As a long standing public servant I can relate to this.
Wisdom says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
In the Public Service, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Change riders.
2. Buy a stronger whip.
3. Do nothing: "This is the way we have always ridden dead horses".
4. Visit other jurisdictions to see how they ride dead horses.
5. Perform a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse's performance.
6. Hire a contractor to ride the dead horse.
7. Harness several dead horses together in an attempt to increase the speed.
8. Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.
9. Appoint a committee to study the horse and assess how dead it actually is.
10. Re-classify the dead horse as "living-impaired".
11. Develop a Strategic Plan for the management of dead horses.
12. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses.
13. Modify existing technical standards to include dead horses.
14. Declare that, as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes
substantially more to the bottom line than many other horses.
15. Class the absence of life in the horse as a "Permissible Noncompliance".
16 . Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
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Topic: Riding a dead horse (Read 770 times)