Skip to main content

Who moved my cheese - A review


Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson, a fable written to stress on coping with changes. The book's blurb claims that a manager read the book had distributed it to every fellow in the organization, wow!this book must be great. The books has one message 'Changes will be there and you have to cope with them' though for a little fable this message is good enough.


The book starts with a get-together of old friends, where one starts talking about this fable which inspired him and many in his office, sooner the eager friends wants to hear the story too. So they all sit together and listen to the story at the end they discuss the above mentioned message again via the characters in the story.


Story line:

There is a big maze for finding cheese(success), 4 characters are in the maze: 2 mouse Sniff and Scurry, 2 little men Ham and Hew. Everyday they have to run for their cheese, one day they find surplus supply in a station(ref. this a position in real life) little men decides to settle down there and take it granted. But mouses doesn't they await changes as they smell quality of cheese & measure quantity of cheese so they tie shoes to their neck so that they can move when they want. One day they ran outta cheese at that station, soon mouse started running for cheese. But little men choose to stay thinking someone has to come back with cheese, after long time Haw decides to go in search for new cheese. Sometime later Haw comes back to Hem and calls him with new bits of cheeses he found on way but Hem refuses. At last Haw finds new cheese station and hopes that Hem would catch up following the handwritten trails left by Haw himself.


Lesson from the story:

1. Change Happens - They Keep Moving The Cheese

2. Anticipate Change - Get Ready For The Cheese To Move

3. Monitor Change - Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old

4. Adapt To Change Quickly - The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese

5. Change - Move With The Cheese

6. Enjoy Change! - Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!

7. Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again - They Keep Moving The Cheese


Truth is I forgot the moral of story as I have to dig this one outta Wikipedia lame! Actually story translates to personalities in real life as Sniff the one who senses, Scurry the one who acts quickly, Ham the one adapts to changes before its too late, Hem the one who don't want to act(change). This roughly translate to a Tamil story on fishes "வருà®®ுன் காப்போà®®் - வந்தபின் செயல்படுவோà®®் - வரட்டுà®®் பாப்போà®®்". Where one fish escapes the drought by sensing time of summer other saves itself by hard work later, 3rd poor fellow who does nothing dies sadly. I'm not sure about title if you have your children in kinder garden poke them they might know! Oops! I forgot corporate guys we only love International School and complain about the fee :P #noharm


My rating to this novella is 3/5, trust me if I had not heard much about this book it would have been 3.5 at least. But after the much expectation this book created by its blurb and people I know I was up for something even more. The book didn't talk about self-satisfactory stuffs this is no stress buster, I'm sure one can't win life only by following this. Many more stuffs are there in the market to beat this up into pulp :P

Comments

Popular this month

Puththu kovilum Putho tilesum, as they are built

Its the grand Aadi season here in Tamil Nadu wherever you go you'd be followed by awful noise from no mercy speakers masqueraded as a devotional song. Yes, this is the first post dedicated to it. Hindu is not a religion but it's idealism, a way to unite people, that's perfectly constructed by assuming separate task to every God, no single God worship. Hindus moved from nature worship to idol worship, but that doesn't mean that we don't have nature worship we have created an idol for them and continued to worship them in a different form. Snake is a beautiful reptile, I have made friend with few too... Our ancestor found the natural law, 'every living creature on earth is important for the ecosystem to be balanced'. Maybe to make sure snakes are not killed fearing their venom they made them as God too! Not just idol snakes, they are worshipped as they are at their  conquered (from rats and termite)   nest or  puthu . Puthu...

Up and Close with Sudalai Madan: The Encounter

Night of 13th April all the preparations for the rituals were done in the temple, Sudalaimadan swamy was decorated with flowers, fruits and coconuts; the dedications reached above his chest. My cousin Sudalai Muthu, senior priest of the shrine reached home by late-night got blessings of his father Late Shanmugam Sundaram also previous head priest and blessed the family members in room dedicated for God, then started towards the temple. People have already gathered in huge numbers and were waiting for the Sudalaimada Swamy's arrival at Temple. Different rituals were offered by people to the Lord in order to get the blessings. As it is believed Sudaimada Swamy, the son of Lord Siva used to consume meat in Kailash for this reason he is sent to earth, where he can satisfy his earthy hunger thereby not polluting Kailash. Sree Aaladi Padmanabha Sudalaimada Swamy Temple, Kumarapuram Offering meat to Sudalaimadan is the most important and watchful event of the festival. Many devotees off...

My time in Italy: Dinner

I was ecstatic!, the day started, as usual, toast as breakfast, leftover as lunch, and vending machine coffee; in a couple of days we were going to return to India and so it was time for us to shop souvenirs and chocolates. But what excited me most was the restaurants, and for the noblest reason - food. Gli Orsi is the mall of Biella; there are spots in town like Via Italia, and the complex housing Esselunga, then there is also a Saturday market - where we can go and buy many different things in one place, but malls always offer a different experience. Gli Ori has exclusive outlets for chocolates, shoes, electronics, bags, and more, but we usually buy chocolates from Coop, a supermarket similar to Esselunga but offers more discounts. My first dining experience in Italy was at a place that doesn't serve Italian food but western food. I'm from India, Italy is my west 😄but to Italians - America is west, I understood this as soon as we spotted the restaurant. The place was decorat...

why do people sweat more in chennai???

One of the famous ornament of chennai is its summer!. Everyone here would have at least once talked about its effect and the way they affected. People comes out with sweats flowing from the body is the usual scene of chennai noon. The sweat produced is not just due to the temperature of the region. It is in fact due to the high humidity of chennai. To explain this lets see a fact, people in chennai sweats more than the people in delhi where the temperature is higher than the former. This is because of chennai's location. Chennai is located near sea due to which sea water evaporation is high during summer which in turn increases the humidity (Amount of water vapour present in air). Normally human blood temperature is about 35 deg Celsius. If the outside temperature is more than that, then our system tries to automatically cools down by releasing sweat from the body. The sweat which is released cools the surrounding heat by converting into vapour thereby reducing the body te...

Training @ Cognizant

I received my Date of Joining mail on 16 Oct 2011, I was so happy that finally I got that. I was the only one from my college to get the mail to report on that particular day so I went pretty much alone. I reported in MEPZ on Oct 20th from the next Monday my training began in Siruseri. I was able to spot many people who studied with me in school on the first day of Induction. Initially I was placed in customized batch then was moved to Advance JAVA or J2EE in a generic term. I got pinned to IME vertical that handles clients related to Information, Media and Entertainment domain.We were trained in batches of 24, curse or charm I got into a batch with 20 girls! Whatever it didn't last for long, I was pretty much comfortable after getting out of it. My school was co-ed but classes were separate for boys and girls never mind 8th and 12th grades, where I was put into co-ed classes because I'm a good boy :P  In college I remember studying toget...