Change & Change Management Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Change & Change Management - Term Paper Example 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 organiza tion. 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 l ivelihood 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.