Our Iceberg is Melting Book Review

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A few years ago Kenneth Blanchard released a book entitled “Who Moved My Cheese”. The book was a great fable about two mice. One thought his piece of cheese would last forever, and never bothered to go and explore and look for new cheese. The other mouse began exploring looking for new cheese, creating new opportunities.

Now comes a new fable, one written by John Kotter. In this book, one of the penguins observes that the iceberg that his colony is living on is melting. He must use a vast array of tools to convince the town elders, the critics, the masses and doomsayers that the iceberg is melting and that new options need to be explored. All of the characters in the book, Fred, Ann, Nono, Louis, Jordan, are all based on real life characters. Many of them you will quickly recognize from your workplace and day-to-day life.

Knowing that he will need the support of everyone in the community, he gathers together a select group of penguins each with different problem solving skills. Kotter infuses his 8 principles of problem solving in this story. Faced with certain tragedy Kotter shows how the penguins, identified the problem, created urgency, developed a tem-building structure and stepped outside the box.

The book is very short, and takes only a couple hours to read, you will feel energized after reading the book and ready to make some changes in your life and the way that you communicate with others.

A quick summary of Dr. Kotter’s Eight Steps for Change

1. Set the stage – create a sense of urgency
2. Pull together the guiding group – make sure there is a powerful diverse group guiding the change.
3. Decide what to do – develop the change vision and strategy, clarify how the future will be different from the past
4. Make it happen – communicate for understanding, make sure that as many as possible understand and accept the vision and strategy
5. Empower others to act – remove as many barriers as possible
6. Create short term wins – create some visible unambiguous successes as soon as possible
7. Don’t let up – press harder and faster after the first success
8. Make it stick – create a new culture – hold on to the new way of behaving

I hope that you enjoy this great book as much as I did.

Copyright 2007 Stephen Knight