Stephen Prosser’s ‘You Can Move the Cheese’ (2010) is a good
introductory book on Servant-Leadership from a Christian perspective.
It’s the latest of many from the Servant Leadership school of thinking
(Google Robert Greenleaf), which affirms, in principle, that the key
day-to-day role of managers/CEOs is to serve their staff and empower
them to reach their full potential.

Moving the Cheese, of course, relates to the popular book by Spencer
Johnson (‘Who Moved My Cheese?’) you saw business-types reading on
planes a decade ago – about seven cardinal principles for dealing with
change.

Prosser is professor of leadership and organizational development at
the University of Glamorgan in the U.K. (Try saying ‘Professor
Prosser’ quickly five times!). He cites the wisdom of well-known
management gurus like Peter Drucker (of course), Stephen Covey, Jim
Collins (‘Good to Great’ – but I didn’t see a critique of that thesis
about why some ‘great’ companies went ‘belly-up’); Christian
writers like Philip Yancey (whose surname he misspells a couple of
times), and lots of Bible texts.

A good book to give someone who hasn’t read much in this field (since
Drucker there’s not been a great deal of innovative thinking in the
area of management theory and practice, in my view) and is hoping to climb the corporate ladder. But always bear in mind that whatever hortatory stuff we read about serving others, when ‘push comes to shove’ most of us are still tempted, over time, to accrue rather than give away power to others. See my article on what happens on this score in churches.

Rowland Croucher
September 2010