Imagine Sisyphus.  In the ancient myth, he was condemned to pushing the same great boulder up a mountain only to find that when he was almost at the top, the boulder would roll back down.  Then he would start the process all over again, time after time, after time.

Sisyphus was condemned a pointless task pushing his boulder, a pointless drudgery.  There’s something absurd about him and his task.

The French existential philosopher Camus wrote about Sisyphus and his boulder, reflecting that maybe someone in his position should first acknowledge the absurdity of being locked in pointless repetition and the struggle beyond the constant repetition of defeat.  He goes on to argue that he should consider his circumstances taking hold of the need to change. 

Another French philosopher, Etienne Gilson and a contemporary of Camus’ wrote about what we know to be true.  He made a distinction between that which is ‘common sense,’and so always true in every circumstance and what he called ‘common convention’, which he described as something accepted as being true.

The entrepreneur in me, says that if we are like Sisyphus with our metaphorical boulder, we need to take a moment to stop pushing it and ask ourselves whether we are really condemned to keep pushing or whether we have the opportunity to stop and perhaps do something different.

Sometimes, we don’t have the choice to take that moment to stop.  Sometimes, stopping is forced on us.  For many of us, Covid has forced that ‘stop’. In doing so I invite you to  take hold of the need to change.  For some this may involve a choice to make a radical change.  For others change might be forced on us.  There will be many points in between.

I worry I have in these changing times is that in moving from ‘stop’ to a new start, we run the risk of being formed by worn out ‘common conventions’.  I fear around us providing support to businesses for example, will present methods they have inherited as ‘common convention’.  Business coaches will offer solutions suited to earlier times. Decisions will be made based on business planning tools people have believed in.

I want people to stop, at least just for a moment.  

Are those planning tools fit for purpose?  Do the business coach’s solutions work?  Are the business support methods effective?

The answer has to be, ‘We can’t know in the new post Covid world’.  

There may be those who will go on to say, ‘Our tool have been good enough up to now, so why not keep using them?’.  There will be others who say, “I believe in them’.

To those people I say, by all means believe your tools are fit for purpose and are solutions that will work!  Excellent.  Go use them.  But how do you know they are fit for purpose and effective?  You don’t know.  You simply believe they will because you’ve been told they will by someone else or because they are one of these ‘common conventions’.

Let me show you another way, one that’s fit for a post-Covid world and is effective.  It’s a way I’ve been developing for a number of years as I’ve worked with all kinds of organisations and written about the kinds of trends we are now facing up to: remote working, changing working practise, effective solutions for a changing world.

All I ask of you is that you stop pushing that boulder for a little while and look, because we’ve created new tools to assess people and to connect their development to their performance, anywhere and on demand.  It will only take a moment to look.  So, go to www.spiceframework.com or contact me personally at my main business email address, [email protected] We really would like to help you work beyond these uncertain and challenging times.

Written by Michael Croft

November 24, 2020