Dakota Tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. A recently declassified Pentagon document indicates that people in the Pentagon try other strategies. Specifically there are 23 separate and distinct strategies that people in the Pentagon try when they discover they are riding a dead horse:
1. Buy a stronger whip.
2. Change riders.
3. Say things like, "This is the way we've always ridden this horse."
4. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride their dead horses.
5. Increase the standards to ride dead horses.
6. Appoint a Tiger Team to revive the dead horse.
7. Create a training session to increase riding ability.
8. Pass legislation that declares, " The horse is not dead."
9. Harness several Dead Horses together for increased speed.
10. Declare with a policy directive and operating instruction that no dead horse is too dead to beat.
11. Do a cost analysis to determine if contractors can ride the dead horse cheaper.
12. Buy a commercial off-the-shelf dead horse.
13. Declare that the horse is better, faster, and cheaper dead.
14. Form an IPT to find uses for dead horses.
15. Revisit the key performance parameters (KPPs) for dead horses.
16. Say the horse was procured making CAIV-based decisions.
17. BRAC the horse farm on which the dead horse was born.
18. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
19. Name the dead horse "Paradigm Shift" and keep riding it.
20. Ride the dead horse "smarter," not harder.
21. Call the dead horse "joint" and let others ride it.
22. Ride the dead horse "outside the box."
23. Kill all the other horses.
