Do You Feel Like Sisyphus in Your Job?

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer

Are you a person who believes in and promotes change, innovation, imaginative ideas and are motivated to make a difference in your organization? Do you work in a place where you try to get your new ideas accepted or you have a good recommendation to make something better, but you get regularly shot down by those who prefer the stagnating status quo and mediocrity as opposed to excellence and continuous innovation? Have you gotten so frustrated and annoyed with all red tape, stringent policies that make no sense, along with the burdensome, counterproductive bureaucracy and politics in your company that you’re on the verge of giving in or moving out? Let’s face it change can be scary for many, even if it’s for good.

Try as you might, you can’t seem to get some people to accept your ideas, project, proposals or concepts for something new, different and better. Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates advises us, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Wonderful thought, but that’s easier said than done when it feels like you’re having a tug of war with naysayers and banging your head against a wall or trying to push a huge weight uphill. You may be experiencing the Sisyphus Syndrome. ?

Whether it’s because of being close-minded, rigid in habits or just plain stubborn, some people are resistant to degrees of change, even when it’s worthwhile and an opportunity is clearly there for the taking. Routines and patterns, whether in actions or thinking, are hard to break. Maybe inaction is caused by an aversion to what is perceived as risk. Perhaps it’s just feeling uncomfortable or experiencing fear with the “unknowns” that are imbedded in change and fresh new creative exploits not attempted before. Often people see change and innovation as unnecessary or a lot of extra work they don’t want to do. Unfortunately, growth and comfort do not coexist.

Get Ready! Waves and Tsunamis of Change are Coming

Change and innovation are vital more than ever before because the world is rapidly being shaped and reshaped due to explosive technological advancements and disruptions, shifting globalized markets, increasing competition changing customer expectations and preferences, and economic uncertainty. The “Age of AI” is upon us predicting upheaval of all kinds for employment, business models, organizational operations and a wide host of ingenious applications and disruptions. Combine that with impressive advances in robotics, self-driving vehicles, advances in manufacturing and material science, innovations in education, space exploration and mind-blowing quantum computing, for example, it shouts that science fiction is now becoming today’s reality.? The waves of change are crashing ashore.

The implications are enormous. This means organizations and individuals must be resilient and adapt with agility to stay relevant, competitive and to prosper in both the short-and-long term. Embracing needed change results in innovation, continuous improvement in productivity, efficiency and quality, personal growth, and the ability to better navigate an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. This starts with supporting and promoting imaginative ideas that are then transformed into various positive changes in your organization. Unfortunately, too many organizations still have cultures, managers and teams that are hesitant of anything sparking change, especially major ones.

“Killer Phrases” that Squash Creativity and Change

I’m sure you’ve heard responses like the following to your new ideas, proposed solutions or recommendations at meetings or by individual discussions with your manager, teammates, or co-workers, for example:

“It won’t work — it can’t be done.”

“It’s against our policy.”

“We’ve never done that before!”

“We don’t have the people to do it.”

“That idea is too far-fetched.”

“We’re not ready for that yet.”

“It’s failed before.”

“Why bother — it’s working okay.”

“It isn’t in the budget.”

“Our competitors aren’t doing it.”

“We’re already overworked.”

“We can’t take a chance.”

“Don’t rock the boat.”

“Others here have already tried.”

“Management will never approve it.”

“The timing is not right.”

“Let’s think about it some more.”

“Great solution, but not for us.”

“It’s too much trouble to change.”

“I asked some people. They don’t like that idea.”

If you’re creative, you know it and you see so much more potential and opportunities to unlock in your company, government organization or city, for example. Innovation excites you. It’s the adventure and journey associated with the end point being improvements. After trying to do something just one step ahead in your company or organization so many times and getting rejected, you feel dejected. It seems next to impossible to get others to just listen and be open-minded to new approaches — to simply try something.

