Who Moved My Cheese?
– Spencer Johnson

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, published on September 8, 1998, is a motivational book by Spencer Johnson written in the style of a parable or business fable. The text describes

change in one’s work and life, and four typical reactions to said change by two mice and two “littlepeople”, during their hunt for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly‘s hardcover nonfiction list. It has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains to be one of the best-selling business books. [From: Wikipedia.com]

With Who Moved My Cheese? Dr. Spencer Johnson realizes the need for finding the language and tools to deal with change–an issue that makes all of us nervous and uncomfortable.

Most people are fearful of change because they don’t believe they have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Spencer Johnson shows us that what matters most is the attitude we have about change.

When the Y2K panic gripped the corporate realm before the new millenium, most work environments finally recognized the urgent need to get their computers and other business systems up to speed and able to deal with unprecedented change. And businesses realized that this was not enough: they needed to help people get ready, too.

Spencer Johnson has created his new book to do just that. The coauthor of the multi-million best seller The One Minute Manager has written a deceptively simple story with a dramatically important message that can radically alter the way we cope with change. Who Moved My Cheese? allows for common themes to become topics for discussion and individual interpretation.

Who Moved My Cheese? takes the fear and anxiety out of managing the future and shows people a simple way to successfully deal with the changing times, providing them with a method for moving ahead with their work and lives safely and effectively. [From: Amazon.com]

If you’re struggling to adjust to changes and transitions at work, then you’ll definitely want to keep a copy of Spencer Johnson’s short but effective parable somewhere nearby. Johnson’s gift for taking complicated, sometimes overwhelming feelings and making them manageable as well as open to change is the key to this book’s amazing success. The “Cheese” (with a capital “C”) referred to in

the title is simply a metaphor for whatever it is that we desire most in life — recognition, acceptance, money, relationships, possessions, freedom, or anything, tangible or intangible, that becomes invested with desire. The problem with the world, of course, is that the Cheese is portable, leaving Johnson’s characters — two mice (Sniff and Scurry) and two “littlepeople” (Hem and Haw) — to navigate a mazelike world in a somewhat desperate search for fulfillment and satisfaction.

In today’s volatile work environment, the pithy points that Johnson makes as his characters struggle to find a kind of self-empowerment are worth bearing in mind. At the heart of the book is the assertion that “Old beliefs do not lead you to new Cheese.” As Haw, the individual who is most open to the possibilities of change, discovers, “You can believe that a change will harm you and resist it. Or you can believe that finding New Cheese will help you, and embrace the change. It all depends on what you choose to believe.” Perhaps this is the ultimate and quite hopeful message is the true heart of Johnson’s story: Choosing to adapt will enrich your life, leading you onward to the new possibilities created in the ever-changing world of today’s workplace.  [From: Barnesandnoble.com]