Select Page

You can lead a horse to water, but …

You can lead a horse to water, but …

 … you can’t make him drink.

You can advertise your product but you can’t force people to buy it. You can provide all of the tools to take up jogging, but you still have to put on the shoes. You can buy all of the books on a subject, but you have to open them and study to learn what’s in them.

I can sit next to him, open the books, ask questions and practice, but the student still has to do the learning at some point.

If there’s just one phrase I still have with me from my international MBA program at the Rotterdam School of Management, it’s from Professor Giorgio Inzerilli who taught us that “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

In other words, you can do as much as you are in control of, but at some point, you will have to let it go. Sure, you could put salt in the horse’s water, but it’s still up to the horse to decide to drink. You can try to influence and help, coerce and bribe, even swindle and cheat, but people are going to do what they’re going to do.

More on equestrian business psychology:

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.