They won’t even discuss it. So why waste your time, energy and peace of mind? ?Yet, you haven’t given up. No surrender. Not you! Still, you think you’re a glutton for punishment. You are likely experiencing some aspect and degree of the futile Sisyphus Syndrome!

The Myth of Sisyphus

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was famous for his extraordinary cleverness and for the eternal punishment he suffered after death. According to the ancient Greek poet Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. In other traditional stories, he was disposed to being a highwayman. You likely heard of his story in some form. He was the king of Ephyra, now known as Corinth. As punishment, after his demise, King Sisyphus was placed on a hillside in Tartarus, the lowest region of the underworld of Hades with a massive boulder above him.

The maddening nature of his punishment was due to his scorn of the gods and his audacious belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus, the Greek god of the sky. Sisyphus was forced to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill to avoid being crushed. The gods told him that if he rolled it over the top to the other side that they would release him. His efforts were always in vain, though, for whenever Sisyphus neared the top, thinking he might finally succeed and be released, the boulder would just roll back down again. He was forced to start his burdensome unceasing struggle of labor all over again consigning him to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration.

?It came to pass that any pointless activity would often be described as Sisphean. The French philosopher and author Albert Camus wrote an essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus where he elevates Sisyphus to the status of an absurd hero. American philosopher Richard Taylor renowned for his contributions to virtue ethics and metaphysics, uses Sisyphus’s myth as a representation of life made meaningless because of bare repetition. In various experiments that test how workers respond when the meaning of their tedious task is diminished, the test situation is referred to as a Sisyphusian Condition.

The conclusions from the experiments are that people work harder when their tasks seem more meaningful and that many leaders and managers underestimate the relationship between meaning and motivation of their followers or employees. The phrase Labor of Sisyphus refers to any seemingly mundane or hopeless task that must be repeated endlessly.

You may remember the 1993 movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliott. It tells the story of a television weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He becomes trapped in a time loop forcing him to relive February 2 repeatedly. It’s somewhat of a version of a Sisphusian condition, meaning a monotonous, annoying and repetitive situation. The industrialist Henry Ford had a solution for this condition in his company.

Henry’s Ford’s Creative Solution to a Vexing Problem

It’s a common myth that Henry Ford invented the assembly line. Back in 1913 the Ford Motor Company had a roaring production line making the popular Model T cars. The innovative method of production he instituted on a large scale was the moving assembly line on a conveyor belt in his Highland Park assembly plant in Michigan. This productivity and efficiency improvement allowed the work to be taken to workers rather than the worker moving to and around the vehicle. However, the workers found the assembly line work boring, tedious and physically and mentally taxing as they were now doing only one or two task(s) instead of working to build an entire vehicle.

Additionally, they disliked the constricting timing that the moving assembly line required. It was difficult for workers to satisfactorily complete all their functions before the car moved down the line to its next station. Some cars would end up missing parts, or workers could bump up against each other while putting the parts together. Imagine every week of standing, or bending and twisting in the same spot, making the same movement every couple of seconds. It was unbearably oppressive. Imagine doing it for $2.25 per day on a 9-hour shift and then coming back the next day for more of the same exhausting work. One might call it Groundhog Day in the extreme with a version of the Sisphusian condition to boot.

It was pretty good money in those days, but the toll was too much for many workers to tolerate. Ford's factory turnover rate was so high that in 1913, the company had to hire more than 52,000 men simply to keep a workforce of just 14,000. New workers required a costly training period, and some men just walked away from the line to quit and look for a job elsewhere even if the pay was worse. The increased cost and delayed production kept Ford from selling his cars at the low price that made them so popular.

