If you pay any attention at all to the language of business, you’re likely to hear a number of phrases that show up over and over in day-to-day corporate conversations. For the most part, we know exactly what they mean when we hear them, but that doesn’t make them any less repetitive or annoying. Quite often, when an executive team brings me in to help them build their team or strengthen the corporate culture, they’ll give me a rundown of the current situation that’s often one continuous stream of these overused phrases. They might tell me how they were “ahead of the pack” when they were only looking at “ballpark figures” to give them an idea of the “big picture” as they attempted to “corner the market.” If there really into the corporate speak, they might tell me how they were committed to “go the extra mile,” but “in a nutshell,” they realize that their “hands were tied” and they are no longer “in the driver’s seat” and are now forced to go “back to square one.” Ultimately, they tell me how it’s suddenly “out in the open,” and they realize that it is “not going to fly,” so they’re going to have to start “thinking outside the box.” Most will finish that torturous run of worn-out corporate speak with a polite ” sorry for all the clichés.”

Let’s just put aside the fact that these phrases are incredibly annoying for a moment. I guess we should also put aside that these aren’t clichés… they’re idioms. That’s a pretty common mistake, but there’s a real difference. An idiom is an expression with a symbolic meaning that differs from its literal meaning. The cliché is a phrase or opinion that’s overused and generally indicates a lack of original thought.

My favorite idiom is “beating a dead horse.” If you’re unfamiliar with the “beating a dead horse” idiom, it means that it’s a waste of time to continue to do something where the outcome is already decided. Now, for some odd reason, some really talented executives that I’ve worked with think there’s actually something they can do with a corporate “dead horse.” I can’t really put my finger on exactly why this is. For some, it’s about ego, and I think for others, it may just be tenacity and an unwillingness to give up. The one thing I can tell you about “beating a dead horse” in the corporate environment is that it doesn’t matter how talented an executive you are… nothing will change the outcome when you’re truly dealing with a “dead horse.”

Believe me, I’ve seen them try everything.

  • It’s too late to buy a stronger whip
  • it does no good to change riders
  • the dead horse doesn’t care if you threaten it with termination
  • visiting other countries to see how they successfully ride dead horses doesn’t matter
  • you can’t just lower the standards so dead horses can still be considered productive
  • there’s no outside contractor that knows how to ride a dead horse
  • try as you might, harnessing several dead horses together never increases the speed
  • no amount of additional funding or training is going to increase the dead horse’s performance
  • lowering the expected performance requirements for all the other horses doesn’t make the dead horse any better
  • and try as you might, promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position so it can hire another horse isn’t in the cards either

There’s only one thing to do when you discover you’re riding a dead horse. You have to dismount and find a viable way forward.

So what can we learn from all of this? Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good of a leader you are… you have to be willing to “rock the boat,” “take the bull by the horns,” “address the elephant in the room,” “cut bait,” and look somewhere else for more “smooth sailing.”

Okay, maybe I should admit it. I guess I’m a bigger fan of the idiom than I thought.