Who Moved My Cheese

...

I found this book to be quite interesting. Having read it now has also helped me related with how I would deal with change management. And it has also led me to ask myself a few questions. Can I observe the change beforehand and prepare for it? Or react in accordance with the conditions? How do I deal with changes in my daily life? Or just believe in my old ways and pull away anything new? For others, the book has the potential to be a useful resource to help someone cope with unexpected and unwelcome change, providing a way of externalizing the conflicting emotions caused by change and allowing one to step back and evaluate one’s life from the perspective of Sniff, Scurry, Hem, and Haw.

By providing real life characters, the author help the reader to relate or actualize their own reactions to change (in a real life situation) in terms of one of these characters and evaluates the long-term consequences of those actions. It also allows the reader an opportunity for some introspection, a chance to look at yourself and face your fears or to address characteristics that we feel draw us back. However, the reality is, the Hem’s of the world, paralyzed by fear and distracted by comfort do take a leap of faith and take a gamble with life. Sadly most people will never be able to gain the strength to break free and scamper down the maze in pursuit of new cheese.

For the sake of this review, one could argue, that the storyline itself lacks genuine conflict, there’s no real characterization for example, both the little people and the mice have no gender, the setting is not clear etc. which are some the real life considerations in adapting to change. Additionally, the ending of the story is very predictable, which is a contradiction to organizational change in the real world. Moreover, the philosophy in the book only applies to managers that are expecting employees to supinely accept whatever change comes their way. This book alliterates the picture most managers set in the workplace for employees to blindly adapt to changes decided by their superiors because it is convenient for them. No wonder, CEO’s of the world’s biggest companies such as Robert Davis (President of Chevron) are known to have bought this arguably one sided tale for all his employees. That said, there are some valuable thoughts that management can consider from reading this book.

Reference

Spencer Johnson “Who moved my Cheese?” (1998), Putnma Adult, USA.