The Care and Feeding of Dead Horses
"Riding Dead Horses" comes from old Indian folklore. The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians basically muses: "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."
What the saying attempts to do is to point out that riding a dead horse does not get you any where! While this may seem a bit silly to be discussing riding dead horses, some further examples should clear up the relevance of the discussion.
Now it seems that it is a common occurrence for modern businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions and many professionals to "employ the strategy of riding dead horses>/i>", so they deserve more study so that you are better prepared to identify a "dead horse" and secondly, that you can have a better chance of acting accordingly when you spot one.
There are 2 very useful corollaries to the "Riding Dead Horses" concept in today business world.
1) Never concern yourself about a competitor that is riding a dead horse. Experience shows that you have nothing to fear from competitors mounted on dead horses. In fact, there are occasions where the best competitive strategy you can adopt is to get your competitors to either switch to a "dead horse" or go down a path that will kill the horse that they are currently riding.
2) Always keep checking to see if the horse your riding is dead, because dead horses never carry you to where you want to go.
Some of my favorite examples of people riding a dead horse may provide assistance in recognizing a "DEAD HORSE" and insight as to its potential cause.
Case of the CEO Obsession:
An insurance executive coming from a very large predominantly personal lines insurance company, took over as the CEO of a large commercial casualty company. Knowing the weak spots in his former company's approach, he set out on a massive project to compete with his old company and make the commercial casualty company a major player in personal lines.
Now today, in the era of the internet, where money and technology can open up completely new distribution channels, one could have developed an effective strategy to enter the personal lines marketplace. However, in the 1970's, there was no internet. The commercial casualty company dealt through Independent Agents, and as a very successful commercial casualty company, its agents were located exactly where you would expect them to be ... in major metropolitan areas and industrial areas. These areas had auto accident, theft and vandalism frequencies that were orders of magnitude greater than in the suburban marketplaces where the most successful personal lines insurers were located.
By offering a competitive priced product, it was easy enough to put on business, after all, these were areas where the major personal lines companies did not compete, because they felt they couldn't charge a high enough price to cover their losses.
Now the very successful Independent Agents that were successful commercial insurance agents pointed out that not only was it not very likely to produce profitable personal lines business in these areas, but they were commercial insurance agents whose personal lines operations were basically operated as accommodation business to the executives of the companies for which they wrote the commercial lines.
Millions of operational losses piled up over the years and it wasn't until 3 CEOs later that the personal lines operations was sold to another insurance company.
Lesson: Newly arriving executives or newly acquiring companies many times immediately mount dead horses modeled after successful operations from their previous firms.
Case of the Runaway Project:
Case of the "This was a great idea, now let's run it into the ground!"
Other examples that might help you spot Dead Horses:
What the saying attempts to do is to point out that riding a dead horse does not get you any where! While this may seem a bit silly to be discussing riding dead horses, some further examples should clear up the relevance of the discussion.
Now it seems that it is a common occurrence for modern businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions and many professionals to "employ the strategy of riding dead horses>/i>", so they deserve more study so that you are better prepared to identify a "dead horse" and secondly, that you can have a better chance of acting accordingly when you spot one.
There are 2 very useful corollaries to the "Riding Dead Horses" concept in today business world.
1) Never concern yourself about a competitor that is riding a dead horse. Experience shows that you have nothing to fear from competitors mounted on dead horses. In fact, there are occasions where the best competitive strategy you can adopt is to get your competitors to either switch to a "dead horse" or go down a path that will kill the horse that they are currently riding.
2) Always keep checking to see if the horse your riding is dead, because dead horses never carry you to where you want to go.
Some of my favorite examples of people riding a dead horse may provide assistance in recognizing a "DEAD HORSE" and insight as to its potential cause.
Case of the CEO Obsession:
An insurance executive coming from a very large predominantly personal lines insurance company, took over as the CEO of a large commercial casualty company. Knowing the weak spots in his former company's approach, he set out on a massive project to compete with his old company and make the commercial casualty company a major player in personal lines.
Now today, in the era of the internet, where money and technology can open up completely new distribution channels, one could have developed an effective strategy to enter the personal lines marketplace. However, in the 1970's, there was no internet. The commercial casualty company dealt through Independent Agents, and as a very successful commercial casualty company, its agents were located exactly where you would expect them to be ... in major metropolitan areas and industrial areas. These areas had auto accident, theft and vandalism frequencies that were orders of magnitude greater than in the suburban marketplaces where the most successful personal lines insurers were located.
By offering a competitive priced product, it was easy enough to put on business, after all, these were areas where the major personal lines companies did not compete, because they felt they couldn't charge a high enough price to cover their losses.
Now the very successful Independent Agents that were successful commercial insurance agents pointed out that not only was it not very likely to produce profitable personal lines business in these areas, but they were commercial insurance agents whose personal lines operations were basically operated as accommodation business to the executives of the companies for which they wrote the commercial lines.
Millions of operational losses piled up over the years and it wasn't until 3 CEOs later that the personal lines operations was sold to another insurance company.
Lesson: Newly arriving executives or newly acquiring companies many times immediately mount dead horses modeled after successful operations from their previous firms.
Case of the Runaway Project:
Case of the "This was a great idea, now let's run it into the ground!"
Other examples that might help you spot Dead Horses:
- Case of "The Whiz Kid": (ah yes, dead horses could be people)
- Case of the All Consuming Corporate Planning Process:
- Case of the "We must be the First to the Market":
The following are a list of some BAD STRATEGIES commonly used to cure dead horses:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Reclassifying the dead horse as "living impaired".
8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
