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Summary: Great Book ---Must reading for everyone
Review: I just left the corporate world to enter the world of entrepreuership and give credit to this book for helping me make that change. Thank you Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Johnson.
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Summary: J-O-B does stand for JustOverBroke
Review: I like this g reat book by Blanchard. It deals with change, the changes that started right around 1993 and escalated after that. Downsizing is amajor problem and u nfortunately, many people don't know how to handle it.I have heard of people who have lost their houses, their families and in some cases, their lives because they didn't know how to handle change. This book helps to deal with that. I also found an interesting website that corresponds and/or helps people deal with change. The website is http://www.myxango.com/platinumteam. Thank you Mr. Johnson and Mr. Blanchard. Great book.
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Summary: Who Moved My Cheese?
Review: I don't know that I've ever read a book that so accurately depicts the fears and anxieties associated with change. The book itself is witty and somewhat humorous, yet it's deep enough to provoke intense reflection and self evaluation if you allow it to. The storyline itself includes four characters who live in a maze and look for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. Two of the characters are mice named Sniff and Scurry. The other two are little people the size of mice who act a lot like real people do. Their names are Hem and Haw. The most thought provoking aspect of this book is that it allows each individual to draw conclusions based on their own individual situations relative to "the maze" and "the cheese". "The cheese" is a metaphor for what you want to have in life. "The maze" is symbolic for where you look for what you want in life. In this story, all of the characters are faced with unexpected change. As time passes, one of the characters deals with it successfully and writes what he has learned from his experiences on the wall. In short the message appears to be that when you see the "writing on the wall" you need to know how to deal with change. We all may have a different "maze" in life and may pursue different "cheese" in life,yet, the moral of the story is just the same. Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes later.
Rating: 
Summary: So who did move it?
Review: Does it occur to anyone else that the book never answers the title question? It's amazing to me that many of the people (managers and HR personnel) who hand out this book to their subordinates in a heart beat, apply so few of the principles in it themselves. As most surmise the book's key message is an encouragement to adapt to changes to the environment instead of standing around complaining. No wonder this book is such a big hit among managers and HR professionals. If they make an unpopular change that your subordinates complain about, just hand them this book. After all, it's easier to do that than for the managers involved to examine their own actions and re-evaluate. In effect, it gives the manager the near god-like position of the never-mentioned lab researcher who probably moved the cheese. (This is conjecture, since as I said before, the book never comes out and answers its title question.) In my own specific circumstance I was handed this book by a brilliant boss who did apply the principles of change to herself and her organization, so there is a counter point. But I fear she was the sole exception. The more I read the book and talked to my friends who'd been given it as the answer to constructive criticism they offered in their own organization, the more I see this book as the cop-out answers for managers who believe in change for changes' sake. In closing, read this book, one, two or twenty-three times and you'll never find out, who moved the cheese. And for the sake of preserving your own inner integrity, don't tell yourself, "That's the wrong question." That's the biggest cop-out of all.
Rating:
Summary: J-O-B=JustOverBroke
Review: I believe that Who Moved my Cheese is an excellent book to help people deal with the changes that started during Pres. Clintons term, when downsizing became fashionable. But I also believe that too many people are missing the point. People get canned from one company and the first thing they do is to go out and find another job within another company just like the one they just lost. Somebody once said that the definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing, over and over even though it doesn't work. What I got from Who Moved My Cheese is to change, to adapt to the changes going on and that very often means finding a new career ina new field. I was working for a sales company that assured me that I had no ceiling on my income. Soon after working for this company, a B2B telesale company, found that there indeed was a ceiling imposed on me. Company controlled my time, the salary and commission structure and my leads and therefore my income. Who Moved My Cheese gave me the necessary motivation to start a company of my own. I am no longer subservient to unappreciate bosses. If you want the true meaning of a boss, spell it backwords! I control my income, my time and every morning while shaving I have a meeting with the CEO, President and the Board of Directors and sometime we talk about things like giving me a raise. I like my new boss. Who Moved My Cheese is a great book to help you adapt. The key is not to just read it, but use it.
Rating:
Summary: Dealing with change and assessing risk
Review: This short parable about dealing with change helped my son to start a new business after failing in a previous attempt. If you have difficulty dealing with change, this book will help you to overcome it. You will understand the benefits involved in take small steps to create desirable outcomes. I also recommend Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D. (Wiley 2002) to show you how to make the best choices in any situation, evaluate risk, and master the emotions that thwart success.
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Summary: Stinky Cheese: The World's Most Insipid Management Method
Review: First, let me say that I have never felt my intelligence more insulted than when reading Dr. Spencer Johnson's book, Who Moved My Cheese? With support and acclaim from major corporations such as AAA, General Motors, MCI, Kodak, Time Warner, and Whirlpool, I was expecting just what the front cover promised, "a gem - small and valuable". However, as I began reading this insipid, little book, I realized that it was a trite, loquacious rendering of fourth-grade wisdom.
This "wisdom" comes in the form of a child's bedtime story told by a professional adult to other professional adults. The story takes place in a maze, much like one you might find in a scientist's lab full of scurrying mice tracking down bits of cheese. Two mice, "Sniff" and "Scurry", as well as two "little people" (small creatures - just as their name denotes), "Hem" and "Haw", live in this maze. Their days consist of finding, keeping, and eating cheese, which is magically provided for them by some outside source. One day, they wake to find that the cheese is gone. While "Sniff" and "Scurry" go hunting through the maze for more cheese, "Hem" and "Haw" keep on at the old site waiting days for a new batch of cheese to be provided for them.
