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Title: Spencer Johnson--Cowardly Weasel
Author: Kevin Carson
Date: March 6, 2006
Language: en
Topics: book review
Source: Retrieved on 4th September 2021 from https://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/03/spencer-johnson-cowardly-weasel.html

Kevin Carson

Spencer Johnson--Cowardly Weasel

Karen De Coster has some interesting comments on one of my earlier Who

Moved My Cheese? posts.

Carroll is right about several things. First off, it is everywhere in

the corporate world. Second, employees are ordered to read it. Third,

the thesis is: do exactly what you are told. And this, we are supposed

to understand, is “learning to make changes.” Pshaw!

It is a pile of collectivist, feel-good, moronic shit. Its purpose is to

dumb down every corporate drone to the lowest common denominator. The

book says that you cannot stand out from others, that you must accept

your bits of cheese, and smile, for it pays your mortgage and new car

lease every month.

And hers is the voice of experience:

I was told--by a particular loser--that I had to read either of those

two books. Or else I would suffer the consequences of a marking of “goal

not obtained” in my annual performance review. My other choice of a book

to read was Jack Welch’s intellectually stirring, deeply philosophical,

and supremely written “Winning.” Another winner--pun intended--written

at the 3^(rd) grade level.

This is what people in the corporate environment desire of their

employees that otherwise have an undergrad degree, (2) grad degrees, and

a CPA. So here I was, in the middle of reading, say, The Superfluous Men

or Bahm-Bowerk’s Capital and Interest, and I was supposed to embrace,

into my reading time, the fish book or cheese book, or perhaps even Jack

Welch’s Oprah-like brilliance. Worse than that, I was told to write a

“book report” on it, explaining the importance of the book to my job,

and life in general.

Seems to me she might just as well have pulled a hammer out of her

overcoat, banged herself in the forehead real hard about five or six

times, and gotten that “goal obtained” marking right away--without all

the unpleasantness of having to read Spencer’s “book.” The practical

effect would be pretty much the same: unless you prepare yourself for

WWMC? with a generous application of Bullshit Gard (TM), you can feel

the IQ points being sucked out as you read it.

That’s the kind of anecdotal feedback I’ve been getting a lot of since I

started posting on WWMC?, by the way. For example, I got an email from a

university instructor (who will remain anonymous, for obvious reasons)

who said the university president ordered everybody to read that putrid

little turd of a book (that’s my characterization, not hers).

In another post, Karen quotes an excellent review by Laura Lemay, who

identifies the not-so-subtle message in the book:

And one of them [the classmates] says they have this great story about

cheese, and how in their company when they told they cheese story, it

CHANGED EVERYONE’S LIVES.

Everyone? the group asks in awe.

Well, not everyone, the classmate says sadly. There was one guy at our

company who heard the cheese story, and he thought it was stupid and a

complete waste of time. But then, he was one of those types who refuses

to look for new cheese. And we eventually had to let him go.

Ahhh. You will read the cheese book, and you will like the cheese book.

It will change your life. Or we will fire your ass.

But the funniest development of all in the world of Cheese: Spenser

Johnson’s apparently seen some of those negative reviews at Amazon and

elsewhere, and he is not amused. Johnson, in an endpaper blurb, takes

umbrage:

Some even fear it suggests all change is good and that people should

mindlessly conform to unnecessary changes imposed by others, although

that is not in the story.

No, it’s just implicit in every page of this wetched little book. The

real question is, how could a reader not make such an interpretation?

First of all, Johnson’s pissing and moaning is directly across from a

facing page full of enthusiastic endorsements from “organizations” that

used the book to get their employees’ minds right. This is our first

clue that there might be a hidden agenda. The fact that WMMC?‘s website

is geared toward corporate clients might also raise some eyebrows. Much

like the Chicken Shit for the Soul series, the book’s prime customer is

HR departments. Regarding the latter series, the (unfortunately now

defunct) Molotov Cocktail for the Soul site helpfully explained that it

was aimed at

“organizations who want to get the most out of people;” and those people

would, of course, be the Prozac-plied personnel now doing twice the work

they would have at the same position twenty years ago and are too

sedated to feel the boss’s whip cracking across their backs. ”

As more than one Amazon reviewer noted, the “book” is a heavily marked

up piece of fluff, specifically designed to be marketed by the gross to

HR departments, who in turn pass it on to a captive audience of

wage-serfs. And a lot of those employees, mindful of Haw’s slogan

“Noticing Small Changes Early Helps You Adapt To The Bigger Changes That

Are To Come,” see the distribution of this book as the prelude to

downsizing or a general tightening of the screws on the “littlepeople.”

If your employers start passing out WWMC?, just remember what Victor

said in that Ren and Stimpy cartoon: “Relax and think happy thoughts,

because this is really... gonna... HURT!”

