Oscar Berg just released a book where he used the dead horse theory in the modern office.

As a horse owner, who has taken away several horses, I can see the similarities with transformation projects.

Horses are big and fragile animals. They cost a lot of money every month and there is a huge effort to maintain them. If you can’t use them for anything, they will be a really expensive puppet for many years to come.

If your horse get an injury or get sick so you can’t ride, then you need to do rehab, but you can’t be sure of a positive outcome. If the injury doesn’t heal, the animal will continue to be in pain, and at some point you as a horse owner need to decide to take the horse away.

You often invest lots of time in training a new horse, unless you buy a really expensive one, so just switching to a new when you have a problem is not a viable solution in the long term.

With Mimosa, the wild horse, the vets at the equestrian clinique didn’t give her any chances for survival when she got grass-sickness disease. Still, with the proper care, will-power and sheer luck, she survived. Some of our other horse were not so lucky.

The question for the steering group of a transformation program is the same as for the horse owner. Will it survive and give any value back, or should we let it die with our help?

Who are you going to call?

Disruptive architecture