Step aside ‘Who moved my cheese?’ Make way for the new management bible: ‘Who ate my Pret a Manger fruit and nut bar?’

Sure, ‘WMMC?’ might be the world’s bestselling book on change, and arguably the world’s most famous business book.

But here in the belly of the start-up, change is something we embrace naturally and management is a more prosaic task.

Spencer Johnson’s book is often used to catalyse change agendas in a big company (sometimes achieving the very opposite). But the dynamics of the start-up have more in common with life in a student flat than a big corporate.

No, a more useful tome for us startupers (an American term, forgive me) would start somewhere else, address the everyday issues that bubble up on the small company frontline.

Such as what to do WHEN SOMEONE HAS EATEN YOUR PRET A MANGER FRUIT AND NUT BAR.

Here at the startup, there’s a healthy sense of the collective, of ‘what’s mine is yours’. There’s no ‘Mel’s stapler’. No ‘Vicky’s heater: DO NOT TOUCH!!!’

Which is great. Until someone…OK, you’ve got it.

I’m guessing my missing fruit and nut bar is already nestling in the stomach of one of The Soupeaters: the small band of brothers eking out a living on the creative breadline as they learn their trade here. These boys wolf meeting leftovers like vultures stripping a carcass, casually driving new business prospects from reception every time they microwave Mulligatawny (the soup, that is, rather than a colleague).

It’s this kind of stuff the startup needs guidance on. Do I let my loss pass, grieve and move on, turn a blind eye to the precedent this creates? Pen an all staff email, intended to rebuild the circle of trust, that instead goes on to destroy it?

‘WAMPAMFANB?’ will be the manager’s best friend at times like this, and quite frankly its publication can’t come soon enough. Only last week a fellow startup (and one which has otherwise fared pretty well) revealed that one of its major management challenges to date had been an ill-fated attempt to reduce the number of snacks in its offices. Google, if you’re reading this, help is on the way.