Online Bookstore: Putnam Pub Group (Paper) Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life Book

Average Rating:

This audiobook was given to me, along with a number of other coping-with-trying-times resources, by one of my many middle managers in the midst of a merger. With an open mind I gave it a shot. What did I have to loose, except my job?

This book is an over-simplistic metaphor for unexpected change that is beyond one's control, in which "cheese" is a symbol of something you want, ie: happiness, security, financial resources. The message the authors attempt to convey is that your future, success, security, and ultimately happiness is within your control. While this may be PARTLY true, the tone of the childlike story is so condescending (an unintended byproduct of the tale's simplification, I suspect), one could easily get the feeling it was penned by the committee representing CEOs Happily Unopposed to Bad Behavior (CHUBB).

The book amplifies feelings of rejection and betrayal by the faceless "Cheese Removers". It raises many questions like, "What if I was counting on that cheese for future use", but offers no answer other than you've got to go out and find more "cheese" for yourself, even though everything you had was just taken from you for no apparent reason. To me (and many others) this was not an inspiring read. It was painful.

This book was destined to be a best seller because, no doubt, it can be ordered by the box-load by those anticipating removing others' cheese. Sure, the message is a fine one, it's the delivery that flat-out stinks.

The book is, as almost a thousand other reviewers have pointed out, inane and juvenile in presentation, but sinister and propagandistic in intent. Its core idea--that if you get moving as soon as your livelihood (your "cheese") has been removed, you will find a bigger store of cheese just around a few corners--is a bizarre and outdated combination of 90s boom-time delirium and New Age pablum. But it's pablum with ground glass in it--it's easy-to-swallow Newspeak for "You're probably gonna get fired soon."

I give this (physically and intellectually) slim volume a second star only because during the 20 minutes it took me to read it, I did get one valuable insight about a particular problem in my workplace.

Otherwise, I recommend viewing this book with suspicion and misgivings, if indeed you're forced to view it at all.

Unlike many of the one-star reviewers, I'm a libertarian, and I do believe that we all need to be ready to adapt to radical changes in how we earn our livings. Like it or not, the anti-globalists and the Luddites aren't going to turn back the tides of freer trade and ever-improving technology. I myself got laid off last month, and although at times I've been downhearted and panicky (my skills could use some major upgrading), I am trying to look at it as an opportunity, not a catastrophe, especially because my most recent job was in an industry with a dwindling future.

That said, all the trees that died to make "Who Moved My Cheese?" would have been better put to use as toilet paper. An author who truly cared about helping others adjust to change would make concrete suggestions on how to do so. Indeed, there are any number of books out there on how to change careers, relationships, self-image, etc. Of course, many of them are hack jobs, but others offer concrete suggestions, sound strategies, and morale-boosters that actually have some intellectual heft to them.

This book, on the other hand, is an exercise in managerial self-congratulation at its most condescending to subordinates. I was disgusted, but not really surprised, to learn that people were receiving it in their layoff packages. Scott ("Dilbert") Adams could hardly come up with a crueler twist on corporate perversity.

Many readers have given this book five stars. Then again, the same holds for those ever-so-deep (think Jack Handey) tomes in the "Chicken Shi--" sorry, "Soup for the Soul" series. I guess a lot of people not only don't mind being spoon-fed the ridiculously obvious and trite, even after it's been dumbed down so that it could be understood by 4-year-olds and then repackaged as priceless wisdom, but will afterwards lick their lips and say, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

Any well-written fantasy novel grounded in moral realities -- many recommend Tolkien's books; I myself strongly suggest Diana L. Paxson's trilogy based on the ancient Germanic tale of Sigfried and Brünhilde, starting with "The Wolf and the Raven" -- would get across the message that most of life is the fighting of adversity, and do it with far more haunting, enchanting grace, than a thousand books the likes of "Who Moved My Cheese?"