Who moved my cheese?

"Who moved my cheese?" (WMMC) is a slim book - 94 pages - by Spencer JOHNSON on the management of change. Its four characters are two mice "Sniff" and "Scurry" (students?) and two Littlepeople "Hem" and "Haw" (lecturers?).

It is a parable of profound truths which apply to any person's world.

It would make a marvelous study for any examination of the issues of self-organised learning and change that is self managed. The mice simply react to change in an instinctual fashion, whereas the Littlepeople want to have solid reasons for changing. So much so that they hold on to their existing tethered assumptions assumptions far too tightly and become amusingly reactionary.

The Cheese here - what is it? It is anything you deem important. For students it might be "getting lots of good grades" - for lecturers it might mean "enjoying the pleasant collegiate atmosphere of a University and writing papes for gentle discussion at colloquia".

Pushing the parallel between the two Littlepeople, Hem and Haw (two lecturers?), we read on page 34 their reaction to not finding any cheeses at Cheese Station C:

Finding Cheese wasn't easy, and it meant a great deal more to the Littlepeople than just having enough of it to eat every day.
Finding Cheese was the little people's way of getting what they thought they needed to be happy. They had ideas of what Cheese meant to them, depending on their taste.

For some, finding Cheese was having material things. For others it was enjoying good health or developing a spritual sense of well-being.
For Haw, Cheese just meant feeling safe, having a loving family someday and living in a cozy cottage on Cheddar Lane.
To Hem, Cheese was becoming a a Big Cheese in charge of others and owning a big house atop Camembert Hill

Because Cheese was important to them, the two Littlepeople spent a long time trying to decide what to do. All they could think of was to keep looking around Cheeseless Station C to see if the cheese was really gone.

While Sniff and Scurry had quickly moved on, Hem and Haw continued to hem and haw.

They ranted at the injustice of it all. Hawstarted to get depressed. What would happen if the Cheese wasn't there tomorrow? He had made future plans based on this Cheese.

The Little people couldn't believe it How could this have happened? No one had warned them. It wasn't right. It was not the way things were supposed to be."

Times change and we must change with them. Hem and Haw were holding too tightly to their beliefs about the changing world around them. They saw it as a static unchanging world. It was understood. They knew how things were meant to be. But something had happened that was unexpected, cosy comfortable collegiality had changed into a world of seeking money, writing papers and building esteem (Yes - I am talking the Research Assessment Exercise here.)

In SOL terms thety were unaware. In Heideggar's terms they simply had undifferentiated everyday-ness. They had stopped caring for their environment and took it for granted. "It will always be here," they thought. The absence of Cheese became an awakening event.

Who said allegory was dead?

And what is the lesson? Johnson's answer:

• Anticipate change.
• Adapt to change quickly
• Enjoy change.
• Be ready to change quickly, again and again.

All thoughtful stuff.