Who Moved My Cheese? (Johnson)

Who Moved My Cheese? An A-mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
Spencer Johnson, 1998
Penguin Group USA
96 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399144462

Summary
With over a million copies in print, the #1 New York Times bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life has grown from a guide and training tool for America's top corporations and organizations to a cultural phenomenon that is changing people's lives. While a few analytical or skeptical people find the story too simple on the surface, the vast majority of readers' responses reveal it is the clear simplicity that makes it so easy to understand and apply to changing situations at work or in life.

This amazing bestseller, written by Spencer Johnson, M.D., the co-author of The One Minute Manager, the world's most popular management method, is reaching beyond the business community, where it has been the #1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller for more than 30 consecutive weeks. It is now being embraced by hundreds of thousands of readers-from community leaders and college coaches to parents and children-helping them to adapt to change.

Whether it's the challenge of a changing relationship, or moving to a new neighborhood, or the downsizing and merging of corporations, people are finding that the basic lesson of Who Moved My Cheese? is an unthreatening and invaluable source of comfort and advice. It is no wonder that this diminutive tome has become a runaway bestseller! (From the publisher.)

---

Author Bio 
• Birth—January 1, 1940
• Where—South Dakota, USA
• Raised—in Hollywood, California
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California; M.D.,
   Royal College of Surgeons (Ireland) 
• Currently—lives in Hawaii and New Hampshire

Spencer Johnson is an M.D. who has become better known for fixing ailing corporations than healing the sick, first with his 1982 business classic The One Minute Manager (coauthored with psychiatrist Kenneth Blanchard) and then, unforgettably, with Who Moved My Cheese?, a word-of-mouth sensation that eventually remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years and has been translated into 11 languages.

Word had slowly built up about Cheese, based on the strength of recommendations from heavy-hitter executives at Procter & Gamble, GE, Hewlett-Packard and others. Businesses, hit by the downshifting economy, began ordering copies by the thousands; by 2000, it was a national bestseller. The book sets up a story about four characters who live in a maze: Hem and Haw, who are little people; and Sniff and Scurry, who are mice.

Johnson, who based the story on the fact that mice rarely go back to the same place to look for cheese and felt that humans might benefit from the example, created the story for himself as a way of helping himself get through a divorce. Urged by former writing partner Blanchard to set the story down in book form, Johnson finally did – and nothing happened, at first. But over two years, the book picked up momentum, not only among companies who were trying to deal with everything from sales downturns to massive layoffs, but among individuals who found the book helped them gain a new perspective on personal situations as well.

Johnson’s forte is to create allegorical stories that present simple, digestible solutions (or paths to solutions) for seemingly huge challenges. The approach is far from immune to criticism from those who complain that Who Moved My Cheese? is simplistic and silly; Johnson doesn’t argue with either barb (though he might prefer "simple" over "simplistic"). His message is that being simpler and sillier makes us better adapters and decision-makers, and all of his books boil down to opening oneself to possibility and better communication. The ideas aren’t revolutionary: As Johnson said in an ABC News chat, “The challenge always for me and for others is to live the story and not just read about it.” (From Barnes & Noble and Wikipedia.)

His own words:
My five year old son told me a cheese joke: "What do you call cheese that's not yours?" When I gave up, he laughed and said, "Nacho Cheese!" It made me smile and reminded me to keep having fun with Cheese.

I've just seen a new software product that also made me smile. It's called the "Who Moved My Cheese? Change Survival Kit. It has an electronic game with animated prompts and reminders showing the characters running around inside a maze, reminding us to laugh at ourselves and discover how to do well in changing times.

Many years ago, when I was struggling with a difficult change in my life, I created the story of "Who Moved My Cheese?" to help me take my changing situation seriously, but not take myself so seriously. When my friends noticed how much better life had become for me and asked why, I told them about the "Cheese" story. Several friends said, sometimes years later, how hearing the story helped them to keep their sense of humor, change, and gain something better themselves.

Two decades after the story was created, it was published as a book, and to my amazement and almost everyone else's, within two years of publication, more than three million people had read it. Many have reported that what they discovered in the story has saved their careers, businesses, health and marriages. It has spread around the world in many foreign languages. It's appeal seems universal.

