Change & Change Management - Term Paper Example

Change and Change Management Who Moved My Cheese is an artistic text in form of a parable that shows four characters: two little people and two mice in a maze, all trying to have their Cheese. Who Moved My Cheese is written by Spencer about four characters that have different ways of coping with change. This is a fiction with an artistic approach Cheese as a word. Cheese has been used in the text to mean something that the company or organization holds dear (Spencer 14), hence why I chose this fictional text for analysis. The Cheese in this case refers to the livelihood, status and way of life that the four characters had in their environment (Spencer 14). For a company, the Cheese would be the status in the industry, the market size, the customers as well as the profits that they earn from their operations. When the Cheese is exhausted in the original station the four characters have to look for other ways to survive, just like how it happens when change occurs in any company. The mice are able to detect change before it happens and find ways to deal with it, while the little people wait for the change to happen before they can find ways to deal with it (Spencer 36). The intention of Spencer is to teach managers and anybody else interested in moving well with changes in an organization. Most of the time, individuals would want to maintain the status quo because they are very comfortable with the current situations and would not like to put in more efforts to have a different status. Change is simply the alteration of the status quo or making things look differently from their original look. In organizations, change refers to the alteration of the overall work environment. Change can occur due to external or internal forces which disturb or force the status quo to be disturbed. Change caused by internal forces is called proactive change while that which is caused by external forces such as competition is referred to as reactive change. In Who Moved My Cheese, the writer uses four characters to describe how people react to change. Sniff and Scurry the mice are non judgmental and non-analytical. All they needed was cheese and were willing to do whatever it takes to get it. For the two little humans; Haw and Hem, cheese has a different meaning. It is a means of livelihood and helps them attain some sense of worth. When change occurs, a reaction to the change is in most cases involuntary and unplanned because most people fear change because they lack control over it. Change happens either to the individual or by the individual (Moris & Neering 76). It is because of this reason that Spencer shows us that what really matters the most, when it comes to change, is the attitude. It is important for an organisation to find ways of adopting to change. For example, big companies like IBM and Microsoft must craft ways of maintaining a competitive edge in the market and for them to do so they must embrace change in and outside (Moris & Neering 769). Introducing change is difficult and the process leaves different individuals with emotions and hatred for their managers and change agents. The best way of introducing change is aligning the company’s objectives with those of individuals (Yongmei & Pamela 265). Spencer’s allegory in Who Moved My Cheese, in this case is seen when the cheese is exhausted in one station and the two little people had to adopt a change; they had to craft other means of getting their daily bread (Spencer 36). As their way of adopting to change, Sniff and Scurry used try and error tactics. They searched one corridor after the other without assuming those corridors where they had never found cheese. Sniff, who is gifted with the skill of finding the direction of cheese, does so and scurry, goes ahead. Like managers in a company that is looking up for a positive change, they sometimes got lost but they retrace their direction and find their way (Spencer 34). This is not true for the mice alone; Denial in the process of adopting change is common in organizations. The two little people also utilize their experiences from the past to adopt to change. They thought and developed strategies to get cheese. Sometimes, they succeed and other times they fail and go back to the drawing board. Sometimes they are guided by emotions instead of reason and waste a lot of time. These experiences complicate their efforts and leads to new challenges but they had to find ways of overcoming the challenges if they have to stay atop (Spencer 27). In the denial stage, individuals believe that they can ignore change. They may feel that it will not happen or that they will not be affected (Burke & Bill 50). Unresolved fears can be resolved by acceptance. The organizations must be willing to accept change and not play by the old rules that only worked well when the old Cheese was still available at the initial station. The initial practices that brought Welch, Goizueta and others success were developed to respond to particular conditions in a specific time in history, and they worked well and brought their organizations the desired success (Moris & Neering 77). When the time and conditions change, change itself becomes inevitable. It becomes important therefore that organizations and their managers learn from their past and make the long-term decisions of making the future position of the company better. Not necessarily number one or two, but be an ideal for one that customers and clients can associate with. Exploration comes only when the individuals and the company as whole realize that there are no other options apart from accepting the change. The company starts to explore the new responsibilities and steps that need to be taken. When a company is at its top position in performance, it is tempted to relax and this explains why it is impossible for many companies to remain at the top for long. Today, for a company to dominate a market, it will take a great effort (Moris & Neering 76). Some big companies such as Wal-Mart, Exxon and Nike would have wished to remain at the top in their line but this was not possible because of competition. When a company is at the top, it is likely to forget about simple things like evolving, hiring new talents and forging forward. The best way to achieve this would be to concentrate on internal stakeholders and not the company of market status alone. When most companies get at the top, they become happy and too comfortable to notice when the leaves turn. The Cheese is a good thing, but it is important to notice the changes fast and get on to the needed actions so as to enjoy the supply of Cheese both in the long run and the short run. Allowing new ideas to be adopted in the organization like a routine would help in making individuals believe in becoming change agents. This means they believe in the changes, have time and energy to invest in the changes, and the whole organization gets ready to support the changes (Judge et al. 624). The most important thing for any company to do is to know and understand what they have within the company and what they need to achieve, especially giving the customers the first priority when coming up with new strategies. Work Cited Burke, Warner, W. and Bill Trahant. “Traveling Through Transitions.”Training & Development, 50.2 (1996): 37 - 41. Spencer, Johnson. Who Moved My Cheese. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1998. Print. Judge, Timothy, Chad Higgins, Carl Thoresen, and Murray Barrick. “The Big Five Personality Traits, General Mental Ability, and Career Success across the Life Span.” Personnel Psychology 52.3 (1999): 621 – 652. Moris, Betsy and Patricia Neering. “New Rules.” Fortune International. 154. 2(2006): 70-87. Yongmei, Liu and Pamela Perrewe. “Another Look at the Role of Emotion in the Organizational Change: A Process Model.”  Human Resource Management Review 15 (2005): 263-280. Appendix: The four characters used in the artistic text by Spencer (1998) Read More