The Top-Ten Strategies For Dealing With A Dead Horse – Myers Barnes

A friend of mine recently gave me The Top-Ten Strategies For Dealing With A Dead Horse. I first thought it was hilarious, and then realized it was a commentary on change.

According to the book, here are your options for dealing with a dead horse.

1. Buy a strong whip.
2. Change riders.
3. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
4. Appoint a team to revive the horse.
5. Send out a memo or email that the horse isn’t really dead.
6. Put someone in charge to find "the real problem."
7. Harness several other dead horses together for increased speed and efficiency.
8. Rewrite the standard definition of a live horse.
9. Declare the dead horse as the "way it’s always been done."
10. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Honestly, haven’t we all seen every one of these solutions enacted at our workplaces and our personal lives? In reality, of course, there’s only one way to deal with the problem of a dead horse and that is to dismount.

There is boiled-down wisdom in the proverb, "There’s no use beating a dead horse." It’s not going to go anywhere. You can’t revive it. It’s only going to get worse. All you can do is to walk away and let it rest.

Often, we have a hard time doing that because our dead horse is familiar to us. We’ve been riding it for a while and grown accustomed to it. To leave it behind would mean to go in another direction — to make a change in life — to abandon something we’re comfortable with and venture into the unknown.

No one said you have to love change to be successful, but you do need to accept it. Change is the substance for growth. Sometimes you must tear something down to be able to rebuild or leave something behind to be able to move ahead.

Change offers you the opportunity to redirect your outcome — and your income.

Keep selling,
Myers
Myers Barnes Associates, Inc.

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