Corporate Cowboyism

Having spent my fair share of time on horseback, I reckon I’ve got the corporate world figured out. It operates on a simple principle: if there’s an easy way to do something, by all means, let’s take the hard way instead. Take a yearling pony, for instance. You’ve got to show it the ropes—literally. It usually involves tying a rope to the pony and to a good stout snubbing post, then watching the pony throw an existential crisis. It will pull, strain, and fight like sentenced to hard labor for crimes it ain’t committed. And then, after an impressive display of stubbornness that would put any middle manager to shame, the pony finally does the unthinkable—it takes a step forward. And just like that, it learns the process was as simple as moving its fool legs. Had that pony been raised in a boardroom instead of a corral, it’d have held three meetings, commissioned a study, and formed a task force to analyze the strategic feasibility of stepping forward—before ultimately concluding that what it needed was a consultant charging $500 an hour to tell it to do what it could’ve figured out for free.