¶ … Moved My Cheese?
Change is not an easy thing to do for many individuals, in life and in work. Change means moving away from your comfortable routine and accepting something new and different, a new chapter in your personal or professional life -- and that, for some people, can be scary. Spencer Johnson has written a clever, entertaining book about change and the challenges it presents, titled Who Moved My Cheese. This is a motivational book with mice characters named "Sniff" and "Scurry" and two small human people named "Hem" and "Haw."
Johnson has a clever way of introducing the fictional characters to the reader; he creates a high school reunion scenario and the day after the event, old classmates sit down together and get caught up on their lives. They discuss change, and Michael, one of the classmates, tells the others in the group that he has heard "a funny little story that changed everything," including the way he looks at change, from fearing he was losing something to recognizing that he is gaining something. Hence, the theme of the book is believing that you gain something through change.
The four characters live in a kind of maze, which for Johnson's book symbolizes the environment one lives in, and the cheese is a symbol for happiness. Probably 99.9% of the people on the planet are in search of happiness from some position or angle, and so Johnson chose cheese as the symbol of happiness, and when someone takes that cheese away or hides it, a person...
The following relates excerpts from the Website for Who Moved My Cheese?: "The more important your cheese is to you the more you want to hold on to it." (p. 36) To Succeed at Change: Prepare for Change Gain (obtain) Change Skills Achieve a Change Four Change Skills The following four "easy to understand' change skills are routinely used in training sponsored by Johnson. Skill #1: Anticipating Change Anticipating Change is the ability to see what has
Moved My Cheese? Before the video; Describe a current situation in which you or others are having difficulty dealing with change. My mother My mother is dealing with the fact that people in our family are not as close to one another as she would like them to be. How do you feel about the situation? I believe that those people have revealed their true colors and that we are better off without them. How do
Situations change - competitors get stronger, raw materials prices increase, consumer preferences evolve, and new regulations come into effect. A variety of forces can change a market, and even kill it off altogether, and if you are not thinking ahead and planning for the future, your business can suffer greatly. One of the book's other great lessons is that in work or in life, how we react to change can
This is the character I can relate to most. I often wait until the last minute to study for a test or to do a paper. Pulling all nighters is common, when I have a test the next day. Then I go into the class exhausted. For papers, at the last minute, I have to hurry up and not only get the work done, but done well. This is
Hem and Haw's reaction to change is completely different to Sniff and Scurry's. They aren't focused on the practical needs of finding more cheese. Instead, they react emotionally. They complain that it's not fair and become depressed. They spend a lot of time looking around and hoping that the cheese will return. They even return to the same spot the next day to see if the cheese has returned. These
This increased their word of mouth advertising and eventually led to a very large order from a grocery chain, Fresh Market. This word of mouth marketing helped expand their distribution channels as well. The greatest opportunity for a small business, like Sweet Grass, is to focus on what they do best and serve a niche market. Sweet Grass isn't trying to be the largest dairy producer, with an all-encompassing product
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