1. The document discusses lessons on managing success and adapting to change from the book "Who Moved My Cheese?". 2. It emphasizes that becoming too attached to current assets can inhibit progress, and that being open to change and letting go of the past is necessary to take advantage of new opportunities. 3. Key ideas are that anticipating changes, adapting quickly, and overcoming fear are important for continued growth and avoiding becoming obsolete.

1. How not to let your success drive your failure
Lessons from ‘Who moved my cheese’, Dr. Spencer Johnson

2. Having assets makes you happy
1. There are things in life, your wealth, possessions,
position, relationships, that make you happy.
2. You get so comfortable in these that the main focus
becomes how to protect what you have.
The more you love your assets the more
you fear losing them

3. Love of assets retards progress
1. The more important what you currently have is to
you, the more you will try to protect it.
2. Since progress means to let go what you have, in
order to have a chance to get what you want, this
attitude retards progress
An asset is only as good as its return

4. Only empty hands can hold
1. The less attachment you have to your current
possessions, status, situation, the easier it will be to
give it up in favor of new possibilities.

5. Planned redundancy
1. 1983 – ISABS (1985 Professional Membership)
2. 1983 – 1994 training 45 days/year (30 vacation + 15 unpaid leave)
3. established in 1994
4. Continuous learning: Experience, documentation, evaluation,
risk, customer feedback, decision making
5. 1997 – 2000 American experience
You can only do it if you have passion

6. Exercise: Identify your Assets
1. Please list those things that are important to you in
order of priority
2. Now rate them in terms of how much you fear losing
them
3. Then think of what you are giving up to hold on to what
you have
Does risk excite you?

7. How to make good mistakes and what to do when
you make them
The Importance of Making Mistakes – John Cleese

9. What time is it now?
Give me an answer with no
chance of making a mistake

10. Ask, “Why are we afraid?’
What is the word for a
reasonable try that did not
succeed?

11. How to turn
failure into
learning
What?
Why?
Learn
Try

12. Lesson
1. As a result of making hundreds of mistakes,
eventually the space probe succeeds in avoiding the
only mistake which would really have mattered…..
2. Missing the target

14. Redundancy is a law of nature
1. When boundary conditions change you need to
adapt to them. Otherwise you will perish.
2. Adapting however, only guarantees survival – not
growth or development

15. How do you know when you are
reaching your redundancy limit?
1. In order to be able to anticipate impending changes, you
need to be constantly aware of your environment and the
conditions that impact it.
2. This awareness should relate both to time and space -
historical and geographic perspective. Who are you and
how do you fit into the larger scheme of things?

17. Environmental Scanning
1. When was the last time you scanned your
environment to assess your own market value?
2. What was the result?
3. What do you intend to do to enhance your worth?

18. What are you doing to keep fit?
1. Constantly challenging yourself – the dynamics of
deliberate discomfort, created to combat
complacency – is the key to development.
2. Constant and continuous self development and
learning, challenging yourself to new heights once
you have achieved your current goals.

20. When you move beyond your fear,
you truly become free
1. Everyone starts from being afraid. Fear is a sign of
intelligence, that you recognize the enormity of the goal.
2. However to get ahead it is necessary to conquer that fear
and to move beyond that. To move despite it. To use it as
the engine of energy to move you forward.
3. When you do that you set yourself free from fear.

22. Old beliefs do not
lead you to new discoveries
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at
the same level of thinking we used when we
created them.” ~ Albert Einstein

23. What would you do
if you weren’t afraid?
1. For growth and development, you need to
anticipate change and prepare for it while the need
is still not clearly evident.
2. For this it is essential to conquer fear. Ask yourself,
what you would do if you were not afraid.

24. What would I do…..
1. Ask yourself: What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?
2. Write down your thoughts………..
3. Don’t allow any thought about the practicality of
your dreams to intervene.
Dreams are supposed to be impractical

25. Imagine what the new world will be like
1. Visualization and other such techniques help to
conquer the fear and to find new direction.
2. Ask yourself, “How would it feel to have what I
want? What does that mean to me? How important
is that to me?”
Adapt quickly
Speed is a competitive advantage

28. Celebrate small achievements
1. Small changes are not only good signs of what is to come
but they are also easier to adapt to and less costly to
make.
2. So if you are aware of them you can significantly shorten
your learning curve and reduce time-to-market for your
product and make it highly responsive to customer need.

29. Risk enables success.
Success breeds success
1. Once you start making an effort you will see signs
of success. This will enhance your confidence and
enable you to realize your dreams.

30. Keys to driving change

31. It is safer to search for new horizons
than to hide behind fortress walls
1. The safest place for a ship is the harbor.
2. But ships are not made to stay in harbors
Flowing water moves mountains.
Stagnant water, stinks

32. The Writing on the Wall
1. Change Happens
 Boundary conditions change beyond your control
2. Anticipate new conditions
 Prepare for change before it happens
3. Adapt to Change Quickly
 Take decisive action fast. The longer you take the more
painful it will be to change.

33. The Writing on the Wall
4. Consolidate the new situation
 Capitalize the new assets
5. Enjoy Change
 Enjoy the new state of being

34. Because the only constant is change

35. Change derailers
1. False sense of urgency (negative effect of speed)
2. Need for instant gratification
3. Lack of clarity about strategy and plan
4. Not noticing the small wins
Success is the inevitable result of intelligent effort

36. Realities
1. Success comes before work only in the dictionary
2. Fear hides behind many masks
3. Priorities cost, but not prioritizing costs more
4. You have to give up something to get something
Do what you love and you will always love
what you do