Just about every page of Who Moved My Cheese? has something to bear out

the interpretation that Johnson finds so objectionable. It is full of

examples of people wisely adapting to “change” and being rewarded, and

obstinate “change resisters” who suffer the consequences of their folly.

The leading character, Haw, at first questions change and then discovers

the error of his ways. But there is not one single, solitary example of

a character questioning change, deciding that it was unjustified, and

turning out to be right. The only character in the book who even raises

the question of who is responsible for change and whether it is

justified, Hem, is portrayed as unattractively as possible.

“What? No Cheese?” Hem yelled. He continued yelling, “No Cheese? No

Cheese?” as though if he shouted loud enough someone would put it back.

“Who moved my Cheese?” he hollered.

Finally, he put his hands on his hips, his face turned red, and he

screamed at the top of his voice, “It’s not fair!”

When Hem even raises the question of who moved the cheese, and why, it’s

portrayed as the moral equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum, or as

motivated by a feeling of entitlement.

“Why should we change?” Hem asked. “We’re littlepeople. We’re special.

This sort of thing should not happen to us. Or if it does, we should at

least get some benefits.”

“Why should we get benefits?” Haw asked.

“Because we’re entitled,” Hem claimed....

“Why?” Haw asked.

“Because we didn’t cause this problem,” Hem said. “Somebody else did

this and we should get something out of it.”

Haw suggested, “Maybe we should simply stop analyzing the situation and

go find some New Cheese?”

Or as Homer Simpson said, “I mean, we could sit here and try to figure

out who forgot to pick up who ‘til the cows come home.”

It’s kind of hard to make a reasoned evaluation of whether change is

“unnecessary” when it’s out of bounds even to raise the question of who

moved it. For that matter, Spencer makes his “change” the work of

anonymous forces which are never identified, conveniently making the

question of who moved the cheese impossible to answer. No scientist in a

white lab coat ever reaches in to move the cheese. “Change” is not the

product of human agency--it’s just “there.”

It’s also hard to imagine, in Johnson’s little world, just what the

identifying features of unnecessary or unjustified change would be,

although in his endpaper blurb he appears to recognize it as a

theoretical possibility (like antimatter or wormholes, or something). In

every concrete example in this sorry excuse for a book, the very act of

questioning whether a change is necessary puts one squarely in the camp

of Hem. For example, consider this anecdote from Ken Blanchard’s

introduction:

One of the many real-life examples comes from Charlie Jones, a

well-respected broadcaster for NBC-TV, who revealed that hearing the

story of “Who Moved My Cheese?” saved his career....

...Charlie had worked hard and had done a great job of broadcasting

Track and Field events at an earlier Olympic Games, so he was surprised

and upset when his boss told him he’d been removed from these showcase

events for the next Olympics and assigned to Swimming and Diving.

Not knowing these sports as well, he was frustrated. He felt

unappreciated and he became angry. He said he felt it wasn’t fair! His

anger began to affect everything he did.

Then, he heard the story of “Who Moved My Cheese?”

After that he said he laughed at himself and changed his attitude. He

realized his boss had just “moved his Cheese.” So he adapted. He learned

the two new sports, and in the process, found that doing something new

made him feel young.

It wasn’t long before his boss recognized his new attitude and energy,

and he soon got better assignments. He went on to enjoy more success

than ever and was later inducted into Pro Football’s Hall of Fame –

Broadcaster’s Alley.

Aha. So Job, though sorely tempted to question God, finally recognized

that the Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. And in

the end,

the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning...

For Charlie to question his boss was akin to Job questioning the voice

from the whirlwind. “My boss decided it, I accept it, that settles it.”

What’s really ironic is to imagine employees accepting “change” with

such blind trust, when the “change” might result from some nitwit at the

top who made a decision with a copy of One Minute Manager in his hand.

And Johnson’s own book, apparently, has itself become a form of

cheese-moving to be accepted without question. As Blanchard put it in

his introduction,

it stimulated their [his employees’] thinking about how they might apply

what they’d learned to their own situation.

See, whether or not they agreed with what they read wasn’t even an

issue--just how to “apply” what “they’d learned.”

The fictionalized Discussion in the last part of the book, between the

class reunion attendees, includes an extended anecdote by “Michael,” the

meta-story’s fictionalized author of the “little story,” who invented it

to deal with “change resisters” in his own “organization.” At one point,

he actually appears to be about to address the question of resisting

change imposed from above:

Well, the further we went into our organization, the more people we

found who felt they had less power. They were understandably more afraid

of what the change imposed from above might do to them. So they resisted

change.

In short, a change imposed is a change opposed.

But having skirted the edge of heresy by raising this question, he

apparently dismisses it as unworthy of serious consideration. The book

helped all these recalcitrants to improve their attitude toward change,

and the issue of its legitimacy as allowed to slowly fade away:

But when the Cheese Story was shared with literally everyone in our

organization, it helped up change the way we looked at change. It helped

everyone laugh, or at least smile, at their old fears and want to move

on.

