Deconstructing "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" | lessons in systems thinking

Welcome to the second edition of #TurnThePage – increasing change literacy one children’s book at a time.?In our inaugural edition, we deconstructed “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” and its teachings on change resistance.

This time we’re taking on the beloved children’s classic “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Numeroff. This starter book of the cult-favorite series provides us a cornucopia of lessons at various levels:

-?????????L1:?A lesson in systems thinking, enterprise interconnectivity and the danger of the second and third order consequences of seemingly innocuous decisions.?

-?????????L2: A case study on the importance of strategy in preventing reactionary moves and enabling quality decision making.

-?????????L3:?A highlight on the detrimental effects of a leadership vacuum, and a clear, shared north star leadership vision that guide others’ actions as aligned to that shared goal.

-?????????Bonus lesson:?A case study of the power of siloed reasonableness (intentionally cryptic so you read below ??)

SYNOPSIS

The story is simple enough:?a young boy gives a mouse an innocent cookie.?The mouse then consecutively asks for milk to wash down the cookie, straw for the milk, napkin to clean up … and ends up trimming his whiskers, cleaning the house, making a picture to hang on a fridge, coming back full-circle to wanting a glass of milk, with the prospect of another cookie shared by the author in the book’s conclusion – thereby starting the whole cycle again (represented by this cute board game on the last page).

DECONSTRUCTIVE LITERARY ANALYSIS

L1 | The Danger of Unintended Consequences

At the most basic level, the book can be read as a warning to those wishing to embark on shiny enterprise initiatives that may be “delicious”, sound exciting, but have numerous consequences that are either unseen or unconsidered.?

Let’s break down the characters:

-?????????The boy: represents na?ve, siloed thinking manifesting as a painful inability to connect the dots and see the bigger ecosystem within which he’s operating; says yes to everything.?AKA: the enabler of chaos

-?????????The mouse: represents the short sighted, excitable change catalyst (or maybe that new leader who thinks he has a great idea that will prove his value and catapult his career to a next level, without listening or learning first.) ?AKA: the instigator of chaos.?Zooming out, the mouse represents that ADHD element of our hive-minded organizations, constantly context switching and jumping from one flavor of the month to another, leaving mess & fatigue in its wake.?The thinking fast vs thinking slow; the action addiction that entraps so many organizations.

-?????????The cookie: represents the shiny new change initiative (i.e.: “let’s get rid of performance management!” or “let’s go digital!”) – one of many possible initiatives taken out of the “grab bag” the boy is holding. AKA – the chaos catalyst.

The basic message at this level is:?be mindful and think holistically about the enterprise implications of “just one cookie”; think through the second and third order consequences of such a move and be principled about your decision, lest you want to become a slave to that decision down the road.

ANALYSIS GOING DEEPER

L2 | The Power of Strategy

The second lesson quickly unfolds from there:?the power of a strategy to help people make quality decisions and, importantly, to say “no”. ?(Think Strategy Mapping.) ?Just as valuable as what we choose to do is what we choose to NOT do, and the choices we intentionally turn down because we understand their misalignment to our overall objective. ?

In this case, notice the boy never says “no” – to anything. He has no anchor, no direction … no strategy that drives his actions.?He’s in a reactive role throughout the book, stirring up every aspect of the “organization” in the meantime:?the kitchen, the bathroom, the supply closet, the drawers, etc. ?

Without intentionality, without the whitespace to breathe and assess, reaction begets reaction and soon he finds himself in chaos and burned out. Notice, in fact, how his posture and facial expressions regress throughout the book, until finally he is drooping on the floor, defeated and exhausted.?He wants to stop, physically and mentally, yet he is now ensnarled in the chain reaction set off by his first decision.

The parallels are many – from us spending most of our time in our inboxes merely reacting to emails and getting nowhere to our never-ending to-do lists embracing the tantalizing delusion that that action is progress.

L3 | The Vacuum of Leadership

The third lesson is obfuscated – quite literally – and is present via its absence.?Where are the parents??The boy is alone in the house, with no adult presence or direction.?In this case, parents are our missing fourth character, representative of leadership.?

Active leadership presence, vision and role-modeling is critical keeping the enterprise buffered against the natural pulls and tendencies of so many initiatives, actions and opportunities. ?Without visionary leadership, without a clear strategy shared and reinforced by key leaders, the organization runs amuck – spending a whole lot of energy accomplishing nothing.

LITERARY ANALYISIS GONE WILD

Bonus | A deeper set of lessons we can glean can be summed up as “the power of siloed reasonableness”. ?To unpack this lesson, think about each ask from the mouse as its own mini silo.?

• Is it reasonable to give a napkin to someone who just drank milk? Of course.?
• Does it feel right to give someone a broom to clean up a mess??Yep.
• Does it make sense to provide a pen to sign a picture just drawn? For sure.?

It’s not the individual decisions that are the problem here; it’s their cumulative effect – the insidious pull of the “reasonable” and its compounding effects towards chaos.?And it all starts with that first “yes”.

This dynamic mirrors that of our siloed organizations:?in their own right, within their own fiefdoms, their individual decisions make all the sense in the world. ?However, when pulled together under the holistic umbrella of the organization - living, breathing and intertwined - those individual decisions chip away at the effectiveness of the whole.

The support of this theory in the book is represented by the outdoor / indoor shift that occurs at the onset, with the house representing the ecosystem of the enterprise.?Importantly, the thought of giving the cookie to the passing mouse happens OUTSIDE of that ecosystem, outside of the considerations and weight of the enterprise and the “greater good”.

Once that first, siloed, individualistic decision is made, without consideration of the “whole”, it unleashes the domino effect from which there’s no escaping.?Do the child and mouse ever get out of the house? No. They’re stuck in there, in that never-ending cycle of reasonable but detrimental reaction, devoid of strategy, devoid of leadership.

As we end the book and this analysis, we are left to wonder if organizations will ever learn.?Quite provocatively, the author leaves us in suspense as to whether the whole cycle will repeat – only alluding to “he will want” a cookie, without solidifying this possibility. The author invites us into a space, a crack for something other than history repeating itself, however thin.?

The question is: will the boy learn? Will we?_____________________________________________________

Subscribe to the Turn the Page newsletter for the next deconstruction of a cherished children’s book, for your change literacy pleasure … ensuring you never read children’s books the same way again ??