Q 240. Time is money and it should be spent on doing 'Important but NOT Urgent' tasks. However we all are like Sisyphus (a prisoner in the ancient Greece who was given a never ending task of rolling a heavy and huge rock up a hill only to watch it roll back down and start over again). Endless to-do lists that only grow longer are a big deterrent for Continuous Improvement Projects that require creativity. Explain what can be done to address the Sisyphus effect.

 

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Sisyphus will have a Snowball rolling effect similar  Newtons 3rd law 

For every improvement made through CI  there is an limiting point where it topple back in terms of Change management or Complete overhaul of Technology or process methodology include but not limited to Change of people all together.

The tendency to stop this process is doing PDCA approach where during each phase we should not come down by keeping a wedge kind of mechanism of bench-marking.

 

Approach of "Continuous" to be made to "Continual improvement" where there is a provision to standardized the achieved result at each stage and making that as a benchmark for the next process.

 

Similarly usage of Horizontal deployment methodology  will also leads to lesser work for doing similar improvement in other processes. (parallel process)(not re-inventing wheel).

 

The Tipping point effect of changeover from Sisyphus to Snowball should be monitored and Controls to be standardized using risk elimination methodology by "Mistake proofing". similarly use of Corrective and preventive & predictive mechanism will help us to overcome the Sisyphus effect. 

 

There are additional ways of analysis and overcoming as FMEA and Re-FMEA after implemented solutions reduces the effect and "Lesson learnt" activity will help to reduce the effect of Sisyphus. 

 

 

Sisyphus effect, emanates from a Sisyphus who was a king in ancient Greek, was being punished for his craftiness and cruelness. He was being punished  to carry a rock up the hill. As he used to reach the hilltop, the stone was being forced down the hill by god. His repetitive actions were all futile and never-ending.  

The Sisyphus effect is seen in day to day activities and continuous improvement activities and projects. It is due a  never ending to do list due to large number of incoming  and demanding  activities.  The employees get demotivated and struggle in their work, when their leaders  do not value  their  hard work and dedication in accomplishing the activities, urgent work and continuous improvement activities. Rather some of the leaders criticize their  workers. So the leaders are killing  the usefulness of their team member’s contributions and leads to accumulation of  their day to day activities, which are rendered as worthless by leaders .

Strategies to combat Sisyphus effect:

 

-       Give a continuous  ongoing feedback to team members in  their day to day activities. Give acknowledgment, appreciation and rewards for their good performance.

-       Trust the team  members in accomplishing  improvement and project related work, without managing them all the time.

-       Remain connected with the team members, explain them clearly their role in doing improvement activities and how their contribution adds in achievement of the goals and  upliftment of the organization.

-       To do list with prioritization of the work, based on the level of importance is utmost important to have a clear vision.

-       Start doing the things, according to the order of importance.

-       It is important to keep a track of effort/input and likely outcome.

-       Daily review of workload is important, before  starting to  just get going 

-       Root cause analysis to find out  the  causes of Sisyphus effects, continuous quality improvement to tackle them and overcome the tipping point(threshold at which sudden downfall occurs) 

 

Sources for the images

www.researchgate.net

www.slideshare.com 

 

 

Benchmark Six Sigma Expert View by Venugopal R

A few thoughts on addressing the Sisyphus effect…

 

PDCA wheel analogy

By looking at the story of Sisyphus, trying to roll up the rock up the hill, I can’t help relating it to the PDCA wheel which has to be rolled continuously for improvements. And that too… the PDCA wheel has to be imagined to be rolled upwards on an inclined plane.

The problem that most of us would have experienced, and possibly continuing to experience is that the PDCA wheel will tend to roll backwards. We would experience it in the form of repeating the same ‘Continuous Improvement Projects’ repeatedly. The lack of adequate control systems, mistake proofing and SOPs are some of the major reasons that result in rolling back of improvements. That’s why you see that a ‘wedge’ is placed under the PDCA wheel to prevent its roll back, and this wedge is the QMS (Quality Management Systems).

 

A good QMS is a pre-requisite to ‘Continuous Improvement Programs’, the absence of which puts us at risk of losing the gains.

 

Separating resource allocation for Continuous Improvement:

Very often we see the same set of resources being given the responsibility for handling the ‘day-to-day’ roles as well as ‘strategic roles’. With this, you will see that most of the ‘Improvement related actions’ get postponed due to 'pre-occupation' on the day-to-day activities. In order to obtain specific focus on strategic improvements and innovative thinking, specific time and resource have to be budgeted and complied with leadership focus.

 

Comfort zone syndrome

If one is used to a set pattern of activities for a long period, then they tend to develop a ‘comfort zone’ around this routine, despite it not being the most efficient method possible. There would be a resistance to come out of this routine, and to take up a creative thinking. It helps to have periodic job rotations to break the formation of such comfort zones.

 

Continual application of Lean

Develop process maps for all processes, including administrative processes and periodically perform a VA / NVA analysis. It is quite possible that you would come across few steps that could simplified, eliminated or clubbed with some other step to reduce the effort and time. With the ongoing improvements in information technology, it is important to keep identifying ways of digitizing and automating tasks that would relieve repetitive efforts by humans, and thus release their time for more creative thinking and developments.

 

Balanced work allocation

It is not uncommon to find few individuals who appear to be extremely busy and over-occupied with routine work, whereas there would be others who appear relatively less occupied. The reason could either be an imbalance in the work allocation or due to the difference in method or behavioral traits of the individuals. Apart from balancing the workload, it may be worthwhile to capture and share the best practices for performing a similar job more efficiently.

Both Harsha Subbanna and Shashikant Adlakha have provided very good answers and are joint winners. Please go through Mr. Venugopal's answers for additional strategies.