Creative solutions were needed if he was to keep up this production and solve problems. That’s when Henry Ford doubled the pay by introducing the $5 workday to persuade the men to stay. It was so successful, that besides significantly reducing turnover, it drew mechanics — with better skills — from around the country to Detroit. With the higher wages, Ford cleverly boosted sales by turning his workers into new customers for his cars. He also shortened work hours that reduced fatigue-related mistakes and implemented other process improvements to better the working conditions. A master innovator, Henry Ford once said “I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”

Strategies to Overcome Impediments to Ideas and Change

If you’re in a work environment where managers and co-workers resist most things that might upgrade operations, there are ways to “soften them up” so their resistance or apathy might vanish or at least weaken enough that your chances of getting through to them will increase. Here is a 3-step process:

One: Identify the Real Reasons for Resistance or Apathy

Try to find out exactly why people don’t like what you’re proposing. Usually, the reasons involve these overall categories: 1. They fear the results and consequences of your proposed idea, strategy, solution, plan or other suggested approach. They believe that it might have a detrimental or unpleasant effect on them; 2. They have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are now regarding their current income, benefits, reputation, power/position or expertise. 3. They don’t believe the value and importance of your concept or recommendation.? 4. They’re not motivated to change because it involves more work on their part that does not interest them or might distract them from their other priorities; 5. Ego and insecurity. They see it as making them somehow “look bad” perhaps because they did not come up with the idea or solution. They don’t want to be shown up for their perceived inadequacy or incompetency.

Asking meaningful questions that do not put anyone on the defensive can help you determine the true reasons why they hesitate or outright reject what you are trying to do. Once you determine the source of their opposition, you can try some approaches to mitigate or eliminate it. Here are some examples:

“Are you saying that because it’s not in the current budget, that we couldn’t get additional funds to run even a small test program? Is that the only downfall to my idea? If I were somehow able to get funding, would you consider it?”

“Why do you feel that our management might buck this possible solution going forward?”

“What exactly do you think it would take to get the team to support this project?”

“You brought up a good point of not fixing what’s currently working. But I’ve done some research and got good ideas from others. It looks like this new process I envision would boost productivity somewhere between 25 to 35 percent or more than now. Even if it only was 15 percent better, isn’t it worth at least looking into now?”

“You’re right. It initially seems to be a lot of extra work. What specific activities do you see that would cause more needless work? I anticipated that some of us might legitimately feel that way. So, I put together a simple plan and process to show how we could implement this quality change rather painlessly, more easily and quicker that it might otherwise be realized. It’ll take about 2 minutes to summarize. Can I share it with the team and then get everyone’s feedback?”

Two: Explore Tactics to Blunt Resistance

Here are some possible ways to get people more receptive and accepting of your idea or recommendation:

? Suggest trying out your idea in a smaller, less threatening scale as in a pilot project.

? Give convincing examples of other organizations and businesses that have tried your proposed change and succeeded. If you can, describe why it worked for them and why it would work for your company.

? Use a metaphor or relevant quote that puts things in a sharper, more appealing perspective.

? If possible, show an approach to make your idea easier, faster and cheaper than people realize it can be done.

? Get some grass roots support from experienced, respected managers and co-workers before you bring up your idea, so their advocacy is evident, helpful and persuasive.

? Use smart, non-offensive (to cynics and skeptics) humor to show the illogic ??of the resistance.

? Help others shift to a new “enlightening” perspective or context that will provide a more realistic and beneficial evaluation of your recommendation.

? List science breakthroughs, inventions, innovative products, processes, systems and policies that were originally criticized, but became extremely successful such as crop rotation, alternating current, television, personal computers, smart cell phones, electric cars, vaccines, social media, nuclear power, and artificial intelligence.

? Explain the safeguards and options you created to reduce risk and potential problems with your strategy, concept, approach, solution or other change.

? Show how the benefits and strengths of your proposal greatly outweigh the perceived negatives of the naysayers.

? Offer to work on your own time on your pet project to show initial success results.

? Paint a picture and story of how individuals might be positively impacted by your idea and describe a win-win situation for all those affected by the change.

? Explain how other operational and financial benefits and their returns on investments add up to warrant the change.

