Jon Husband found an engaging post by Kevin Carson taking aim at the thesis of the book Who Moved my Cheese? If you enjoyed the Fetish of Change essay I pointed to the other day, you’ll probably like this, which reads likes a late-night, high caffeine version of the same ideas. Snippet:
See, “change” is good. It doesn’t matter that it’s the kind of change that’s shoved down our throats by people totally unaccountable to us. The book, in fact, was created as a management tool for dealing with “change resisters.” And naturally, it’s a big favorite of HR departments everywhere. Those managers who applied the lessons of the book in their thankless job of imposing “change” found, to their delight, that it “worked wonders.”
Kevin’s interested in empathy, and the difference between the fake kind and the real thing. I think empathy is what gets left out of many narratives about how change happens. The desired future state somehow trumps the present, and stops us from being present to each other.