Eventually, "Hem" and "Haw" make a journey throughout the maze to find more cheese - obviously, because if they do not, they will die of starvation (let me say that I personally do not consider an all-diary diet as either healthy or nutritious). On their journey, they encounter several high school gym teacher-esque posters with inspirational meditations such as, "Old beliefs to not lead to new cheese"; "Move with the cheese, and enjoy it"; and "It is safer to search in the maze than remain in a cheese-less situation". (Pearls of wisdom if ever were spoken, I'm sure.)
Of course, "Hem" and "Haw" do find a new location full of cheese where "Sniff" and "Scurry" have been for days already. There, they discover the "handwriting on the wall", a rather irreverent and incompetent allusion to the Judeo-Christian Biblical accounts of the Ten Commandments and the book of Daniel's (yes, of the lion's den) divine handwriting on the wall. All seven (according to the Bible's book of Revolation, seven is God's holy number) of the "handwriting on the wall" phrases are including on a handy-dandy little bookmark that comes free (!) with the book (ah, it's all worth it now).
My problem with all of this lovely, itemized wisdom is just that - its lack of any apparent real or new wisdom. I refuse to believe that companies that have enjoyed as much success as Amway, Exxon, Hewlett-Packard, Pepsi, and Shell do not already know and have not already applied the information offered by our distinguished Dr. Johnson. In fact, I daresay that more research into the marketing strategies and company developments of these corporations would prove the very fact that Dr. Johnson has only reiterated what they have been practicing for years already.
Not only does Spencer Johnson spew out some of the most common sense business information, but he also includes a large amount of personal propaganda and praise on the cover and the first several pages of the text:
"Spencer Johnson's unique insights and storytelling make this a rare book..." Randy Harris of Merrill Lynch International proclaims. John Lopiano of the Xerox Corporation says, "This wonderful book is an asset to any person or group". Even Albert Simone, president of Rochester Institute of Technology states that, "Dr. Johnson's enticing images and language give us a fundamentally sound and memorable way of managing change".
Even former co-author, Ken Blanchard, Ph.D. (together they wrote The One Minute Manager) throws in his two cents with a stupefying forward retelling the success of the book within his own companies, "When I told people about the story and then they got to read Who Moved My Cheese? you could almost feel the release of negative energy beginning to occur. Person after person from every department went out of their way to thank me for the book and told me how helpful it had been to them already... The Ken Blanchard Companies are constantly changing. They keep moving our cheese." Thank you Dr. Blanchard.
So, why, you are probably asking, if this book is so ridiculous are all of these distinguished companies and people of fine credentials praising its wonders? In truth, I cannot be sure. My first theory was that they must have been drugged, brainwashed, mind-melded (I don't really know what this is, but I think it's pretty bad) or paid off by Dr. Johnson and his associates in a scheme to hype his book to the public, boosting sales and making them all incredibly wealthy. Next, I thought that perhaps Dr. Johnson and friends had infused the pages of the book with a chemical that shuts down the human brain's ability to recognize useless and crappy self-help manuals (which is why I read my copy with plastic gloves and a gas mask). My last theory had to do with an alien plot for world domination, but I threw that one out after a while.
Honestly, and in all seriousness, I can find no logical reason why any person with the IQ of a rock or higher would read this book and get anything useful from it. Its painfully obvious "discoveries" about the changing nature of the business world are insulting to human intelligence; and its self-serving self-proclamation (touted by Johnson himself) is irreverent and even a little disgusting. As the ancient Roman writer and philosopher Pliny said, "Aiunt enim multum legendum esse, non multa." It means, "Truly they say that much must be read, not many things." Pliny was differentiating between reading much that is good, useful, and wise ("much must be read") and reading a lot without censoring out the "trash" so to speak ("not many things"). My advice to you: wake up and smell the cheese; it stinks.
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Summary: Thoughts about change
Review: Who Moved My Cheese is a nice book to help you reflect on change and the impact on your life. I read it in an evening and it did help me to think quite a bit, and the story was a breeze to get through. I also ordered the Emotional Intelligence Quickbook which was recommended on this page--read them both in one night ;) Anyway, I recommend the Quickbook as well because it taught me how my emotions play a role in how I react to change, and had some really great research on specific strategies that folks have used to get results. It also came with a free emotional intelligence test which was fun and taught me a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, Fun, and Enlightening
Review: I avoided this book for months because the title struck me as something I did not have the time for. However, once I overcame my arrogance, I discovered this small book featuring mice in a maze as a metaphor for real life had an important message to tell. People naturally resist change, and in today's societal and economic environment, this means being left behind. The authors do a great job of illustrating how those who anticipate and/or accept change prosper, while those who resist change, fail. This book is a quick read, but offers a valuable lesson for life. I recommend it for anyone brave enough to face their fear of change.
Rating:
Summary: Nice little book
Review: I work for a fortune 500 company and this book was highly recommended by our management team. So much so that they bought several dozen copies for our employee library and gave several more away as gifts. I really don't understand the people bashing this book. All I can figure out is that they never read it or resist change. In either case, their loss.
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