Who Moved My Cheese?
An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
Spencer Johnson · 1998
The cheese always moves. The pain is in refusing to move with it.
About the book
A business parable you can read in an hour. Four characters live in a maze: two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two little people, Hem and Haw. They depend on a supply of cheese, and one day it is gone. The cheese stands in for whatever you want, a job, a relationship, a sense of security, and the maze is where you go looking for it. The whole book is one lesson about how differently people react when what they relied on disappears.
About the author
Spencer Johnson was a physician who became known for very short, parable-shaped books that carry a single idea inside a memorable story. He co-wrote the bestseller The One Minute Manager with Ken Blanchard, and Who Moved My Cheese? went on to become one of the best-selling business books ever. He died in 2017.
Key ideas
- Change is constant. The cheese keeps moving whether or not you think it is fair.
- Most of the suffering is in the resistance. Hem digs in and stays angry; Haw eventually laughs at himself and starts moving.
- Watch the small signs so the big change does not blindside you. Check the cheese often enough to notice when it is going stale.
- Fear shrinks once you move. Asking what you would do if you were not afraid tends to break the freeze.
- Let go of old cheese quickly. The sooner you stop mourning it, the sooner you find the next supply.