Critics on the other hand think the story is too cheesy and do not understand how so many people could find it so valuable. They say it is so simple a child could understand it and it insults their intelligence, as it is just obvious common sense. They get nothing out of the story. Some even fear it suggests all change is good and that people should mindlessly conform to unnecessary changes imposed by others, although that is not in the story.

It seems to me that both fans and critics are "right" in their own way. It is not what is in the story of "Who Moved My Cheese?" but how you interpret it and apply it to your own situation that gives it value. The challenge however is to remember to use what you discover in the story. So I thought it was great when I learned that the new entertaining piece of software has animated characters from the book prompting and reminding us to use what we find most valuable in the story to change and win and enjoy it.

Some people who have seen the "Change Survival Kit" say that it is "better than cheddar!" Let's hope the way you interpret Who Moves My Cheese? and act on it, will help you find and enjoy the "New Cheese" you deserve. (From the publisher.)

---

Book Reviews 
This quick read of simple ideas will provide at least one character to relate to and some advice to hold on to during a busy day.
Christy Ellington - Christian Science Monitor

I'm giving this book to colleagues and friends. Spencer Johnson's storytelling abilities and unique insights make this a rare book that can be read and understood by everyone who wants to succeed in these changing times.
Randy Harris - Former Vice-Chairman, Merrill Lynch, Intl.

(Audio version.) This is a brief tale of two mice and two humans who live in a maze and one day are faced with change: someone moves their cheese. Reactions vary from quick adjustment to waiting for the situation to change by itself to suit their needs. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid. Listeners are still left with questions about making his or her own specific personal changes. Capably narrated by Tony Roberts, this audiotape is recommended for larger library collections. —Mark Guyer, Stark Cty. Dist. Lib., Canton, OH
Library Journal

---

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points—and activities—to help get a discussion started for Who Moved My Cheese:

1. In Johnson's book the cheese is a metaphor. What does it represent?

2. What does the maze represent?

3. Identify both the cheese and the maze in your own life. Then consider what might happen if someone moved your cheese. Imagine the ways you might have to cope with the changes.

4. What changes have you already experienced in your life? How did you react to the changes? Were you threatened, angry, frightened, disoriented, or excited by the challenge (come on...be honest!)? After reading Who Moved My Cheese? do you feel you dealt as well as you could have with those changes?

5. Has Johnson's book helped you see how change can be beneficial...in life in general, as well as in your own work or personal life?

6. If you read "A Discussion," the book's third section, what did you learn from the way others interpreted the book? Were any situations similar to your own?

7. Do you wish Johnson had offered concrete answers to the question of dealing with change? Would you have preferred a "how-to" approach, say, a step-by step guide? Or do you appreciate the way in which readers are free to interpret and apply the parable for themselves? Which approach is more helpful to you?

8. In the parable, Johnson says the four characters represent the four parts of ourselves, from the simple to the complex. What does he mean: which character represents which part of ourselves? Is there one character you relate to more than the others?

9. Why is it so hard for most of us (all of us?) to accept change?

_______________

Activities

1. For the hostess or leader of the discussion: without telling members ahead of time, change the format of the book club meeting— perhaps where you sit, when you discuss vs. when you socialize, the manner in which you discuss... whatever changes you can think of (and only for this meeting). This is an experiment to see how members deal with the changes facing them in the here and now.

2. Invite members to write down on a sheet of paper an aspect of their own lives that could be—or is in the process of being—affected by change—a move, new job, a child off to college, a divorce...whatever. Then pass around a basket or hat holding folded pieces of paper with the names of the characters from the parable (Hem, Haw, etc.). Make sure there are enough papers for everyone. Each member should draw one of the folded papers and talk about how that parable character would approach the change he/she wrote on the sheet of paper.

3. Pass around paper and pencils for each member to write down and describe his/her personal maze. Fold the paper. Appoint a moderator to collect and read out loud each member's maze—anonymously. The group tries to guess which maze belongs to which member. (This requires a high degree of trust among members.)

4. Divide up into teams of 2-4 people. Each team begins working on its own project—a jigsaw puzzle, or solving a riddle, or writing a group story—anything that involves teamwork. After several minutes, a moderator rings a bell and chooses a member from each team to move to another team. Let everyone begin working on their team projects again, this time with a new member. Wait for another interval, ring the bell, and shuffle members around again. Keep this up as long as you can stand it. The idea is to replicate how difficult it is to change— both in terms of disrupting group coherence and having to fit into a new group.

(Questions and activities by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

top of page (summary)