Dismount strategies for dead horses

The tribal wisdom of the North American Dakota Indians passed down from generation to generation says that “when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount”.

It is amazing how much time, effort and energy business owners will put into trying to breathe life into ‘dead horses’ instead of committing their valuable resources to more productive pursuits. Most would be able to reflect on specific things that they have poured considerable time and money into, only to achieve poor results. For example:-

• Buying a stronger whip
• Doing nothing: ‘This is the way we have always ridden dead horses’
• Visiting other countries to see how they ride dead horses
• Performing a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance
• Modifying existing standards to include dead horses
• Harnessing several dead horses together in an attempt to increase their speed
• Re-classifying the dead horse as ‘living-impaired’
• Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses

While there is no doubt that running a business is about taking risks, there needs to be an appreciation that sometimes the only means of achieving the desired results is to adopt new strategies.

In a way, persevering with poor strategy is like putting up with a car engine that is steadily going out of tune. It’s not until you have it serviced that you truly understand how bad things had been. Perhaps if cars engines or business strategy were like horses the path to non performance would be a lot faster and we would be more ready to make the required changes.

Try this quick quiz based on the ten Ps of business:

Processes – are your internal and external processes so non-existent, inefficient or restrictive that you make it difficult for your staff to provide effective internal and external customer service?

Products – are you relying on under-performing products or services that do not react favourably to advertising and promotions effort and may therefore have come to the end of their natural life cycle?

Prices – are you relying on pricing and discounting alone as your main point of competitiveness and differentiation, rather than building value for the customer by other means?

Policies – are your staff disempowered because your internal policies do not allow the authority and responsibility to resolve customer issues or complaints immediately?

Personnel – do you have under-performing staff who just don’t ‘get it’ and therefore cause you on-going frustration because you don’t know how to give them the meaning they require?

Plans – do you develop business plans without spending time to develop strategies specifically related to on-going innovation?

Promotions – do you constantly restrict your marketing effort to advertising and promotions without having a measurable return for your investment?

Positioning – have market circumstances and / or your service offering changed over time to render your current positioning strategy (how you want to be perceived by your customers) obsolete?

Priorities – Are there issues having a negative impact on your business but you have so much on your plate that you don’t have time to address them?

Potential – Can you see the potential for improvement but you are too busy working in the business to take time out to work on the business?

If the answer is yes to one or more of these questions then you may have a dead horse on your hands. If you have also been using any of the business equivalents of the ineffective corrective strategies listed above, then you may well be in need of a re-think as to your means of achieving future success.

Now is a good time to recognise your dead horses and develop strategies for dismounting and remounting strategies of energy and vigour.

Try our free business diagnostic to discover your ‘dead horses’