Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

Penguins & Global Warming

"Our Iceberg Is Melting" is a fable which deals with the subjects of change management, human behavior, and team building in similar form as "Who Moved My Cheese". Some interesting insights may be drawn concerning human behavior - specifically how people react to change, differing personalities, and the challenges that one may encounter when working in a small team environment. There are at least a couple disturbing techniques (at least in my opinion) that encourage crowd behavior and lessen independent thinking. Not my cup of tea but may be a good fit for someone seeking guidance in a corporate environment.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Painful read but not a bad message

The message and idea's behind this book are potent and important. However the presentation of the book is painful to digest. The focus of a "Leadership Fable" is to try and present important management concepts in a real world situation, also adding an amusing twist to the whole learning ordeal.

I feel this book fails miserably at that. Judged as a work of fiction I would hesitate to use this for torture for risk of cruel & unusual punishment. It's obvious this book was written after having had read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "The Giving Tree" to his child one too many times before bed. Every character is a cartoonish caracture with obscenely obtuse behavioral patterns. For example, the "brains" of the operation behaves more like an autistic child than an intelligent council member.

Lencioni's books are far better at telling a story using real people in a way that doesn't incessantly insult the intelligence of the reader. I'd read this to my child when he is old enough but I was shocked this was required reading for my management training program.

Highly recommended

As an educator, amidst the many changes, I found this extremely motivating and reconfirmed the fact that only working together with everyone on board can changes happen and be effective.

our iceberg is melting

great story to illustrate change in the workplace. excellent book

Fantastic Fable Outlining the Way to Execute Change in Business

Professor Kotter continues to amaze me at how clearly he articulates the need for change and the steps to execute change. This book tells the story in an innovative way by using a fable of sorts. "Create a shared desire / need for change", the "power of the quick win", "Don't be complacent and always have urgency" are just a few of the items brought to light in this book.

The question we all must ask is that if this is such "common sense" (I hear that all the time in business) then why do so few companies do this (i.e., change) well? An example of a company which executed it at least once is IBM (move from hardware to services) but those types of examples are few and far between.

The next question is even if you can pick a company that changed dramatically once, why do so few of those companies make it a "culture of change". In the IBM example, will their services model keep up with "cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS)? Probably will but again, even when companies get it right once they rarely get it right two three or four times.

Of course we all know now that business IS the business of change. In a "copycat" economy, if you are going to stay in front and not get bogged down in a commodity style price war you have to keep changing. If nothing else, reading from Professor Kotter's books keeps your mind thinking of change.

Great for a book study or individual.

It is a very good book to use in order to take a look at your organization or learning community. I am an educator and our department was given this book for our book study. It reads a little slow, but it gets you to take a good look at the issues by using penquins.

Our Iceburg Is Melting

This book is too long to be easy to share it's concepts. (Which is what I thought fables were meant to do...) I also felt that the story left you with great ideas IF you live AND work within a confined space with a group of people who stay together through anything. I have not seen this in the workplace, and individuals are let go and removed from the group regularly. I don't see it as applicable because of the lack of commitment within work environments. It is not something I can implement myself to prepare for that iceburg melting... so although somewhat entertaining, and worth the opportunity to begin discussions and shift in thinking... it wasn't exceptional.

don't move until it's finish

Great book, kept you on you sit, did not won't to put it down.

This book is the newest Change Management "handbook"

Written as a fable this is a very quick read with a lot of information - read it twice for the impact of the lessons that are being taught. There are a number of personalities in the book who will seem familiar and that helps to make it "real". I used it for a presentation in a master's level leadership course and the Executive Director of a nonprofit I am involved with has used it to help the staff through some challenging times recently.

Outstand book for the dramatic changes going on in the working and personal world today.

John Kotter has proven again that he knows how to take a complex subject like change and put it into an easily understandable tail.

An insight in to a changing lifestyle

This book stresses the ability (and necessity) of changing one's functioning in one's life to changng circumstances in which one's finds him/herself. This adaptability is critical for one to maintain his/her lifestyle or place in the community, in business (owner or employee), or family (parent, child, sibling, etc). It is very worthwhile in that it presents coping behaviors one needs to incorporate in order to meet the challenges one may face on a daily (or otherwise) basis.