Three: Compellingly Communicate Your Case

Be prepared beforehand for all types of comebacks of resistance — “killer phrases” — by those listening to your proposals and recommendations for improvement and change. Here are some examples of how to communicate to thwart those aspects of negativity, skepticism, defensiveness or outright hostility:

“Because this idea was tried before and did not work, does it mean that it was planned and implemented properly? Let me quickly describe how we can dramatically increase the chance of this big idea bearing fruit — right now — with the six success factors my team engineered into our plan.”

“Sure, this approach may seem far out, but what breakthrough isn’t perceived that way at first. This could greatly increase our market share. Here are five examples of bold, daring and even outrageous ideas in our industry over the last ten years that created fortunes for their companies starting with…”

“By changing nothing, nothing changes. That’s extremely risky knowing that our aggressive competitors are continuously innovating and achieving breakthroughs in AI and advanced battery design. We must accelerate our R&D funding as I outlined.”

“All things are difficult before they are easy” said Thomas Fuller, renowned for his mathematical abilities. This multi-part solution will not be easy to achieve. But we have the right people, backed by our management with the resources to do it. No doubt, we have the brainpower. We just need the willpower!”

“I know and agree with you that our manufacturing process has worked just fine till now. Our engineers should be proud of their fine design of it. However, it’s now yielding diminishing returns compared to our competitors and what is needed for the productivity and quality we must have in the years ahead. The hard part is our letting go of what worked for us so well in the last five years but will not serve us now. I have both a short-and long-term innovative plan that will keep us ahead of the pack for many years to come. I ran it by seven industry experts who helped me fine tune it. I’d like to present it to the team now for your feedback and insights as well.”

Insights for Leaders

Whether you are an executive, manager, supervisor or team leader, be aware of your employees who genuinely want to contribute to making your organization even better. Their ideas, strategies, solutions and concepts will be lost if they are not listened to, appreciated and ultimately rewarded for them.? Effective, active listening is critical. If employees were being ignored so many times, they feel futile, powerless, hopeless, and maybe rebellious. Their motivation and engagement will plummet. Check out my article “Great leaders Are Great Listeners” at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/great-leaders-listeners-ray-anthony/?trackingId=sCzrJqJdRSqz5CzKfC8iLQ%3D%3D for valuable tips and insights.

Don’t dismiss their ideas. Even a brief hearing is welcomed. When they repeatedly have their opinions and suggestions squashed, they’ll feel like Sispyphus rolling that massive boulder up a steep hill. At some point, they’ll give up and either stop taking the initiative to contribute or they’ll bolt to an organization that has a culture that encourages and promotes people trying to make a difference there. When employees at all levels feel a true sense of belonging, they are proactive, totally engaged and self-driven to be more productive and to develop innovative solutions. They don’t want to just fit in. They want to feel a sense of belonging that respects and appreciates their individuality and value for their work.

To make a job less boring and mundane, you can try finding ways to challenge employees within your roles, connect their work to a larger purpose, break up repetitive tasks, learn new skills, set “stretch” goals, rotate assignments that give them variety, let them listen to their music or podcasts while working, and consider having contests for who has the best ideas in various categories. Importantly, consider discussing with them about taking on additional responsibilities or exploring opportunities for career development within your company or other organization.

About the Author

Ray Anthony?is the?Chief “Innovader”?in The Woodlands, Texas, USA. He is the author of 9 books and over 100 articles on organizational change, innovation, leadership, creativity, sales, presentation skills and other strategic business topics. His vanguard book, Innovative Presentations for Dummies (Wiley Publishing) shows how to powerfully reimagine, reinvent and remake presentations that win against the toughest odds. Ray is a successful, dynamic keynote speaker, executive coach, program developer, corporate trainer, videographer and creative who has worked with numerous Fortune 500 corporations and elite U.S. government agencies (CIA, NASA and USSOCOM) to help improve their operational performance and results through creativity and innovation. He can be reached at [email protected] or cell: 832-594-4747.

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