It's about time that a parody on "Who Moved My Cheese" appears in the market. Now we already got two parodies. I bought Mason Brone's one in a bookstore in Hongkong, where it was placed side by side to the absolutely not funny original cheese book. Let's see in which company managers have the guts to distribute Brown's parody. The book also will be translated into other languages - which is somewhat of a challenge, as the meaning of "Who Cut the Cheese" won't be conveyed well to the readers after a word-by-word translation. (In Japan I wait for a WhoMovedMyTofu as response to WhoMovedMyCheese.)

I picked up Mason Brown's "Who Cut The Cheese?" on a pre-jury duty visit to my local bookstore. I had been looking for anything to pass the time at court - and I ended up discovering this comic gem! It's been a long time since I have laughed out loud from a book, but "Who Cut The Cheese" had me giggling in the jury waiting room. Several other prospective jurors wondered what I was reading, and I ending up sharing the book with three other people. Thank you Mr Brown, you made jury duty a lot more fun for us!

Mason Brown's "Who Cut the Cheese?" is a hilarious book depicting corporate America in its truest light. The book is wonderfully funny! I enjoyed it so much that I couldn't resist buying more copies to send to my friends and relatives. It's a great stocking stuffer if you like funny gifts.

(From Take 5 newsletter)
Braiden Rex-Johnson's revised edition of the Pike Place Market Cookbook is a delightful read about the Market's colorful vendors and includes delicious recipes from shopkeepers, restauranteurs and local chefs. Rex-Johonson's first edition was published in 1992, and a decade-plus later nearly a third of the businesses featured in the original book have changed hands. She describes current vendors from the fishmongers to French bakery, smokehouse to spice shop, berry vendor to brewery. Among her 130 appetizer-to-dessert recipes are 60 new recipes and 70 of the best from her previous book. The Pike Place Market is a popular destination for locals and tourists alike - this book will guide readers to the many tucked-away shops and cafes, and its recipes will prompt a shopping list for the next trip.

(From Wine Press Northwest magazine)

Braiden Rex-Johnson's newest offering is her second edition of the best-selling Pike Place Market Cookbook.

Rex-Johnson, a Wine Press Northwest columnist, published the first Cookbook a decade ago, and it's been wildly popular with residents and tourists alike.

Like the first edition, the completely revised version is loaded with recipes by and features on vendors and chefs, and it beautifully captures what a special and magical place the Pike Place Market is in the Pacific Northwest.

If you own the original Cookbook, you'll thoroughly enjoy the revised edition, and if you never picked up the first version, this will become a treasured part of your cookbook collection.

For anyone who's ever visited Seattle's famous Pike Place Market, this book is a necessity. A short history of the market frames anecdotes about the people who spend their working life at the market: high stall vendors, farmers, restauranteers. The stories are delightful and the many recipes delicious - I've personally tried quite a few of them. The skill range needed is moderate and the ingredients available, some can be mailordered from the Market vendors and information is given at the back of the book. Ms. Rex-Johnson's affection for the people and place shines throughout, and most strikingly, almost all of the business profiled are still in existence, 6 years later. A must for Market fans.

"The One Minute Sales Person" is a book about sales. As the title suggests, the focus of the book is on various activities that you can do in "one minute". There is a lot of emphasis on the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of the work is achieved by 20% of the effort. Basically it is a book about how to effectively prepare and present a sales presentation. The "one minute" stuff is just a brand and at times seems a little forced.

I like the book because it is short and easy to read. It contains useful, practical tips that are good if you are a beginner to sales. It puts a lot of emphasis on caring about the customer and finding out their needs, something that we all lose touch with from time to time.

Some things I don't like about the book include the third person perspective. Constant phrases such as "he had his doubts", "he wondered" etc become annoying and a tad confusing over time. The material is presented as a series of exchanges between a novice salesman and the mythical "One Minute Salesperson". Again unnecessary and garbles the message.

All in all a good introductory text if you're new to selling. I got through it within an hour or so and did learn a few things.

Johnson (with Wilson) notes "I frequently look at my goals and then at my behavior to see if it matches my goals (p. 68). This is the practical advice offered throughout this well-written book. There is discussion of "relaxed excitement," whereby a person enjoys the process of success as it happens. The benefit of "seeing success" before it materializes is also included.
Sales is elevated beyond drudgery to altruism when one sells on "purpose." By this, the author means helping people get the good feelings they want about what they purchased (p. 25).

