About four years ago, one of my mentors – Brian W, challenged me and the other engineers I worked with to read a book by Dr. Spencer Johnson called Who Moved My Cheese?. It’s a short 94 page book that I was able to read in just a couple of hours, and in the time since those couple of hours I have had to re-evaluate my thoughts and perception on every humans favorite subject – change.
For those that haven’t read the book, here is a quick look at the plot – there are four characters that live in a maze. Two mice named Sniff and Scurry, and two Littlepeople named “Hem” and “Haw”. In this maze cheese would be delivered and they would have to find it to eat. Somedays were easier and more plentiful than others, but overall, all four were well fed and lived well. Then one day the cheese suddenly stopped appearing! The two mice took off to start finding more cheese, but Hem and Haw were stubborn and stayed put, believing the cheese would return. In time, as more cheese did not appear, Haw also eventually left in search of new cheese, but Hem was stubborn and stayed put, believing that the cheese would come back. Quickly, Sniff and Scurry found a new source of cheese and were well fed. Haw eventually also found the new cheese, and even though there wasn’t as much, he was still able to eat and be happy. However, new cheese never came back to Hem and he sadly starved to death.
The point of this story that Dr. Johnson tells is pretty blunt – if you or your organization does not adapt to changes, then you will be left behind and may not recover. I used to be someone that was stubbornly against change of any kind. I was very much of the mindset “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. And while that mantra can be true, it only lasts for a short time. After all, a horse drawn carriage still works perfectly fine! But after a while, as the trains, cars and planes start to pass you by as those new inventions and technologies emerge, that horse drawn carriage, which still works, can no longer compete with the new faster methods of travel. After reading this book, and understanding the analogy above, my mindset on change started to, well, change (I swear that is not an intended pun).
Throughout his book, Dr. Johnson spreads in several nuggets of wisdom for the reader to pick up on. One of them is “The more important your cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on to it.” This is something that I was, and still can be at times, guilty of. This is especially true of something that you create and build yourself. It’s hard to admit that something you made can and should be improved. As a developer, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the code you write is good and that it doesn’t need to change. Why? Because it works of course! But I have discovered, since I learned to be open to, and even embrace, change is that changing my code and applications and workflows to be better is just as much fun as creating them in the first place! I’ve been able to make things faster and more efficient by changing some of the ways I do things – looking for new cheese – and learning new tricks and tips from my mentors and experimenting. And when I find myself falling back into that trap, I have to remind myself to keep “smelling the cheese”, and that it is OK, and good, to change things.
There is the old cliché of The only consistent thing in the world is change. It may be cliché, but it is one of the few hard-coded truths of the world, and the pace of change is only going to get even quicker. Dr. Johnson ends the book with a section called “The Handwriting on the Wall” where he lists out a couple last nuggets of wisdom on how to handle those changes:
- Change Happens – “they” will keep moving the cheese on you
- Anticipate Change – Get ready for the cheese to move
- Monitor change – Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old
- Adapt to change quickly – The quicker you let go of old cheese, the quicker you will find new cheese
- Change – Move with the cheese!
- Enjoy the Change – Savor the adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese!
For those of us fortunate enough to work in the technology industry, we have a front row seat, and in many cases are in the drivers seat, to the changes going on in the world. It seems like there is something new coming out daily – new frameworks (looking at you Javascript…), new languages (See Rust’s crazy growth), new architectures (Hello AWS/Azure/GCP!) or ways of managing (See the evolution of Project Management over the last 20 years). And because of that, we -developers, managers, organizations, engineers, account managers and recruiters – need to keep “smelling the cheese” to keep up with the times, lest we end up like poor Hem. And when the cheese starts to smell bad, take the time to consider letting go of that cheese and start the search for new cheese.
If you haven’t read the book, I highly encourage you to read it. It’s a short 94 page book and will only take a couple of hours to read. But that couple of hours might have an over-sized impact on how you handle and adapt your career, life or organization.