Your iceberg is probably melting

In the current economy, it's easy to feel as if things are slipping away from underneath your feet. For many industries, they probably are. Either way, we can all use a good wake up call for thinking about change, and taking a proactive approach at making things better. Our Iceberg is Melting does just that.

Another parable I strongly recommend is Squawk! - How to Stop Making Noise and Start Getting Results.

A great, quick read with an important message.

So on a day when I was setting up the business section in the new store, hating life and my job in general, I saw this book sitting on the shelf. I read the title and thought to my self "Hey...MY iceberg is melting! In fact, it's already gone." I was so interested that, rather than wait until the store is open, I drove to the library after work and checked it out.

It's like 120 pages, with giant print, and full of pictures--you can read it in a long night easily. It's a story of a colony of fake penguins who discover their iceberg is melting and they have to do something about it. I was a little disappointed [hence the -1 star:] that the message is geared more towards large organizations than individuals, but the bottom line is almost the same.

I didn't even really need to read this book--I just had to see the title--to realize that my own personal "iceberg" was in danger of melting. It's helped me realize I need to keep looking for that next opportunity. And to think I never thought I would fall for one of these cheesy business books! :-)

Wonderful Book on Change Management

My daughter gave me a copy of this book. As a corporate human resources director, she believed I would enjoy the subject. I can truly say that she underestimated the enjoyment I derived from these penguins.

This book is a must read for anyone that manages people with all of their quirks and baggage. While the book is largely common sense, it opens your eyes to various tools to stimulate discussion and engage in effective communication.

There is no better way to teach a topic than to build an interesting story around the topic. This empowers the subject in a way that straightforward narrative and lecture style can never achieve. Keep writing John Kotter. It is a great book. Michael L. Gooch

Unique

Kotter's book is unlike any business parable I've seen (except for one, I'll get to that in a minute). It uses animals (penguins on an iceberg) as a metaphor for the challenging environment in which corporations operate today and their resistance to organizational change. Unlike the over simplified WHO MOVED MY CHEESE, these animals have far more human characteristics that pose challenges like those you face in your work and they'll remind you of people you know. Hard to fully explain how it works so well, but, believe me, it works. Highly recommended. The only other book I've seen do this so well is SQUAWK!: HOW TO STOP MAKING NOISE AND START GETTING RESULTS, which uses a seagull manager to illustrate the problem managers are having these days with swooping in at the last minute, squawking up a storm and dumping orders riddled with formulaic advice upon their people. Highly recommended as well.

A reviewer

I have read John Kotter's previous work on leading change so I was curious as to whether his concepts could be effectively conveyed in fable form. To my delight, I discovered that Kotter put his own findings about the power of stories to work to create an engaging story that conveys his principles about organizational change more powerfully. By reading this book, my staff and colleagues remember the steps and continue to be guided by them as we transform our work group and help to transform our company. I highly recommend this book!

