Let's Move On From 'Cheese': So Over It

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- Who Moved My Cheese?, a 96-page book about confused mice, is still on the Wall Street Journal's list of best-selling nonfiction books more than 10 years after it was published.

To recap its "plot," Hem and Haw are two mice who use their great intelligence to gather cheese throughout the maze in which they live. By contrast, their fuzzy little neighbors, Sniff and Scurry, are more bound by luck, memory and intuition. When the maze-keeper moves the titular cheese, chaos ensues and only an ability to adapt saves the day.

As childish as this all sounds, countless executives treasure their editions. A friend in public relations told me how her boss gave copies to all his employees as a Christmas bonus when it was released. Rather than revolt at an act of cheap, touchy-feely leadership, most adored the book. People lived by it, reading it for affirmation, decoding it for their own needs, consulting it as if it were the I Ching, Madame Zola and Warren Buffet all rolled into one. Some companies have even mandated that employees read it.

Seriously. It's a book about mice and cheese. If Hem and Scurry engineered a leveraged buyout of Kraft Foods(KFT Quote), then maybe it would be worth the accolades.

Maybe we are too hard on Cheese (G.P. Putnam's Sons 1998). It's only one example of the new breed of business books that are taken far more seriously than they should be. These are books that offer catchy, number-based titles (top 10 this, best 100 that, seven most of these). They use mile-long titles to clue you in on everything you need to know without cracking the cover. They create catchphrases and then fill in the blanks, Mad Libs-style, to build a business strategy that fits the clever coinage. The advice is Business 101 dressed up in a new suit and delivered with a false sense of bravado. We pity anyone willing to run their company based on a bargain-basement paperback, or overseeing their finances on the advice of Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Business Plus 2000).