Book Review: "Our Iceberg Is Melting" by John Kotter

Reviewed by Ilker Cingillioglu, 02/03/2010

"Our Iceberg is Melting" is a fun and simple fable about how a penguin colony in Antarctica responds to the need for revolutionary change. Kotter demonstrates a scenario in the form of a dilemma in which interactive humanized penguins with diverse personalities are put through a quest for managing change. In a way he endeavours to elicit how his 8 stage change model could easily be used by any group of people - in this case penguins - when the need for change arises.

The book simply illustrates and provides insightful lessons around the relevance of Kotter's acclaimed 8-stage change process as follows:

1) Creating a sense of urgency by eliminating complacency and inertia and bringing up the inconvenient news and communicating the desperate need for change,

2) Pulling together the guiding coalition by convincing a broad-based group of penguins and engaging them in acting as a part of the solution by exploiting their distinguishing skills and experience,

3) Developing the change vision and strategy (seagull tactics) in a way to ensure the survival of the colony by looking for alternative places to live,

4) Communicating for understanding and buy in by spreading the vision across the colony with ice posters, speeches and seagull stories and telling other penguins what needs to be done,

5) Empowering others to act by assigning scouts to look for new places,

6) Producing short-term wins when scouts successfully complete their missions by acquiring vital information about the existence and location of new food resources which helped penguins embrace the idea of change even more,

7) Keeping up the good work and continuing to look for bigger and better places to move the colony to, as the scouts are rewarded for their effort and more penguins are getting excited and involved in the change process,

8) Creating a new culture by anchoring the changes in the culture of the colony and never letting them give up their new ways of living and life style.

As the author suggests, the core message that can be drawn from this book is "that the world needs much more action from a broader range of people - action that is informed, committed, and inspired - to help us all in an era of increasing change."

The penguin characters introduced in this book are so similar to individuals that we encounter in our organizations and they can easily be recognized as being like people from all walks of life. I also believe that its being a very clear, simple and quick read makes it possible for anyone to grasp the idea right away.