A grain of mouse excrement spoils a pot of porridge.

The literal meaning of this sentence is that you can't drink a pot of porridge because there is a mouse excrement in it. Metaphor means that a person made a mistake or a person's personality problem implicated the whole group.

For example, in a group exercise, one member shirked responsibility, resulting in the task of the whole group not being completed.

Extended data

The law of wine sewage is to pour a spoonful of wine into a bucket of sewage to get a bucket of sewage; Pour a spoonful of sewage into a bucket of wine and you get a bucket of sewage.

In fact, everyone knows the truth of the law of wine and sewage. In China, there is a proverb that "a mouse excrement spoils a pot of porridge" and "a bad piece of meat spoils a pot of soup" also mean the same thing. An organization is actually a collection of people, and the overall efficiency of this organization depends on the behavior of its internal team members. If a member of a team always screws things up, or gossips and spreads rumors, which undermines the internal harmony of the whole organization, such a team member is sewage in an organization. They have amazing destructive power, which splits the collective and makes members suspect each other, so an organization is no longer United and efficient.