"On the cover of Harvard University guru John Kotter's classic book Leading Change is a picture of penguins. While one penguin leads the plunge into icy-looking water, a group of others watch.
If you ever wondered why one of the foremost business authors in the world chose these friendly-looking birds to illustrate his ideas on leadership and change, he now gives an answer - or at least an elaboration. His latest book, co-authored with Holger Rathgeber, Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, takes the penguin-as-leader to a new level. For starters, the cover is again ornamented with the tuxedoed birds. However, in this picture, one is carrying a briefcase.
Yes, this is indeed another parable business book. This genre has become increasingly popular in the last decade, crowding bookstore shelves - and often, remainder tables. Airport stores seem particularly fond of the parable book; most can be read during a short plane trip. Leadership has been compared to sharks, ants, fish, bees, and a number of other creatures. The parable business book seeks to take complex issues and distill them down into a simple story for all to understand. Some are very successful; others come across as far too simplistic.
It is interesting that Kotter would consider this medium. Long honored for his groundbreaking work on leadership and change, his foray into a more light-hearted discussion of very difficult issues is perhaps an unexpected choice. Fortunately for the reader, Kotter and his co-author spin a well-told tale. And in the end, they do an excellent job of allowing a group of arctic creatures to help us understand the challenges of leading change.
It is worth noting that Dr. Spencer Johnson writes the book's foreword. Johnson is, by any measurement, the ultimate guru of the business parable book. As the author of Who Moved My Cheese and co-author of The One Minute Manager, it can be argued that Johnson is responsible for popularizing this genre with sales of his books in the millions around the globe.
Johnson's opening comments to the book state that while leaders and managers around the world have read Kotter's work on successful organizational change, everyone working in any kind of organization can now discover how to use the ideas as they are expressed in this more recent book. Johnson declares the book for "everyone from CEOs to high school students."
The risk, of course, is that such a broad-brush approach actually loses part of its intended audience. The success of this fable is that it shows, rather than tells, utilizing the methods that have made parables successful teaching tools for centuries.
It does so because the story is based upon Kotter's award-winning research on change. Everyone in business today has their own stories regarding the traumatic issues of change. Fewer of us have tales of the effective ways of dealing with those issues.
The fable is about a penguin colony that has lived on the same iceberg in Antarctica for many years. Our Iceberg Is Melting asks us to recognize, and even identify with, the characters in the story, who happen to be a group of emperor penguins but could just as easily be your fellow office workers.
Some of the birds are given names that reflect their personalities, such as NoNo, while others are named simply Fred or Alice. When one penguin makes the discovery that their iceberg is melting, the colony must determine how to deal with a changing situation.
In the welcoming remarks to the fable, the authors explain, "This book is about real-life problems that frustrate nearly everyone in organizations."
The penguin characters are similar to those people we know in our own organizations. Melting icebergs can include aging product lines, decreasing quality problems or a business strategy that makes little sense.
The penguin story is one of process, based upon the Eight Step Process of Successful Change, which Kotter developed in his #1 bestseller, Leading Change, followed by The Heart of Change. The penguins successfully work through the eight steps and move into a changed situation.
Kotter's goal in this book is to take the concepts of his classic research on change and present them in an easy discussion format. He asks readers to analyze the actions of the penguins in the story and parallel these to what the readers themselves, their groups and their organizations have been doing or might do. Discussing these difficult topics may be less threatening under the guise of a penguin fable and perhaps more entertaining.
It's definitely worth a try. At a time when many of us are feeling adrift on our own icebergs of rapid change, a good story may be just what we need. Especially, if it results in a happy ending.
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