ONE CRISP AUTUMN day, a group of people met for another session of a weekly business development seminar. This was their next to last class, and for today they had been assigned to read a little story about two characters, Hem and Haw, who each responded very differently to change. The book was called Who Moved My Cheese?
Dennis, the seminar leader, called the class to order.
“Okay, everyone, I want to start off with a question: Who the heck did move our cheese, and what are we gonna do about it?”
The students laughed. Dennis had a way of putting them at ease, yet they also knew he had some serious insights when it came to business.
They began discussing the book. Some said they had gotten a lot out of the story, both in their work and in their personal lives.
Some, though, had questions.
“I get the whole thing about adapting to change,” said Alex, who worked in the tech industry. “But that’s easier said than done. How exactly do we go about doing that?”
Mia, a doctor, agreed. “Some changes seem easy to go with. But some seem really difficult.”
“And my job hasn’t just changed,” Alex added. “Seems like it’s disappearing completely.”
“Me, too,” said Brooke, who was in publishing. “Sometimes it feels like I don’t even recognize the field I’m in anymore.”
“Sometimes I don’t recognize my life anymore,” said Alex. The others laughed. “Seriously,” he said. “So much is changing at once. I’d ‘Move with the cheese’ if I could—but half the time I have no idea where the cheese even went!”
While this was going on, a young man in the back, Tim, raised a hand and said something.
Dennis put up both hands to stop the action, and once everyone else had quieted down, he asked Tim to repeat his question so they could all hear it.
Tim cleared his throat and said, “What about Hem?”
Alex turned to look back at the young man. “What about him?”
Tim said, “Whatever happened to him?”
The room fell silent, as everyone thought back to the story of Hem and Haw and asked themselves the same question.
“That’s what I want to know,” Tim continued. “Because honestly, Hem is the character in the story that I most relate to.
“Haw seems to catch on and find his way. Meanwhile Hem is sitting back there in his empty house, alone and upset. Seems to me, he wants to figure this all out just as much as Haw, but he’s genuinely stuck. And I hate to say it, but that’s pretty much how things are for me, too.”
At first, nobody said anything. Then Mia spoke up.
“I know what you mean. That’s kind of how my situation feels, too. I want to go where the cheese is. But I don’t even know where to begin.”
One by one, they realized how much they resonated with what the young man said. In the story, the Haw character went out and found “New Cheese.” He went with the change, and it worked out for him. But Hem was still lost.
A lot of them felt that way themselves.
All that week, Dennis thought about the young man and his question.
When the class gathered the following week, he said, “I thought a good deal about your questions from last week, about why Haw changed but Hem didn’t, and what might have come next.
“I think there’s more to the story, and I’d like to share it with you.”
The place got so quiet you could hear a mouse blink. Everyone wanted to know: What happened to Hem?
“You probably remember the events of Who Moved My Cheese,” Dennis began . . .