Riding dead horses

My friend Cynthia Chavez moved from the beautiful city of San Francisco to Arizona. She bought a house in Scotsdale and has been inviting me and my family to visit. Lord willing, I think I will this year.

Pardon my ignorance on the subject matter, but the moment I hear the word “Arizona”, my mind automatically launches into a series of thoughts about Indians and cowboys. Having been in the denim jeans and apparel business for a long time, I distinctly remember the jeans brand Arizona. Now this in turn makes me think about a material I got from the Web, about the wise sayings Dakota Indians pass on from one generation to the next. The material is entitled, Riding Dead Horses, and according to tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians,

“…When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, other strategies often have to be tried first with dead horses, including:

1. Buy a stronger whip.

2. Change riders.

3. Threaten the horse with termination.

4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.

5. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Appoint an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.

8. Create a training session to increase the riders load share.

9. Reclassify the dead horse as living-impaired.

10. Change the form so that it reads: “This horse is not dead.”

11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.

14. Provide additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.

15. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.

16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.

20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Are there dead horses within your organization? If there are, what are you doing about it?

Leaders have to make unpopular decisions. When CEOs of top business companies were asked, “What is the most challenging thing you have to do as the top dog in your business organization?”  Almost without exception, every single one of them answered, “It’s when I have to let people go.”

“But Francis, do you just fire lazy people without giving them a chance?” Of course not. But with some people, it just cannot be helped. And when you do not deal with them, you are being unfair with those who are working their heads off trying to make things work in the organization so that all may survive the tumultuous times.

Whether these dead horses are friends or family, you need to be gracious - but you also need to be firm and fair. You cannot allow a handful of lazy unproductive people affect the many who are working hard. Even Jesus condemned the lazy servant who did not make productive use of the talents given him.

Leadership is no walk in the park; you got to do what you got to do. Call me harsh, brand me as insensitive, but dealing with the situation is a leader’s call. Train them. Trade them. Transfer them. But if it really cannot be helped, you have to let them go. This is called responsibility. 

(Dr. Ramesh Richards, Anthony and Maricel Pangilinan, Ardy and Tingting Roberto, Malou Tiongson Ortiz, Peter Tanchi and Francis Kong will speak in “I’m Inspired 2”, a whole day seminar on finding true success behind success, on May 14, 2010 at the SMX Convention Center. For further inquiries contact Inspire at 632-6872614 or 09178511115.)