Friday, June 03, 2005
Move Your Own Damn Cheese: A Rant
So, am I the only one who thinks that these story books masquerading as business fables are a complete waste of time? Years ago, Richard Bach wrote a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull which was about the concept of adapting to change and persevering when the odds were against you. That was when metaphors weren’t tired and it was amusing to think of seagulls trying to attain nirvana. But then, when you have mice teaching you to combat fear, and dogs expounding the values of loyalty, and milions upon millions of people are actually buying that crap, that’s when battle lines need to be drawn.
Why am I so pissed? Because, at 3:03 PM today, a colleague said to me, “You’ve gotta move with the cheese.”
Entropy is the amount of disorder in a system. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that the entropy in the world is increasing every day, and there will come a time when nothing will happen. I believe that. I can clearly see it coming.
And it’s followed by a gargantuan chunk of cheese.
Look, even before Lewis Carroll had Alice smartly and quickly negotiate her way through Wonderland to reach her goal, characters in books have always found interesting solutions to their in-story problems. Fables, Tales and Parables have been around for years, and their context in our daily lives and history is unarguable. Each has its own characteristics. The Tale consists of narration of a story that is founded in facts, or created in imagination, but with no specific moral lesson in its wake. The Parable is a story created to imply or convery a secret meaning that is not contained in the words that make up the story, which may not, but is supposed to have a special meaning to the listener or reader. The Fable is hybrid of these: it consists of a short narrative that tells a story, and it tries to impart a secret meaning, but not through the use of words. Instead, the Fable uses fictitious characters to create meaning, and more importantly, has a higher purpose: utlimately, Fables have presented, for years, instruction on moral maxims, ideologies, social duties, political reality, and now, business sense. There is no greater fable in the past century, in my opinion, than George Orwell‘s Animal Farm.
That kind of quality no longer exists with today’s fables. Much like the emperor’s clothes, people who read drivel like Who Moved My Cheese mistake the books’ naive and mornic simplicity for a higher truth—that if something is so simple and popular, it must be really deep and compex. It is the equivalent of a literary mirage, and that fact that we have bough 12 million copies of it is a collective exercise in global stupidity.
Business and marketing are more complex than ever before. And yet, our ability to be succesful and driven continues to tank. Last year alone, over 70% of marketing programs implemented by the Fortune 1000 failed, according to a survey conducted by American Marketing Association. Some of this can be attributed to luck, the markets, and consumers. But in my opinion, a large part of it is due to the constant dumbing-down of American business. Part of the reason we have such horrible marketing and skills in general today is because people spend more time reading these obvious fables instead of brushing up on their core skill sets. Answer this question for yourself: do you have five years’ experience, or do you have one year’s experience five times?
I sat next to an executive from Honeywell on a plane ride last month who declared that Who Moved My Cheese and Fish! were the best business books he had read in his life. He said he had bough 200 copies of each and was insisting that everyone on his team read them. After that, he said, they were going to have a “fable writing” contest and the employee on his team that came up with the best business metaphor would win an award. He was debating whether to have the award be a large block of cheese.
Ladies and gentlemen, the emperor has arrived, and look, we can see his pee-pee.
The truth is, fables aren’t that hard to write. They’re great for making children understand concepts, and teaching the subtle art of the metaphor. But come on—let’s get back to business here, shall we? If you do want your employees to read non-businessy books that make them think, have them read ones like The New New Thing, and Purple Cow. Have them read Where The Suckers Moon, and The Force. Have them devour Barbarians at the Gate, and Liar’s Poker. But please don’t make them go home and read The Present, and Fish! Please don’t insist that they make Whale Done! part of their business shelf. These books are dumbing down your business, and they’re moving the focus away from the issues at hand.
All that said, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. Here’s a fable of my own, in sixty minutes. Would you like to buy a million copies?
Billy Oyster and Mandy Moon: A Fable
When little Billy Oyster was old enough to speak, he did.
He spoke up from the back of the large family of oysters that lazed at the bottom of the ocean, and announced in a high, clear voice that he was going to see what lay beyond the surface of the water. He had heard wonderful things about this thing called the sky from the dolphins that swam up there, and he really wanted to see it all for himself.
Of course, the older oysters wouldn’t hear of it. They were afraid that something might happen to Billy Oyster, and that he might not be able to find his way back. They were afraid that a large fish might mistake him for food. But Billy Oyster would hear none of it, and one night, despite the strong objections of all his family and friends, he began the long climb to the surface of the ocean.
When he finally got up there, he was tired, but happy. He had finally made it! Billy Oyster opened his shell to look up at the sky for the first time in his life.
