A Dead Horse <Reflections on Business Today.>
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a
dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often
try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this
horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

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You've Been in the Corporate World Too Long When....

1. You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core
competencies are.
2. You decide to re-org your family into a
"team-based organization."
3. You refer to dating as test marketing.
4. You can spell "paradigm."
5. You actually know what a paradigm is.
6. You understand your airline's fare structure.
7. You write executive summaries on your love letters.
8. Your Valentine's Day cards have bullet points.
9. You think that it's actually efficient to write
a ten page presentation with six other people you
don't know.
10. You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting
a performance review.
11. You believe you never have any problems in your life,
just "issues" and "improvement opportunities."
12. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.
13. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer
to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed
to "in debt."
14. You end every argument by saying, "let's talk about
this off-line".
15. You can explain to somebody the difference between
"re-engineering," "down-sizing," "right-sizing," and
"firing people's asses."
16. You actually believe your explanation in number 15.
17. You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner
arrives late.
18. You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost."
19. You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."
20. You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.
21. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.
22. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour
to comprehend.
23. You account for your tuition as a capital
expenditure instead of an expense.
24. You insist that you do some more market research
before you and your spouse produce another child.
25. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an
emergency meeting about their brand equity.
26. Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean
laundry and paid bills.
27. You use the term "value-added" without falling
down laughing.
28. You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a
whiteboard and Internet connection.
29. You give constructive feedback to your dog.