Who Moved My Cheese? Character Alignment and Life Lessons

Identifying with Haw: The Middle Ground of Change

While Sniff and Scurry were the more enviable characters in the story, I would probably have to align myself more with Haw. His character sits more in the middle ground between resisting change and boldly accepting it. In fact, I think many people in business identify with Haw, and Spencer probably intended this character to represent many U.S. businesses.

I think it is a real challenge to adopt the attitudes we saw from Sniff and Scurry in the book. They are already considering new cheese supplies while there is still an abundance of cheese in Cheese Station C — planning for the end while times are still good, which is visionary but also very difficult in practice. Imagine sitting in a boardroom for one of the major automakers ten years ago, while the sport utility vehicle market was booming, and loudly proclaiming that the market could not sustain the company long-term and that leadership must aggressively search for new revenue sources. You would have been right — the SUV market is not what it once was — but there is also a good chance you would have been shouted down or dismissed as a pessimist or an alarmist.

I think it is easier for most people in business to recognize and accept change once it has already occurred. There is something about the business mindset that makes us want to quantify that change is happening before we accept it and make appropriate adjustments. But while the cheese — or revenue — is still abundant, there is a tendency to ride that market out and extract as much value as possible. It is easy to get caught up in that approach and not spend enough time planning for change.

Reflecting on Past Character Alignments

Although I currently identify more with Haw, I think I have probably exhibited characteristics of Sniff, Scurry, and Hem at various points in my life. I was probably more like Sniff and Scurry in my youth, but not necessarily in a mature and visionary way. It is easy to be capricious when young and to have a tendency to constantly move on to the next big thing. I was certainly that way when I was younger, but it was fueled more by boredom or a need for adventure than by any genuine appreciation of change. Sniff and Scurry, after all, stayed with Cheese Station C until that supply had been fully tapped. As a young person, I probably would have left while it was still half full.

I think we can all act like Hem at times, especially when we start reflecting on questions of fairness. I can imagine moments in my life when I would have felt that I had worked hard to attain something and that no one had the right to take it from me. From Hem's perspective, he worked hard to locate cheese, and he may have felt it unjust that one day it would simply be gone. It is easy to see how anyone would dig in their heels in such a situation. In business, however, no one owes you a living. A variety of forces can make the cheese — or sales — disappear, and it is counterproductive to act stubbornly when such change occurs. While we may all feel like Hem at certain points in our lives, it can be perilous to adopt too much of his attitude or to carry it for too long. It is understandable to feel frustrated at the loss of cheese, but it is not acceptable to do nothing about it.