Dealing with the absurdity of work

As leaders of business education, it is our mission to encourage and train our students to accept absurdity and live happy and ful? lled lives, writes Loic Roche, from Grenoble Business School

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.” Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942

According to French philosopher, journalist and author Albert Camus, the character described above – Sisyphus – is the worker of the industrial revolution, when labour was often repetitive and unrewarding. 

But, Sisyphus is also the employee, the manager, the executive, the leader or the entrepreneur of today. If there is only one management text that Business School leaders should read, I would recommend Le Mythe de Sisyphe [The Myth of Sisyphus], an essay by Camus published in 1942. An odd choice some might argue. For those not familiar with Camus, he is an absurdist philosopher who speculates about whether the realisation of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily requires someone to end their life – commit suicide. 

In Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Camus describes humanity’s absurd condition: life is meaningless and nonsensical, but humans strive constantly to take meaning from and make sense of it.

Yet, taking meaning from something and making sense of it are the foundations of education (including business and management). There are scores of works that examine pedagogy, leadership, management, organisations, workforces, innovation and invention. Education is not just about knowing something, it’s about understanding and being able to apply knowledge – to make sense of it. And these are the lessons with which we send students into the world; for Camus, we ask them to make sense of something that is nonsensical.

So, in the eyes of Camus, education is absurd. But with Le Mythe de Sisyphe he offers leaders a lesson to think about. Facing the absurd does not entail despair, but on the contrary, can ensure life is lived to the fullest.

Camus claims that the mythical character of Sisyphus is the ideal ‘absurd hero’ and that his punishment is representative of the human condition: Sisyphus must struggle perpetually and without hope of success. So long as he accepts that there is nothing more to life than this absurd struggle, then he can ? nd happiness in it.

For me, Sisyphus could be every human being in our global system: from an undergraduate to an MBA student, or from an assembly worker in a factory, to a CEO of a global organisation. Much of our work is repetitive, and more often than not, we have to walk back down the mountain to retrieve our fallen rock. But through Camus, we can accept the absurdity of this and still experience education and work to its fullest. As leaders of business education, it is our mission to encourage and train our students to accept absurdity and live happy and ful? lled lives.

HOW?

There are three qualities Camus identi? es in his essay, which we, as humans as well as leaders, need in order to deal with our absurd lives. These qualities translate easily into how we can, in a simple fashion, ensure we can deal with the absurdity of work; meaning, recognition and hope.

Meaning is the understanding of what you do and how you ? t into the ‘big picture’. If something happens, how does that affect me? If I do that, how does it affect my colleagues, my manager, and my organisation? 

A deep understanding of not just what you do, but why you do it, is as important for the modern employee, as it is the modern leader. Seeing the bigger picture brings about a deeper sense of ful? lment and belonging – a meaning. 

Work that makes sense is a living work, a work that allows us to recognise ourselves. To borrow the words of political theorist Hannah Arendt (in her 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism), ‘it is a job that allows me to add something of myself to the world’. Or, in other words, as author Fran?ois Hubault writes in, Psychosocial Risks: what reality, what is at stake for work?, ‘whatever happens happens to me, because I know how to relate it to the capacity to do something about it.’

Here lies the nub for us as business educators, we must instil in our students the ability to feel that they can give something to the world, rather than take from it – that they can add value.

Second, humans are essentially vain and insecure, and to be truly ful? lled they need recognition. Through Camus we can begin to understand that recognition is beyond remuneration and bonus packages, it is more emotional and personal. 

To counteract feelings of the absurd, you need to feel valued – it’s the old ‘I’m a person, not a number’ narrative. Recognition comes from the personal relationships we build through our lives and this is especially true at work. Good leaders take the time to understand their employees, ask after their children and families and appreciate their day-to-day rock rolling. We must teach our students this. Business relationships are not just about networking; they are about forging a deeper emotional understanding of co-workers and colleagues. These ‘soft skills’ are highly valued by companies and often go unrewarded, where in actual fact they can create some of the deepest value for an organisation. 

Third, we need to feel hope: hope for greater meaning and value from the work we do and hope that this is achievable and within reach. 

Our wellbeing rests on hope and it is this quality that closes the circle on Camus’ trilogy to combat the absurd.

We need hope that we will have a greater understanding of meaning and earn greater recognition for what we do; it is what drives us as human beings, ‘where, at every step, the hope of succeeding is diminished, their destiny is tilted to become tragic,’ writes Camus.

This trilogy also drives organisations. Making people feel valued, and making sense of the absurdity of the world of work, reaps rewards for companies in that it creates even greater value – in essence the value of the many is greater than the sum of all its parts.

And here is where we can take another lesson from Camus. 

Alongside our absurd individual lives, we exist in a world which is similarly meaningless and absurd. Grave questions face us as a human race – notwithstanding Donald Trump’s election as US President or the UK’s ‘Brexit’ from the European Union, issues such as climate change, the refugee crisis and ensuring a sustainable future are massive challenges to the human race.

‘A deep understanding of not just what you do, but why you do it, is as important for the modern employee, as it is the modern leader’

Camus’ philosophy focuses on us, as humans, and our condition, and I believe that if we approached our global problems in the same human-centric fashion, we would be better positioned to deal with these challenges. Instil meaning, recognition and hope in every individual and we will go a long way to meeting the challenges of the future.

At Grenoble, we focus very much on developing students to face our absurd future. We do so through creating programmes with these three qualities in mind. How will this develop meaning for the student? Will they feel they gain recognition? And will it give them hope for a better future? In doing this we hope to create the value we need in order to address our future challenges.

For Camus, those without these attributes, these skills, or indeed this philosophy, become ‘the souls condemned in their deaths in what must be called their "living" – in certain enterprises, organisations, administration – to roll the same rock all the days of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year, and sometimes years, still and always the same rock.’

So whether running a small, local SME, a large global conglomerate, or heading up a Business School or MBA programme, it is worth remembering that we are all essentially pushing rocks up a mountain. For me, this is a vital lesson – we can read every book written and learn how to push the rock up the mountain better or more ef? ciently; but if we don’t understand why we are pushing it in the ? rst place we will never be truly happy.

________

This article was published in AMBITION | BE IN BRILLIANT COMPANY, Association of MBAs magazine, pp. 48-51, www.mbaworld.com, David Woods, Head of Editorial.