Iceberg of the Vanities

I ask myself why does anyone write a book like this? The answer I came up with is money! Very cleverly crafted, the author appeals to that age old human trait: vanity. His target is senior managers and like any good salesman, seeks to feed their self esteem or vanity. Change brings lots of opportunities to increase ones own prestige and destroy enemies (or those that don¿t think quite the same way that we do). All you have to do is find something that has to change significantly. This is actually very hard to do - to find something that incontrovertibly needs to change drastically. Most sensible changes evolve, tiny increments or alterations over a period of time bring the ship safely into port. It¿s the big project that earns the prestige and the opportunity to dump off the dead bodies that got in the way of ambition. But do you really need a rock solid reason to change? If you can sell a disaster scenario, fear will do the rest. To choose an obvious example the millennium bug issue brought billions of dollars into IT departments around the globe. IT managers and staff soon cottoned on to the idea that they could command exhorbitant wage increases and lay claim to vast resources to counter this threat. They realised, or so they thought, that they were in a no lose situation: if the organisation was not affected by Y2K they could say that it was as a result of a successful programme to counter it. If the organisation succumbed to it, they could say that not enough resources were apportioned for it and they would be able to quote the occasions that they had asked for the resources that the Board did not grant because they thought they were excessive. The outcome was very unexpected. There was no major disaster, no explosions, no major breakdown in communications, no crashes because traffic lights wouldn¿t work. In fact very little at all. Even the organisations that had been taken to court for refusing to do anything to counter Y2K and had still done nothing come the big day, had reported no problems. In fact the only embarrassments were a few companies who had invested very heavily in Y2K and were money had been no issue had succumbed due to oversight by their IT department. The IT world went very quiet for a long time after Y2K! Fear is the key: `will the iceberg crack up in the winter¿? Who knows? No one knows, great! Tons of mileage here! All those poor little penguins drowning in the frozen sea, at the same time as being savaged mercilessly by killer whales! Fear not I will lead you to a better place! Who said that? And when the job is done, and praise and honour are heaped upon me, reluctantly, yes reluctantly there will be a shake up of the management team (sharpen those guillotines). Then I will retire and leave everything in the capable hands of those who supported me, and tell stories to the young ones like some cuddly father figure (and command huge expenses fees on the lecture circuit). Already I have heard of a senior manager saying to one of his subordinate managers that he was a `Nono¿ (an anti change character in the book). OK what did that make him? Vanity of vanities he would see himself as the Louis (the cool wise leader in the book), this is so obviously appealing and gives the highest feel good factor for the `Panther¿ type manager So what¿s all this negative attitude? Don¿t you have a better solution or a better model? The type of leader that I would follow is found in another fable: ¿The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep¿ the good shepherd knows his sheep and his sheep know him.¿ But hey! Come on, it¿s only a fable!

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The next 'Who Moved My Cheese?'

This book will help all tiers of your organization have a 'common story' to talk about change. Get it soon and share it!

Excellent Book on Leadership and Change

Years ago when I was a student hit by the initial waves of change happening in urban India, I was given a book by one of my all time gurus..a book that tells the story of a seagull that wanted to fly ¿ Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Batch. I am not sure if it is a coincidence or my guru realized that we are going into an increasingly changing world and to face it we need to be armed with lessons to be different and face all kinds of difficulties to achieve what we want. It has changed the way I thought and reacted. When we reached the thick of change being a part of the evolving software industry in India I faced the situation of inability to understand the change that may come and react to the same. I found Spenser Johnson¿s Who Moved My Cheese?. While going through the blues of middle management and not finding which way will bring deliverance I found an all time classic Sidhdharth by Herman Hesse. Now when I am moving into my first level leadership role and learning the lessons of working on strategies and handling large groups of people to achieve business success I was hit by the challenge of changing people to orient them towards the expected performances ¿ in a nutshell demanding excellence from the team. This needs change of mindset which can be achieved only with a strong action plan..I started reading Leading Change and started looking at the eight step process to achieve the same. That is the time I found this new book `Our Iceberg Is Melting¿. This book reflected the eight step process in a subtle way to impact each reader even without knowing the eight step process. In addition, it has provided lessons of different behaviour patterns of leadership and each one leading to different success. Each character Louis, Alice, Buddy, Fred and the Professor represent five different characteristics required to make a complete personality. Each one of us need to be level headed and show ability to take responsibility like Louis at the same time we also need to be go getters like Alice. The humility of Buddy, Inquisitiveness of Fred and the Intellect of the Professor will make each one of us a complete personality. It is a book that offers both direct and subtle messages. Using the eight principles discussed we can achieve the required impact and change from our teams. In addition we will learn excellent leadership lessons to handle crisis and creating crisis situation ¿ sense of urgency to attack critical problems normally we keep ignoring for ever. A wonderful book each one of us irrespective of our walks of life and professional engagements we are involved in.

Change is inevitable..be open-enjoy it-make it last

I love learning through stories and the penguin fable resonated with me. It's a memorable way to learn especially when the topic applies to so many aspects of life. This fable did that extremely well! Our Iceberg Is Melting is a great business book presenting an 8 Step change process that applies to so many business environments. However, it also was a great book for me for its message applies to my experiences both personal and business. I loved the read - the depth of message and the simplicity of the presentation of a complex issue as it applies to business and life