‘Who Moved my Cheese?’ was written by Spencer Johnson (of ‘The One Minute Manager’ fame). It is a book about change and way we handle change. Its lessons are taught through telling of a simple parable. We follow fortunes of four characters (named Sniff and Scurry, Hem and Haw) as they move through maze which is their lives.

‘Cheese’ is a paradox in a publishing industry which produces hundreds of business books every year. Most of these books are thick, complex and offer countless checklists for success.

In contrast, ‘Cheese’ is thin (only 96 pages), offers no explicit solutions to anything and makes almost no reference to business at all.

To summarise lessons of this book would be to do it an injustice: you need to read it for yourself. But success of Johnson’s approach has a lot to teach us about how simplicity can make written communication more accessible. Consider these four characteristics:

Consider:

The managers of two department stores frantically scrambled to do damage control following employee-actions that sparked public outrage.

In first scenario, a sales person refused to call 911 when a mother requested help for her child who was experiencing a seizure. "It's not our policy to make phone calls for customers," said staffer.

In second incident, a sales person walked away wordlessly when a pregnant woman reported dizziness and asked for help. Other shoppers assisted after she collapsed. "An unfortunate incident," manger told local journalists.

The media coverage of these two incidents could not have been good for business. That old saying "No such thing as bad publicity" isn't always true.

Meanwhile, in another department store in a different city, a shopper suffered an injury to her arm when a heavy box fell from a high-up shelf. The woman pointed out to a supervisor that boxes were unstable in their present position. She suggested they be moved elsewhere before someone was seriously hurt. Several weeks later, supervisor merely shrugged when shopper returned and pointed out that boxes had not been moved.

The above incidents all involved large, international chains. Is situation any better with medium or small businesses?

We would like to believe that it is. However, answer is "Not always." In one example, a diner at a small mom-and-pop restaurant was dumped unceremoniously on floor when a chair collapsed. The waiter snickered and walked away, leaving it to other customers to ask if person was hurt.

Undoubtedly, it was not store policy to refuse assistance to customers experiencing medical emergencies. Undoubtedly, it was not company policy to stack merchandise in such a way that shoppers are at risk of injury, or to laugh at customers who are victims of damaged restaurant chairs.