Spencer John­son’s (1999) book "Who Moved My Cheese" seeks to ex­plain how peo­ple, or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments can learn to deal with change and in so do­ing min­imise fail­ures and max­imise suc­cess.

The sto­ry about change in­volves four char­ac­ters- two mice (Sniff and Scur­ry) and two lit­tle peo­ple (Hem and Haw). Sniff an­tic­i­pates change quick­ly, and Scur­ry can adapt to change soon. Hem can­not over­come old be­liefs and is re­sis­tant to change and risk-tak­ing. Haw ini­tial­ly re­sists but is pre­pared to change when the ben­e­fits be­come ap­par­ent.

The Sniff, Scur­ry, Hem, and Haw sto­ry takes place in a vast Maze where they search for Cheese, which rep­re­sents the goals and ob­jec­tives of in­di­vid­u­als - good health and hap­pi­ness; cor­po­rate or­ga­ni­za­tions—prof­its, in­vest­ments, new prod­ucts, and ser­vices; sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions—in­crease fund­ing and suc­cess; gov­ern­ments—em­ploy­ment cre­ation, bet­ter health care ser­vices, etc.

Spencer iden­ti­fies sev­en lessons from his sto­ry:

• Change hap­pens: in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions have to get ac­cus­tomed to it. Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions must ac­cept that gov­ern­ment fund­ing may not al­ways re­main the same or in­crease. They must al­so ac­cept that spon­sors - pri­vate - and the gov­ern­ment, through SporTT (Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T), may change their re­quire­ments to qual­i­fy for fund­ing. Change man­age­ment in­volves know­ing your en­vi­ron­ment.

• An­tic­i­pate change: The sport­ing en­vi­ron­ment is con­stant­ly chang­ing as strate­gic man­age­ment prin­ci­ples and good gov­er­nance be­come more ex­pec­tant of na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies (NG­Bs) op­er­a­tions. As such, NG­Bs must en­sure that they have the re­quired hu­man re­source skillset to com­ply with their own strate­gic plan and meet their Ser­vice Lev­el Agree­ments (SLAs) with all stake­hold­ers. Change man­age­ment in­volves know­ing the play­ers in the dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment. The rapid growth of women’s crick­et has forced CWI (Crick­et West In­dies) to re­act al­though re­gion­al women’s crick­et has been played over 50 years. As a re­sult, age group de­vel­op­ment is lag­ging.

• Mon­i­tor change: Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions utilise da­ta to un­der­stand dif­fer­ent as­pects of the sport­ing en­vi­ron­ment. For in­stance, af­ter be­ing crowned joint net­ball World Cham­pi­ons with New Zealand and Aus­tralia in 1979, Trinidad and To­ba­go net­ball ad­min­is­tra­tors still need to mod­ernise the game. How­ev­er, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, and oth­er coun­tries have been able to change the sport's im­age, there­by mak­ing it more ap­peal­ing and at­trac­tive to not on­ly play­ers but al­so fans and spon­sors, in­clud­ing tele­vi­sion com­pa­nies. A good ex­am­ple of mon­i­tor­ing change in net­ball has been the in­tro­duc­tion of Fast 5 Net­ball. Da­ta analy­sis, tal­ent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion scouts and oth­er spe­cialised skills are be­ing used to train and pro­vide com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages.

• Adapt to change: Change hap­pens but must be an­tic­i­pat­ed and mon­i­tored. NG­Bs must con­tin­u­al­ly pro­fes­sion­alise and up­grade their man­age­ment to en­sure ap­pro­pri­ate or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and cul­tur­al changes oc­cur. The or­gan­i­sa­tion's cul­ture has to em­brace change head-on. Coach­ing tech­niques, strate­gies, tech­nolo­gies and sci­en­tif­ic train­ing are con­stant­ly un­der­go­ing change.

• Change: For NG­Bs to change, they must "Burn the Plat­form".  They must re­spond, not re­act. They must make tough calls, es­pe­cial­ly in ad­verse sit­u­a­tions such as fund­ing, ath­lete per­for­mance, and hu­man re­source func­tion­al­i­ty. In oth­er words, NG­Bs must not wait for the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD), SPORTT, and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to de­mand changes to busi­ness prac­tices, pro­ce­dures, or op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties. Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture, cul­ture, strate­gic di­rec­tion, and hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty must align with the de­sired change and ac­com­plish strate­gic out­comes.

• En­joy the change: NG­Bs must imag­ine adapt­ing and em­brac­ing their strate­gic goals and ob­jec­tives. Their lead­er­ship has to demon­strate to their mem­ber­ship the ben­e­fits of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change. Cre­at­ing high, pos­i­tive, prac­ti­cal ex­pec­ta­tions is a cre­ative way of en­cour­ag­ing buy-in from stake­hold­ers, even those re­sis­tant to change.

• Be ready for change: NG­Bs must strate­gi­cal­ly ex­e­cute their ac­tiv­i­ties— struc­ture, hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty, pro­mo­tion, fi­nan­cial, and ath­lete per­for­mance. They have to be ahead of the game, their heads above wa­ter to com­mand the at­ten­tion of all stake­hold­ers- spon­sors, gov­ern­ment, the gen­er­al pub­lic, ath­letes, etc.