Lewis Carroll Was Right

Recently, I spoke to a group about how to manage in a world of change. In searching for a metaphor to describe how to adjust to a new environment, I was reminded of a course that I taught in which I screened the film Alice in Wonderland in the first class session. The students were confused. Why were they seeing an animated children’s film in a college level marketing course?

But, there’s a metaphor in the Alice story that applies to life today. When Alice falls through the rabbit hole, she finds an alternate universe with a completely different set of rules … and she struggles to make sense of it to survive. That situation sounds very familiar. My favorite scene involves the game of croquet between Alice and the Queen of Hearts. The stakes are high (the Queen’s favorite phrase is “off with their heads”), but this is a game that Alice knows. Or, so she thought. In this strange universe, however, the croquet mallets are flamingos and the balls are little hedgehogs that move around on their own. So, when Alice has finally struggled with her feathered “mallet” to line up a shot, the target has moved. (Who moved my cheese?).

There are a lot of people making money writing books about the current economy and how to cope in it. Lewis Carroll perhaps wrote the first one. It’s worth a review.