The Sisyphus Syndrome can cause  your normally smart organization to do some stupid things that work against its success

By Bernard Ross

A Moment of Whimsy — but Worth a Thought

“If the horse is dead you should dismount …”

The above is an example of ancient tribal wisdom from the Dakota plains peoples. I love it. It’s simple, straightforward, patently true and eminently sensible. When I first heard it I had a playful moment composing how a charity might respond to this piece of wisdom, thinking it was too simple or too challenging. Below is my ironic, but maybe close to the truth, take on how a charity might respond (extracted from my book, “Breakthrough Thinking.”) Do you see your organization’s response here? If so, what can you do about it?

1. Buy a stronger whip to see if we can improve performance.

2. Change riders to get a better match of styles.

3. Declare as a core value, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse, and it fits with our culture.”

4. Appoint consultants to study the horse and come up with creative uses for it.

5. Arrange to visit other charities or, better still, private-sector organizations to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Rewrite the performance standards to incorporate riding dead horses.

7. Create a training program to help people ride dead horses.

8. Alter the staff handbook to outlaw the use of the phrase “dead horse” as oppressive and judgmental.

9. Form a project team to find uses for dead horses.

10. Promote the dead horse to a management position or create a special project role for it.

— Bernard Ross

As a consultant, I sometimes feel like a morbid ambulance chaser. I make a career from working with organizations with serious problems. Now, some problems I don't mind — we all make mistakes. But some organizations seem trapped in a sisyphean cycle of not just making mistakes but repeating the same mistakes again and again. For example:

They make and have to undo poor senior appointments.
They embark on quixotic, ill-thought-out campaigns.
They set unachievable and  un-credible service goals.

I'm less keen on working with these organizations. They seem dispirited and are frankly dispiriting to work with. Yet other organizations can make mistakes, even lots of mistakes, and still produce outstanding results. I call these organizations "learning organizations," and it's a pleasure to work with them — there's a sense of progress every time.

You've probably heard the term "learning organization" before. But what does it actually mean? For Peter Senge, who coined the phrase, "learning organization" means something very specific. He talks about "the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into knowledge — accessible to the whole organization, and relevant to its core purpose" from "The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization."

There are some key and challenging ideas present in that definition. It's about constantly  trying new approaches even when things seem to work and turning that experience into something that everyone can use, with a very  specific purpose — to deliver on the mission.

(If you're interested in Senge's broader theories, he expanded his ideas in a second book, "The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization.")

Being a learning organization isn't about having cool, fun offices, or lots of training for staff, or formal policies for everything — and it's never about having an online knowledge management system. (That last item can bring an organization to its knees financially and intellectually. Somehow IT and learning hardly ever seem to match up in real life.)

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Roll the Stone (of Mediocrity) Away

Roll the Stone  (of Mediocrity) Away