We've been circulating this book at work last couple of weeks, "Who moved my cheese?", and it tied into the subject of a work conference I attended last week as well.
The book is a short, fairly simple, book about four mice&'littlepeople' and their approach to the cheese they eat and live by and what happens when the cheese disappear. I wasn't particularly impressed with it when I started reading it. And after an hour when I finished it, I can't say that it was a huge impact either (told you, a short simple book). However, going to the "team discussion" afterwards made me realize that maybe it was a good book/segway for people who haven't encountered/attended "change in the workplace workshops" or "managing people" or even "grief support". There were quite a few people with whom I work, who had never heard about these different approaches to change* and wanted to hear what other people thought and who of the characters they identified with.
In the book there are four characters; Sniff & Scurry (the two mice) and Hem & Haw (the littlepeople). They each are used to describe the different approach to change and living (my comment). How to adapt to new situations, but also how you should act in your present situation. This is illustrated among other things that the mice "keep their running shoes tied around their necks 'to always be ready to run to look for new cheese'" whereas the littlepeople keep their shoes on the hook on the wall and become complacent, thinking "this stash of cheese will never disappear, we don't need the shoes/running anymore".
Full disclosure; I think my main scepticism and disagreement with all these management books and ideas on how to teach your coworkers how to think like this comes from my Swedish (OK, leftish) view on work and society. I have an innate aversion to teach people(workers) that "the normal is that you need to be flexible person who lives by the mission of your job" and "that it is completely fine not to have any job security, no one would ask for that" since I know that there are plenty of places/countries (hello Europe) where this is not normal, nor accepted. (I currently live in a right to work state in the USA - we can leave on the day, company can tell us to leave that day.) The more realistic and utilitarian part of my brain is simply telling me "this is the new normal, you might not like it but you have to know it and work with it since that's the way the world works right now". In a world of contract working (grants and soft money), where you are hired for a specific time/project this is reality for a lot of people. Just because I don't fancy it, doesn't make it less real and affecting me.
Anyway, reading this book and discussing CHANGE at the conference made me think about the similarities between the "stages of change" and the "stages of grief", which makes sense since grief indicates change** Both include anger & acceptance bridged by denial/resistance. With anger being a lot of focus of the fear of what will happen now that it changes. My personal experience is that facing that fear is the fastest/only? way through the stages and helping the move to acceptance.
I would recommend the short book for reading at work for anyone who is in a "movable/flexible/contract" job. Not because I think it is great, true & something to aspire to, but because it is good to get reminded that this is something many management people have as a base for thinking. Also, it is very good not to get too complacent and too secure in thinking "I have my job and it will last forever" since we live in a changing work environment. And finally, it's a good ice breaker for you to talk about this with your coworkers, who may or may not have thought about change/security like this, you can start the conversation with "which character did you identify most with?"
(I'm between Sniff and Haw. I don't love change, I love stability and routine with a spice, but I keep my CV updated and do read job adverts every week, even if I like my job and only have been in this position about a year. If we were down sizing tomorrow and I found out that there was no more job for me, I'd have some options to at least apply for right then and there. This makes me, the planner and over-thinker, feel more secure even though nothing is certain in life.)
*I would say that this book is very much written as a "you as a worker have a responsibility to be adaptive to change since when the job changes it is just normal and you shouldn't be the stick in the mud". Not as coming from a perspective where the job has a responsibility to the worker. I elaborate on my criticism further down in the blog post
**I wrote a section on this but erased it since it was a side-bar discussion that wouldn't move this blog post forward. I'm remembering the rules better, keep to one point per blog post! :)
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