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Who Moved My Cheese? may be more than 25 years old, but its message has proved remarkably durable. Since its publication in 1998, it has sold almost 30 million copies worldwide, spent nearly five years on the New York Times business bestseller list, and been translated into 37 languages. That kind of reach doesn’t happen by accident.
Its staying power comes from a simple truth: people don’t struggle with change because they lack intelligence — they struggle because fear, habit and incentives distort decision‑making.
Nowhere is that distortion more visible than in how organisations allocate resources.
In too many portfolios, funding doesn’t flow to the work that creates the most value. It flows instead to the best‑presented pitch, the most senior sponsor, or the initiative that most clearly signals ambition and career momentum. Fact‑based analysis gets crowded out by advocacy. Prioritisation becomes a competition between directors, not an evidence‑led decision about where the organisation should invest next.
Stay still in that system and inefficiency becomes institutionalised, and your "cheese" dwindles.
Embrace value‑led prioritisation, and the odds of finding better cheese improve dramatically.
Why change matters to prioritisation
There are two reasons. Neither is comfortable.
First, to unlock the real benefits of prioritisation, organisations must be willing to change how resources are actually allocated, not just how projects are scored. Research consistently shows that investment decisions based on value outperform those based on continuity. Opportunity is not evenly distributed — and pretending otherwise is expensive.
Second, while every organisation has pockets of opportunity, there is no credible reason to believe they are evenly spread across divisions, functions, or portfolios. In fact, that would be extraordinary. Yet redistributing resources aggressively — or divesting from underperforming areas — is rarely the easy option. It’s disruptive. Political. Personally risky.
It is, however, the option that accepts a simple truth: finding new cheese requires disruption.
The four responses to change (and why portfolios get stuck)
In Who Moved My Cheese?, Spencer Johnson gives us four archetypes. All four show up in portfolio decision‑making today.
Sniff notices change early. He spots the cheese supply shrinking and doesn’t debate whether that’s “fair” — he pays attention.
Scurry acts. No nostalgia. No advocacy. When the cheese is gone, he’s already moving.
Most organisations would improve dramatically if they behaved a little more like Sniff and Scurry. But many don’t. Instead, they behave like Hem.
Hem doesn’t want to change prioritisation. His cheese has always turned up in the past, thank you very much. This new model sounds complicated. And likely to threaten his control. He believes the cheese should come back — if only everyone would stop interfering. So he stays put, argues harder, and waits for a system that no longer works.
Haw is different. Haw doesn’t like change either — at first. He hesitates. He worries. He argues with himself. But eventually he accepts a hard reality: staying still is worse than moving on. Haw enters the maze, learns as he goes, and writes what he discovers on the walls so others might follow.
The difference between Hem and Haw isn’t intelligence. It’s acceptance.
Why prioritisation feels so disruptive
Changing how resources are allocated inevitably challenges “how things are done around here”.
A value‑based prioritisation model exposes uncomfortable truths:
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Some work matters more than other work.
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Past investment doesn’t guarantee future funding.
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Products rise and fall, and their descent may not be in your control.
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Portfolio capacity is finite, and ignoring this fact destroys value.
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Not everyone gets the same amount of resource.
For those who’ve mastered the old system, this feels like chaos. In reality, it’s just reality catching up. The irony? Sniff and Scurry never experience this pain. They just get it. Resource follows the money.
But Hem and Haw? We're going to have to work on their acceptance.
Entering the maze: Five stage that make prioritization real
Most prioritisation transformations follow a familiar path, so let's follow Haw's journey through the maze of change.
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Denial. “We don’t really need to change.” If your CEO, CFO, or sponsor is stuck here, progress will be slow. You have to show them that their cheese is at stake.
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Contemplation. “This isn’t working. How would Sniff and Scurry respond?"
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Preparation. Aim for velocity - say 60 or 90 days. Slow change with old and new running in parallel dilutes impact and adds task. We can also help you plan these steps.
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Action. Pilots build credibility, momentum and learning far faster than theory ever will. Results are more compelling than proposals.
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Maintenance. If prioritisation isn’t embedded into governance, it quietly unravels. This is why prioritisation should be treated as the start of governance, not a one‑off fix.
When we explain this journey, we often hear: “We’re too immature for this.” Classic Hem.
Change isn’t a function of maturity. It’s a function of necessity and courage. Maturity can influence tooling, modelling and governance, but not the fundamental necessity to structure resource allocation around value.
Lessons from the maze: Eight behaviours that work
Haw’s insights — hard‑won, not theoretical — translate cleanly into prioritisation done well:
- Show the loss. Show how current selection chaos is destroying value to get Haw's tentative steps into the maze.
- Be more Sniff. Change requires energy: someone to agitate for change, to point out that doing nothing is destroying value for every day of inactivity.
- Channel Scurry. Haw's belief grows after a good debate, a productive governance board, a decisive intervention... i.e. find ways to turn insight into action.
- Control the narrative with data. If you don’t quantify the impact of prioritisation, others will claim credit, then declare your process unnecessary overhead. Good data stops backsliding.
- Iterate deliberately. Prioritisation sits at the intersection of data, process and politics. It will never be perfect first time, so don't hold back for perfect. Scurry would not.
- Avoid over‑engineering. Better to learn from a pilot than produce another unread deck. Prioritize what's needed, close down what's noise.
- Communicate. A lot. Changing rules is liberating for some, but Haws will only embrace change once they feel comfortable, so never worry about over-communication.
- Plan to change again. The cheese will move. Use data to stay alive.
There are of course practical prioritization steps that run alongside change management, which complement this journey, but it's important to bear in mind that better data alone is rarely enough to move culture.
Build alliances, enter the maze together
Better prioritization is a key opportunity for many organizations.
It's how strategy gets delivered, portfolios drive up ROI, and resources become agile. If you're reading this, the chances are you know this, and like Sniff and Scurry you're ready to go.
But you cannot do this alone when there are vocal sceptics who like the chaos.
If you want external support there are options. At TransparentChoice we have built a unique "maze hack" putting prioritization into decision support software. We also have a partner network of Sniff-minded folks. We also recommend Business Integrated Governance, if you want to approach prioritization via governance.
You should also look closer to home, to build a network of forward thinking colleagues - fellow Sniff and Scurry types. Could be a value-driven PMO that knows the limits of templates, an IT leader who understands project flow, a finance director who sees beyond ROI or a strategy lead who knows that PowerPoint is only half the story. A C-Suite that sees the big picture is ideal, but should not be seen as a deal-breaker with the right alliance to drive change.
The point is the same. Change comes from taking Haw on the journey and not from a new policy, tool or mandate.
