I Moved Your Cheese

by Deepak Malhotra

Overview

If you were a mouse trapped in a maze and someone kept moving the cheese, what would you do?

Over a decade ago the bestselling business fable Who Moved My Cheese? offered its answer to this question: accept that change is inevitable and beyond your control, don’t waste your time wondering why things are the way they are, keep your head down and start looking for the cheese.

But success in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, leadership, and business growth—as well as personal growth—depends on the ability to push the boundaries, reshape the environment, and play by a different set of rules: our own. With that in mind, Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra offers a radically different answer to this question.

Malhotra tells an inspiring story about three unique and adventurous mice—Max, Big, and Zed—who refuse to accept their reality as given. As we watch their lives unfold and intersect, we discover that instead of just blindly chasing after the cheese, each of us has the ability to escape the maze or even reconfigure it to our liking.

In the face of established practices, traditional ideas, scarce resources, and the powerful demands or expectations of others, we often underestimate our ability to control our own destiny and overcome the constraints we face—or think we face. I Moved Your Cheese reminds us that we can create the new circumstances and realities we want, but first we must discard the often deeply ingrained notion that we are nothing more than mice in someone else’s maze. As Zed explains, “You see, Max, the problem is not that the mouse is in the maze, but that the maze is in the mouse.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609949761
Publisher:	Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/09/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Deepak Malhotra is the Eli Goldston Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is an advisor to firms around the globe and coauthor (with Max Bazerman) of Negotiation Genius.

Read an Excerpt

THE GOOD BOOK

They called it a revolution. The lesson—the insight—had spread throughout the maze. Scarcely a mouse remained who had not heard what was contained in the good book.

The insight was profound. More importantly, it did not rely too much on one’s ability to reason. And any mouse will tell you that this attribute is the hallmark of all great truths. So it was accepted as perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most important, truth. And it was all so simple.

The book made it clear: Change happens. You can sit there and complain about it, or you can change with the times. Do not fear change. Accept change. What happens in the maze is beyond your control. What you can control is your reaction.

Now, just because every mouse had come to understand this insight does not mean that every one of them was able to adopt it in practice. Some succeeded fully. They learned that change is inevitable and uncontrollable. They accepted that they were helpless to control the workings of the maze—fate, they called it—and they pledged to adapt.

Many others succeeded to a lesser degree. They still had moments of fear, immobility, depression, and despair. But such moments were less frequent than in the past. These mice improved their lot in the maze considerably.

To be sure, there were also mice who rarely thought about what the good book taught them. They agreed with it in principle but did not have the time or energy to change their ways. After all, habits are hard to break. They would work on it later—maybe next week, maybe next year.

Overall, life in the maze was now quite different. In the past, when cheese moved from one location to another, all the mice were in despair. They could not understand what happened. They cursed their luck. They sat and waited in the cheese corner of the past and prayed for its return. They got agitated and lost their temper. They got angry and made an already difficult life even worse.

Now, after reading the good book, the mice reacted differently. The disappearance of the cheese was still traumatic, and it was still impossible to understand why the cheese had moved. But now the mice began to go in search of new cheese depots. Those who had fully adopted the good book’s philosophy were the first to set about in search of the new cheese.

Those who struggled with the philosophy, who found it difficult to break old habits, were slower to move. But they, too, understood that they had to change with changing times. They, too, eventually went to look for more cheese.

By learning to change with changing times, the mice succeeded in finding more cheese. They found it more quickly than they had ever done in the past. The good book was right! They had cheese … more cheese, and sooner than ever before. It does not get much better than that if you are a mouse.

And so the mice no longer questioned why the cheese moved. Everyone agreed that such questions had no answers. They did not try to devise plans to try to stop the cheese from moving. Only a fool would think that fate could be controlled. Above all, they never again asked the unreasonable question, “Who moved my cheese?”

Life was simpler now. It all came down to a very simple equation:

You want cheese
+
The cheese is no longer here
= Go elsewhere to find the cheese.

After all, for a mouse in a maze, cheese is really all that matters.

But then …

Well … then there was Max.

And Max was altogether different.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: The Good Book
Chapter 2: Max
Chapter 3: Zed
Chapter 4: Why
Chapter 5: Even the “Impossible”
Chapter 6: Up
Chapter 7: Big
Chapter 8: Out
Chapter 9: Who Moved My Cheese?
Chapter 10: I Moved Your Cheese
Chapter 11: Walls
Chapter 12: The Maze in the Mouse
Chapter 13: A Mouse Like No Other
Chapter 14: Some Mice Are Big
Reflection Questions for Individuals
Discussion Questions for Groups and Book Clubs
Discussion Questions for Your Organization (or Team)
A Note to Educators
A Note to Managers and Executives
Questions to the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Every once in a while a book comes along that makes you question the way things are. This is the book. Deepak Malhotra allows you to glimpse a world of your own making without the limits and barriers that others create.”
—Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The Leader in Me

“A magnificent story with a powerful message. As someone who has encouraged scores of professionals into breaking through the maze and defining their own pursuits, I find this to be a gem of a book”
—Vinod Khosla, cofounder and former CEO and Chairman, Sun Microsystems, and founder, Khosla Ventures

“Deepak Malhotra tackles our assumptions about business and life with humor, zest, and wisdom in this delightful fable. If you’ve ever rankled at the thought of being just another mouse in the maze, this is the book for you.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human

From the Publisher

Malhotra (negotiation, Harvard Business Sch.; Negotiation Genius), a regular guest on CNBC's The Big Idea, provides a thoughtful critique of Spencer Johnson's 1998 best seller Who Moved My Cheese. Johnson's motivational work is written in the style of a business fable and focuses on learning how to manage and deal with change. To balance the Johnson phenomenon, Malhotra offers an alternative approach to handling change that counters Johnson's advice to accept unquestioningly circumstances without exploring any possible alternatives, just like the mice in the parable that mindlessly chase the cheese. Using a similar parable approach with mouse characters, Malhotra suggests that we are not powerless to change our circumstances and that we can control our destiny. He explains how to analyze and overcome assumptions about the limitations we face by first understanding the ways we unknowingly hold ourselves back. Audie Award-nominated narrator Robert Fass provides a solid reading that will appeal to fans of Johnson's earlier work on change. Recommended for public libraries.—Dale Farris, Groves, TX

Library Journal