When the way things used to work no longer applies, it’s tempting to redouble your efforts, or to flog the dead horse.
In their book Net Ready, Amir Hartman and John Sifonis offer bit of humour, underlying the folly of flogging the dead horse. The answer they say is “when you discover you’re riding dead horse, the best strategy is to get off and quickly find new mount”. In business, it’s often difficult to get out of our investments in dead horses, which leads us to try other strategies to breathe life into hopeless investments, including the following:
1) Change riders
2) Buy stronger whip
3) Harness several dead horses together for increased speed
4) Emulate the best practices of companies riding dead horses
5) Outsource the ridership of the horse
6) Affirm that “this is the way we have always ridden this horse”
7) Change the requirements, declaring that “This horse is not dead”
8) Perform cost analysis to see if contractors can ride it cheaper
9) Promote the dead horse to management position
10) Have the lawyers bring suit against the horse manufacturer
11) Put out news release that, in the unlikely event the horse is dead, it was dead before it ever came to the company.
Cost, clarity and Covid lessons: Directors on the fuel crisis
Management Editorial Team
April 23, 2026
Surging costs, a lack of clarity on trigger points for Government action and lessons learned during the Covid pandemic are dominating boardroom discussions about the fuel crisis, according to a