And that’s when he saw her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He could not even begin to describe her. Round and white, she shone brightly in the night sky, lovelier than the beautiful coral reefs under which Billy Oyster and his family lived.
Now Billy was a brave little oyster, but try as he might, he couldn’t find the words to call out to this beautiful creature that lit up the night sky. Every time he opened his shell to speak, nothing would come out. Billy Oyster was speechless!
He stayed up at the surface for as long as he could, never taking his eyes off her, hoping that she’d look his way just once. Perhaps she would see him and begin the conversation herself. But that never happened, and as night turned into day, much to Billy Oyster’s dismay, the object of his affection started fading away. Finally, when he could no longer see her, he sighed and began his descent back to his Oyster home.
On the way down, he ran into his dolphin friends, and told them excitedly about what he had seen. The dolphins smiled at each other, and swam fast circles around Billy Oyster.
“Billy Oyster is in love, Billy Oyster is in love!” they chanted. They explained to him that her name was Mandy Moon, and that poets and lovers and painters and kings were all her admirers.
“You may not have much of a chance, Bill Oyster. Perhaps you should find yourself a nice little girl Oyster to love,” teased one dolphin.
“Nonsense!” said another. “Billy Oyster is a smart, funny and brave little Oyster, and he’s good as any king or poet. You go on and take your shot, Billy. You never know what might happen!”
And so it came to be that Billy Oyster swam to the surface of the ocean every night to visit Mandy Moon, and eventually found his voice.
At first Mandy Moon chose to ignore Billy Oyster. “After all,” she thought, “I already have many more important people who adore and admire me. What would I want with a little Oyster way out there in the ocean?”
But Billy Oyster was funny, and he was sweet, and she started to develop a fondness for him. They started talking one day, and it was the best conversation Mandy Moon had ever had. He really listened to what she had to say, and seemed to genuinely care about her feelings. She started to look forward to his daily visits, and sometimes, when the currents made him late, she would worry about not being able to see him.
Months passed, and Billy Oyster and Mandy Moon had fallen firmly and completely in love. Soon, they realized that it was important for them to meet, and to be with each other, if their love was to truly become real. But Billy couldn’t fly, and Mandy was a prisoner of the sky, and the distance between them was too great for even their love to reach across.
One day, Billy Oyster had a plan. “Look in the distance, Mandy,” he said. “See that line where the ocean meets the sky? That’s called the horizon. Perhaps if we both moved towards it, we can meet where they do.”
“That’s a good idea, Billy,” said Mandy. “It seems really far. Do you think we can get there?”
“We can try, can’t we?”
And so for days that turned into weeks and weeks that turned into months and months that turned into years, Billy Oyster and Mandy Moon inched towards the horizon that would allow them to meet and finally be together. But the ocean was vast, and the sky was never ending, and no matter how far they went, the horizon always seemed to be farther away.
Their made their journey slowly, talking to each other all the time, meeting new and interesting creatures along the way, some of whom would travel with them for periods of time, and became their good friends. They laughed, and cried, and saw sunrises and sunsets, storms and tornados. They saw passing ships and leaping whales, frantic trout, and happy marlins. They saw schools of giant squid, electric eels, and things for which there still were no names. And they saw all this together, tied firmly to each other with an invisible thread formed by their affection for each other.
Billy Oyster had gotten older now, and he was getting weaker every day. One night, he realized that he could swim no longer. He had reached the end of his life, and he knew it was now time for him to go away and rest. But he was happy, because he had lived a full life, and had been able to find what few people do in their lifetime - a perfect love.
And so one clear night, much like the night when he first laid eyes on her, a tired Billy Oyster talked to Mandy Moon one last time. As he looked up at her, even though she knew they had lived the best life they could together, she could not help but cry. She shed big, white, luminous tears that dropped down towards the ocean and Billy Oyster. And as he turned away, a single Moon tear happened to fall into his open shell.
Billy Oyster passed away in his sleep that night, and the next day, when a fisherman found him and opened his shell, the man stared and stared, because he had never seen anything like it before.
Billy and Mandy had gotten their wish to be together after all. Because inside Billy, Mandy Moon’s tear, which he had caught, had hardened, and become a beautiful, white, round object that looked just like Mandy Moon. It was smooth to the touch and shone brightly.
Many years have passed since that day. Now, young Oysters who know the legend of Billy Oyster and Mandy Moon swim up to the surface of the ocean to gaze upon Mandy, the love of Billy’s life. And sometimes, when the memories are too real, and the thoughts get too heavy, Mandy Moon cries.
Much like Billy, the Oysters who catch those occasional Moon Tears, those symbols of a perfect love, are from whom we now get pearls.
The End