Who Moved My Cheese? Dealing with CHANGE!

“You are going to take over the call centre and make it profitable” the CEO said. I had been the Director of Strategic Services for a $3 million direct marketing startup for only about three months when the CEO handed me the 24 person call centre and made me Director of Operations.

I had never run a call centre before but I had managed many teams. So I spent the first 3 months observing and started building my plan. The plan was going to mean of lot of change for those 24 people. I knew that I would need to fire at least 3 of the current managers. I know I would also be rearranging the work to better align it with the talents of remaining managers. I knew that change was stressful and that, if not managed well, could end up creating an environment of such low morale that we’d be worse off than before I took over. So I needed to help people deal with change.

I reached out to an HR consultant I knew and she recommended Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. I bought a dozen copies of the audiobook version and gave them out to people in the call centre (including the ones I planned to let go).

What a great book! They use the timeless idea of a parable  - a story filled with meaning – to teach. It’s under 1 hour on audiobook and you will probably find you have more than a few laughs.

A number of the staff came back to me later and said that the book had really helped them in both their work and personal lives and that they had taken it home for their significant others to listen to and passed it around to friends.

I highly recommend it for anyone about to go through a big change or anyone struggling with change in their lives.

If you get it please let me know what you thought of it.