Of the hundreds of books now available which offer guidance on sales, this is one of the most valuable because -- carefully adhering to the "one minute principle" -- Johnson compresses an abundance of practical advice within just 109 pages. He creates a hypothetical situation in which "a very successful sales person" reflects back on his career and recalls specific people from whom he learned how to succeed. They include a wealthy and respected "salesman" who was now chairman of the board of a major corporation and several others, he explains, who also had become a One Minute Sales Person. The eager young man then seeks each out, schedules a meeting, and thereby sustains his learning process. By the end of the book, the New One Minute Sales Person receives a call from a "brand-new sales person" eager to obtain his advice. He agrees to meet with her, willing to share with her what so many others had shared with him. That in the proverbial nutshell is how Johnson organizes his material but such a brief description cannot possibly do full justice to the value of that material.

It would be a disservice to both Johnson and to those who read this review to say much more about this book. (I found myself in precisely the same situation when reviewing Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese?) I highly recommend it to anyone involved in significant relationships with others. Yes, yes, I know: That includes most of the adult population on the planet Earth. Permit me to explain. The core principles which Johnson advocates are relevant to any situation in which the objective is communication (e.g. explanation and/or persuasion) or providing service to others (helping them to solve problems, fill their needs, achieve their own objectives, etc.). Moreover, I totally agree with Johnson that everyone is a sales person, that selling to one's self and to others are interdependent, and that the most important "pay off" should be measured in spiritual rather than in material terms.

My strong suggestion is that anyone involved with sales or customer service in any organization (regardless of size or nature) should read this book. All of the workshops I devise and conduct for my own corporate clients are based on this assumption: That it is a great privilege to serve others. Those who disagree are strongly encouraged to seek opportunities elsewhere.

I read who moved my cheese one day and really didn't get anything out of it. I thought that it wasn't a helpful book at all. I also thought that even a kindergardener could read and understand it. I am a very avid reader and was very dissapointed with this book.

The only difference between this book and the original is the last chapter, which deals with problems teens face, e.g., parental divorce, not making it onto a sports team, applying for college, etc. I reviewed the first book as follows:

"Who Moved My Cheese?" is a simple parable that illustrates the natural tendency to resist change. The uncertainty that generally accompanies change provides a level of discomfort that some try to escape. Rather than take the necessary steps for change, some people cling to old notions and actions that produce little or no results.

Of course, it has been known for decades that people tend to avoid tasks that cause physical, mental, or emotional discomfort. Why it takes a simple little story about mice and cheese for some people to understand this is beyond me. Perhaps it provides a non-threatening, feel-good reminder of what we already know about ourselves?

The problem I see with "Who Moved My Cheese?" is not the message, but the difficulty in reducing such a simple little concept into practice. Knowing that we need to "search around the maze for new cheese" is equivalent to the stock market wizards telling us to buy low and sell high, or business experts telling us that we need to possess organizational savvy to be successful. These are things we all nod our heads in agreement with . . . but then what? We are left without any guidelines for determining when we are "moving around the maze" or simply "sitting at the cheese station."

Reading "Who Moved My Cheese?" is like signing up for the membership at the health club. It sure feels good, and it can be the start to something better, but the real work is yet to come. Read the book. Ponder its contents. But expect some discomfort if you really want to make progress.

This book helps people to get throught their changes in life and it is a good story too.

"If this wasn't so rediculous, it'd be even funnier." -- Who Moved My Cheese

This audiobook was given to me, along with a number of other coping-with-trying-times resources, by one of my many middle managers in the midst of a merger. With an open mind I gave it a shot. What did I have to loose, except my job?

This book is an over-simplistic metaphor for unexpected change that is beyond one's control, in which "cheese" is a symbol of something you want, ie: happiness, security, financial resources. The message the authors attempt to convey is that your future, success, security, and ultimately happiness is within your control. While this may be PARTLY true, the tone of the childlike story is so condescending (an unintended byproduct of the tale's simplification, I suspect), one could easily get the feeling it was penned by the committee representing CEOs Happily Unopposed to Bad Behavior (CHUBB).

The book amplifies feelings of rejection and betrayal by the faceless "Cheese Removers". It raises many questions like, "What if I was counting on that cheese for future use", but offers no answer other than you've got to go out and find more "cheese" for yourself, even though everything you had was just taken from you for no apparent reason. To me (and many others) this was not an inspiring read. It was painful.

This book was destined to be a best seller because, no doubt, it can be ordered by the box-load by those anticipating removing others' cheese. Sure, the message is a fine one, it's the delivery that flat-out stinks.

If you or your organization fears or resists change, then this short and simple book may just help lead you and your organization to learn to embrace change. George Bernard Shaw once observed, 'Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.' My instincts tell me this book was much closer to being genius than it was to just being overly simple common sense.

