Move Your Own Damn Cheese: Five Business Book Lies
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If you go through the list of bestselling business books on Amazon.com or other book outlets, you’ll notice an entire genre that is aimed at the thriving world of middle management.
These books offer advice on things like moving cheese to managing in a minute. You could boil down most of the advice aimed at workers to a three-fold path to servitude: dig deeper, work harder, and become more disciplined. Others are full of slick tricks to get workers to embrace this attitude.
When the economy falters, these books are passed out like Chairman Mao’s little red book. But, when you apply these principles in real life, you’ll find that this advice is either shewed, or doesn’t work at all.
We’ll explore some of the most common business book lies and how they appear to exist on a one-way street.
Here’s one of the biggest: The worker must sacrifice for the company.
You’re already giving up a third of your day, but it isn’t enough. You should work longer, work harder, work smarter and… do it some more. But when the company begins to make a profit, do you think you’ll be included in compensation that matches your hard work and sacrifice?
Compensation doesn’t matter.
Speaking of compensation, you’ll hear a lot of comments in business advice books that compensation doesn’t matter. Workers are part of the company because it fulfills some intrinsic need. Meanwhile, the CEO is renegotiating a lucrative contract.
Change is good.
This is a half-truth. Change isn’t necessarily good. It can be good… or it can be bad. Bosses usually stress how positive change can be because they totally screwed up the current direction of the company and must scramble to re-right itself.
Your worth is determined by the company.
One of the subtle lies passed on by these advice books is that worth is determined by what you do… not who you are.
Management doesn’t owe you anything.
While you owe the company everything, the company, conveniently, doesn’t owe you anything. In bad times, you shouldn’t expect to hold onto your job. In good times, you shouldn’t expect more money or better perks.
You will never get ahead listening to advice like this.You may become a better worker, but not a smarter, richer one.
Eventually, you must seize the reins of your own economic future. Move your own cheese.
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- The Most Important Money Move You Can Make
- Learn Free: Learn Out Loud’s Free Audio Business Books
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is one of my favorite financial books of all time. It's an allegory about a guy who has a terrible job, and how he overcomes challenges to achieve his dreams.
