‘Corona’ moved my cheese!

During the lock-down, I revisited ‘who moved my cheese?’ a famous book by Dr Spencer Johnson. Many of you must have read it. It talks about ‘accepting and adapting to the change for success in life’. Some points discussed in this book are too much relevant to post COVID situation. Here is my attempt to sum up the discussion.

Our Cheese has moved:Gaining comforts, wealth, rights, power, and sustained business is like ‘cheese’ for us and it certainly makes us happy. We get into a comfort zone and start believing that, having ‘cheese’ is our ‘privilege’. We build our beliefs, emotions and ecosystems around the cheese and tend to ignore the changes happening around us. But after COVID, suddenly the business and life have changed. Business strategies, ways to attract customers, managing employees and system of managing finances has changed. The world is no longer the same! Certainly, Corona has moved our cheese!

Cheese doesn’t vanish suddenly; you fail to see it coming: We tend to believe that, the cheese vanished or disappeared suddenly. But in reality, we fail to recognize the changes happening around us and do not anticipate the inevitable. Failing to interpret these signals exposes us to ‘nowhere’ situation. After Corona Outbreak in China in November ‘19, leaders certainly anticipated the impact, but such a massive outbreak left us high and dry. The book recommends to “keep smelling the cheese to know, whether it is getting ‘old and tasteless”. Corona made certain skills outdated. Suddenly, our cheese became stinking and outdated.

Earlier you forget old cheese, sooner you find the new cheese: It takes time and effort to forget the old cheese. People get frustrated, start blaming others, and keep on growing their worries or make minimal adjustments which hardly work. We need to accept that, any business activity which involves physical human interaction (meetings, gatherings, demo and exhibitions) would soon become the history, post COVID. Mind you, the business volume and value would remain more or less the same, only the mode of doing business would change. Earlier you accept, better the survival chances. Re-skilling, up-skilling and changing the way we look at the business would help us to sustain and grow in a challenging environment.

The Search of new cheese:To search for new cheese, you need to think differently. Due to the comfort zone, our ability to run faster and look for new cheese is curtailed. Search for new cheese starts with a new outlook, a new attitude. Coming out of the comfort zone is the first step towards new cheese.Under the ‘new normal’, finding out new avenues of business, modern distribution channels, innovative products, potential key business accounts and relook at human resource practices would help us to find our new cheese.

Change the mindset:Learning to laugh on ‘YOU’ is the first sign of change in mindset. This change makes you feel good about the challenges and struggle. The imagination of having new cheese in life makes us work towards achieving it.Post the COVID era, all the visionary thinkers have suggested a change in mindset to adjust and grow! A fresh outlook, new mindset would help us to steer in the high growth trajectory.

Adapt and adapt faster: After atom bomb attack on two Japanese cities, ‘cockroach’ is the only living species which survived…reason, adapt and adapt to change faster! The unprecedented situation requires equally unprecedented actions. Noting gets better unless ‘you’ change. Don’t over-complicate matters and confuse yourself with fearful beliefs.  You need to find new ways, going beyond your comforts and fears.

      So Post COVID situation requires you to be ‘Cockroach!’

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