Johnson's clever and insightful story is about two mice ('Sniff,' who sniffs out change early, and 'Scurry,' who quickly scurries into action) and two 'little people' ('Hem,' who denies and resists change for fear of something worse, and 'Haw,' who adapts over time when he realizes change can lead to something better) who live in a maze and how they deal with the realities of unexpected changes in the location and quantity of their cheese supply. Each character represents an easy to recognize, common, stereotypical person with a common approach to changes in life. The cheese represents what a person wants in life (e.g. health, money, a good job, a strong relationship, peace of mind, etc.).

This book was an original and light-hearted approach to the complex and anxiety-filled subject of changes in life. Subtle yet powerful messages were expertly woven into the story and led me to pause, reflect on, and identify with the characters and their actions.

Johnson's style is not for everyone. If you have read any of his previous books, you will not want to miss this one. If you have never read any of Johnson's books, you may as well start with this one -- it may help change your life.

This a great work, written by a master of the modern day parable, with a foreword by another master, Ken Blanchard. The book's value is that in a very short period of time it helps the reader get in touch with an issue that is affecting us all at some level today - how we cope with change. This is one of those books that everyone should read, both to learn better how to deal with some of life's challenges, and to provide an interesting topic of discussion for cocktail parties.

Another book, just released with a testimonial by Spencer Johnson, that falls into this same category is WINNING WAYS: FOUR SECRETS FOR GETTING GREAT RESULTS BY WORKING WELL WITH PEOPLE, by Dick Lyles. Like CHEESE, it also has a foreword by Ken Blanchard, and it also deals with an issue that affects us all at some level.

Those reviewers who say these books are over-simplified miss their true beauty. The reason these books by Johnson, Blanchard and Lyles are so popular is that they highlight simple truths in ways that people can relate to them and apply them to their personal lives for personal betterment. Each book doesn't have all the answers. But then, neither do all the big fat books I've read that are more theoretical and deal with their subjects on a so-called "higher" intellectual plane.

My fervent hope is that people will read the works of these great authors and share their ideas with others for two reasons. First, so these authors will continue to produce classics like these. And second, because if more people read and apply these ideas, the better our world will be.

While the message in this book would seem obvious, not everyone takes away the same "lessons". My wife, for instance, insists that it is better to enjoy your cheese while it lasts rather than looking for new cheese all the time.

Someone else has created entire website around this subject and insists that you should resist when someone moves the cheese.

An insipid book to give to an incompetent employee before laying off.

Found it full of patronizing pap and pizzle. Offers few tips for managing change. Mostly tells you to get over it.

For those who are not familiar with the book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" is a simple parable that illustrates the natural tendency to resist change. The uncertainty that generally accompanies change in the workplace provides a level of discomfort that some try to escape. Rather than take the necessary steps for change, some employees cling to old notions and actions that produce little or no results.

Of course, it has been known for decades that people tend to avoid tasks that cause physical, mental, or emotional discomfort. Why it takes a simple little story about mice and cheese for some people to understand this is beyond me. Perhaps it provides a non-threatening, feel-good reminder of what we already know about ourselves?

The problem I see with "Who Moved My Cheese?" is not the message, but the difficulty in reducing such a simple little concept into practice. Knowing that we need to "search around the maze for new cheese" is equivalent to the stock market wizards telling us to buy low and sell high, or business experts telling us that we need to possess organizational savvy to be successful. These are things we all nod our heads in agreement with . . . but then what? We are left without any guidelines for determining when we are "moving around the maze" or simply "sitting at the cheese station."

Reading "Who Moved My Cheese?" is like signing up for the membership at the health club. It sure feels good, and it can be the start to something better, but the real work is yet to come. Read the book. Ponder its contents. But expect some discomfort if you really want to make progress.

Anyone who is reading me is able to adapt to technology. Do we need a stupid book to tell us so?

Pobre literatura y muchas vueltas y palabras para algo tan simple. Cuesta trabajo acabar el librillo de lo aburrida que es la trama. Todo el libro se puede resumir en unas cuantas páginas no en un libro.

es un buen libro. ameno e interesante. aunque algunos lo clasifiquen como libro para babies, estoy seguro que les ha ayudado a desbloquearse en un momento u otro.
por algo sera un best seller y por algo infinidad de empresas que aparecen en Forbes lo recomiendan a sus empleados.

Para comprender este libro es imprescindible haber leído inicialmente el Ejecutivo al Minuto. En ese libro, hay descripciones que parecen muy sencillas, pero a menos que uno sea un experto o haya hecho un grupo de estudio, son muy difíciles de implementar. Este libro viene a llenar el bache y reforzar con prácticas algunos de los argumentos utilizados. Si le gustó el primero, el segundo vale la pena. No lo lea como primer libro.