There it is again: management assigns this shitty little book to

“literally everyone in [the] organization,” and they all stop asking

about who’s imposing this change from above, who it benefits, and

whether it’s a good idea. They get their minds right.

...practically everyone, those who left and those who stayed, said the

Cheese story helped them see things differently and cope better.

Those who had to go out and look for a new job said it was hard at first

but recalling the story was a great help to them....

...[I]nstead of complaining about the changes that were happening,

people now said, “They just moved our Cheese. Let’s look for the New

Cheese.” It saved a lot of time and reduced stress....

I’ll bet it did, at least for management. “They just moved our Cheese.

Let’s look for New Cheese” is certainly less stressful to hear than

“They ran the company into the ground, sold off their stock just before

the earnings report came out, and flushed our pension fund down the

toilet! Let’s lynch the bastards!”

Before long, the people who had been resisting saw the advantage of

changing. They even helped bring about change.

Michael was then asked why he thought this happened. Pay attention to

his answer, because this is really important. There may be a quiz at the

end.

“I think a lot of it had to do with the kind of peer pressure that can

exist in a company.

“What happens in most organizations you’ve been in when a change is

announced by top management? Do most people say the change is a great

idea or a bad idea?”

“A bad idea,” Frank answered.

“Yes,” Michael agreed. “Why?”

Carlos said, “Because people want things to stay the same and they think

the change will be bad for them. When one smart person says the change

is a bad idea, others say the same.”

“Yes, they may not really feel that way,” Michael said, “but they agreed

in order to look smart as well. That’s the sort of peer pressure that

fights change in any organization....

“People changed because no one wanted to look like Hem!”

But there were, alas, still a few Hems who failed to respond to the

glorious visions of change presented by the Dear Leader:

“Unfortunately, the Hems were the anchors that slowed us down.... They

were either too comfortable or too afraid to change. Some of our Hems

changed only when they saw the sensible [by definition] vision we

painted that showed them how changing would work to their advantage....”

“What did you do with the Hems who didn’t change?” Frank wanted to know.

“We had to let them go,” Michael said sadly.

Again, I’ve scoured this narrative for the slightest hint that the

changes imposed by “leaders” could ever be unnecessary or a bad idea.

Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. As with every single other example in this book,

the pattern is: Leader imposes change, the Haws get with the program,

and the Hems get the door. In Laura Lemay’s words,

You will read the cheese book, and you will like the cheese book. It

will change your life. Or we will fire your ass.

Or as Johnson helpfully put it:

...all change is good and... people should mindlessly conform to

unnecessary changes imposed by others.

While we’re on the subject of that Discussion: it probably says a great

deal about Johnson’s authoritarianism. Outside of the Bible in a Sunday

School class, or Quotations from Chairman Mao in a Red Guard study

circle, it’s hard to imagine any book getting such a relentlessly

positive and respectful reception from a group of readers. One almost

expects somebody to stand up and ask “Mr. Johnson: Your book’s sales

have the momentum of a runaway freight train. How do you explain its

popularity?”

The sole “skeptic,” Richard, only observes that it’s “a nice little

story,” but questions how it might be actually put into use. For even

this modest impiety, one half expects him to be struck dead by a

thunderbolt. Richard is a lot like the first, candy-ass set of critics

mentioned in Blanchard’s endpaper blurb, who only criticize the style

and presentation (he dismisses them before turning on the real enemy in

my earlier quote).

Critics... do not understand how so many people could find it so

valuable. They say the story is so simple a child could understand it,

and it insults their intelligence, as it is just obvious common sense.”

That’s the only kind of “criticism” WMMC? gets in this “discussion.” Not

that it’s lying, bullshit management propaganda. Not that it’s trying to

turn the worker into a docile serf who won’t fight back when he’s dicked

around. Not that its main purpose is to enable management to get more

out of the worker for less pay. But rather that it’s “obvious common

sense.” That’s the kind of “criticism” that Johnson can live with. So

long as the corporate drone accepts the basic truth of the message, he

can get away with some irreverence toward the vehicle it’s delivered in.

If you think about it, most authoritarians probably prefer that kind of

“criticism” to fanatical agreement. Fanatical agreement comes from

someone who, if nothing else, at least cares about the world of the

mind. The lazy-minded worker or citizen who implicitly believes in the

official ideology, but is bored by propaganda, will swallow anything

he’s told (as he clicks over from the State of the Union to American

Idol).

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that Spencer Johnson is

a dishonest, cowardly weasel. His book is obviously written, with

deliberate intent, to impart the very message that he so strenuously

disavows: all change is good and... people should mindlessly conform to

unnecessary changes imposed by others. He just doesn’t have the balls to

own up to it. So when the kitchen light is clicked on, he furiously

scuttles under the refrigerator, all the while affecting outrage. He’s

shocked--shocked!!--that anyone could possibly so misconstrue the book

as to actually get the message that he meant to convey.