What you said. I tried to read this book. I tried really hard. But the writing was so awful and the message so stupid, I couldn’t get beyond the first few chapters. Even if this scheme worked for the author, the suggestions he made were more or less all a plug for the book and some convoluted story of validation.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad certainly sounds stupid, even from the Wikipedia entry on it.
It takes a book to explain that you want to own the means of production, and that you should really look at your purchases in light of how they’d appear on a balance sheet (i.e. that expensive car is really just an expense, not an “investment”)?
The other thing is, you have to have a certain amount of scratch to really achieve financial independence, and most people with the sense/drive/smarts to get it, probably already know what the authors of the book are getting at.
There’s even a market for summarizing these worthless 400-page monstrosities. In Sky Mall (the catalog that’s in the seat pocket of every airline seat), you’ll see ads for a service that charges ridiculous amounts of money for 3- or 4-page summaries of the newest, shiniest business books (which should have only been 3 or 4 pages to begin with).
I know someone who subscribes to those and says its worth every penny. As you said, the books should only be 3 to 4 pages to start with, so he is getting all the value, all the credit for having ‘read’ the latest hot book, and saving a ton of time - as well as money since the subscription is $300 - and ten of those books will set you back that.
I bet it is a senior manager at my company! He loves to throw around those buzzwards, but I bet he hasn’t read anything longer than* My Pet Goat * in the last 20 years!
Most business books have some solid core ideas, but as someone said, they have to fill an entire book, so bullshit them to death. Getting To Yes and Getting Past No had some moments. So did The One Minute Manager.
But from all of these books and all of the classes I’ve had to attend over the years, I’ve only consistently adhered to a couple of axioms: Take your sails out of their wind. Find the good and praise it.
And a few core principles: Be ethical, be equitable, be professional.
These few things have served me well.
Okay - both relate to practical execution; there you go - I never look to Porter for that. He is the ultimate “ivory tower strategist” - I always take his ideas and lift what works in a practical setting…
You should write a book or something 
You’d be wrong. My friend is a self employed, extraordinarily well read consultant. He’d just rather read about politics, current events, the environment, technology, etc., than business - with limited time for reading, summaries make the most sense. Plus, he gets to bill when he works for other people, he doesn’t get paid to read.
That seems… fishy.
d&rs
Exactamundo. The two things wrong with Cheese are (1) it’s message could be written on one page: “change happens. Deal with it.” Through wide margins & triple-spacing & cute metaphors they stretch it out to just-barely book length.
And (2) it’s validation & enabling for clueless management who have no idea why they’re implementing change, other than they Think It Might Help, and don’t give a rats ass how many lives they screw up.
It was a really silly book-written by prof. William Ouchi (UCLA). The book was a pretty boring thesis, tha being nice to your employess was the way to go.
I like “Who Moved My Cheese?” because it is short and has a very simple message. “Shit happens. Deal with it.” It is NOT a guidebook for managers. It’s just something for professional people to read.
Least favorite has to be Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ and ‘Built to Last’. Basically they are manuals for turning small companies into religeous cults.
Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Colored Books are pretty stupid too.
We did the Fish video awhile back. It was mostly harmless.
And then we got the Cheese book foisted on us last year. It was right around the time we were merging with another division within our company. Of course, they couldn’t just leave it at making us all read the book. No, we had to have a one hour round-table discussion about the book after we’d read it.
When they went around the table asking them what they took away from the book, one person (Og bless him) said that he thought the book was telling us that we should start looking for a new job.
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun seemed like not just bullshit, but made up bullshit, to me.
I’ve found about 50% of them are obviously wrong and 20% have zero semantic content. 20% have some content stretched out much longer than it needs to be, and 10% are pretty good.
My favorite one is Marcus Buckingham’s “First, Break all the Rules”. Unlike most of these books, it is based on actual quantitivate research. The conclusions are not obvious, and it has been a real help to me in learning how to manage effectively. The rest of Buckingham’s books have been increasingly less interesting as he figures out new ways to package the same ideas, but they are still worth reading IMO.
I also gained a lot from Difficult Conversations, both in the business world and in my personal life. I am using it to plan out how to ask my mother in law whether she is planning to move in with us when she is older and if she has set aside any money to do so. It has helped me immensely with salary discussions and the like.
Who Moved my Cheese was awful, but the worst one I’ve seen is "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins". No more than 40 words on a page, no words longer than two syllables, and no actual facts. Whenever a book is a giant parable with no reference to the actual world, illustrative examples, case studies etc., it can be safely ignored.
All the one’s I’ve read have been garbage expanded into book form.
I figure if I ever want to get rich I can find a way to expand:
- Trust no one
- Document everything
- Remember, you are more than just their manager, you are their babysitter
and - Never, ever spend your own money
Remaining poor seems to be a good way to hold that last one in check.