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Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions (Hardcover)

~ John Kotter (Author), Holger Rathgeber (Author), Peter Mueller (Illustrator), Spencer Johnson (Foreword)
Key Phrases: Head Penguin, Leadership Council
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
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Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions + Leading Change + A Sense of Urgency
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About the Author
John Kotter has been on the faculty at Harvard Business School since 1972. He is the author of eleven award-winning titles and frequently gives speeches and seminars at Harvard and around the world. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Holger Rathgeber spent his early professional career in Asia. He has worked in industry since the early 1990's and is now with one of the leading medical technology companies, Bectom Dickinson. Raised in Frankfurt, Germany, Rathgeber currently resides in White Plains, New York.
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From Publishers Weekly

Harvard Business School professor Kotter, author of the bestselling Leading Change (1996), teams up with executive Rathgeber to offer his contribution to the "business fable" genre. Kotter presents his framework for an effective corporate change initiative through the tale of a colony of Antarctic penguins facing danger-inspired, perhaps, by today's real-life global warming crisis (or, perhaps, by March of the Penguins' box office). Under the leadership of one particularly astute bird, a small team of penguins with varied personalities and leadership skills implement a thoughtful plan for coaxing the other birds in their colony through a time of necessary but wrenching change. The logic of Kotter's fictional framework is wobbly at times-his characters live and act very much like real penguins except that one carries a briefcase and another ("the Professor") cites articles from scholarly journals-and the whimsical tone will not be to everyone's taste. However, this light, quick read should fulfill its intended purpose: to serve as a springboard for group discussions about corporate culture, group dynamics and the challenges of change.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 160 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (September 5, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 031236198X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312361983
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,075 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #24 in  Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Management
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Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
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Customer Reviews

87 Reviews
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48 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Problem Solving Fable, September 21, 2006
Fables have been used to illustrate problem solving, among many other things, for hundreds of years. Remember Aesop's fables? Several years ago, Kenneth Blanchard successfully re-introduced using fables to teach problem solving techniques with his book, Who Moved My Cheese. John Kotter replicated that method of instruction with this fun little book, OUR ICEBERG IS MELTING. As with the aforementioned work, I believe this one will garner similar acclaim.

Kotter's engaging story introduces the 8 principles of problem solving. This can be used in a variety of venues from business, church, child raising, sports, etc. Kotter illustrates how the penguins, faced with a tumultuous dilemma, identified the problem, created urgency, developed a team-building structure, and stepped outside the box. Along the way, the story is entertaining and includes a diverse array of skepticism, cynicism and other challenges that we all face.

The book is also very well illustrated and can easily be read in a couple of hours. It is also readable for almost any age level and would probably make a good reading lesson for children as well. They will certainly be entertained, if not captivated by the illustrations and side notes. Well done.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Who Moved My Iceberg?, February 12, 2010
By Steven Mason (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is a children's book, and I read it in thirty minutes. The "lessons" are so simple that you won't need any extra time digesting them. The funny thing is, this book is aimed at adults, and not just any adults, but the kind of adults who want to be leaders or agents of change. Ha!

Yes, it's a problem solving fable, but not ordinary problems: Catastrophic, life-threatening problems. I suppose that you could modify the eight steps to solve ordinary problems, but even then it's too elementary to be useful.

Step number one is to create a sense of urgency in other people. In this fable, one penguin had to convince the other penguins that their home was doomed to destruction and many of them, especially the old and the young, would die if they didn't heed his warnings and take drastic action immediately. You see, these penguins had been living on an iceberg for many generations; indeed, it was the only homeland that any of them had ever known or heard about. But one curious penguin had discovered evidence that their iceberg was cracking and melting. The evidence was on the underside of the iceberg, easy enough to see if any penguin cared to look. The curious penguin was convinced that their home would break into little pieces within a couple of months, right in the middle of the dark and stormy winter season. Once the first step is accomplished (i.e. everyone is now convinced of doom and feeling panic), the next seven steps follow simple logic, such as building teamwork, coming up with possible solutions, etc. Yes, as with any decent children's story, this one has a happy ending. The penguins solve their problem by becoming nomads, moving from one healthy iceberg to the next.

Well, what can we take from this fable, then? If the iceberg is a metaphor for the Earth, shall the human race consider becoming galactic nomads and move from one good planet to another? These penguins didn't have to fix anything, or learn how to get along with each other, or learn how to share and use resources, or how to create a sustainable existence. All they had to do was move to another place (which, by the way, is precisely what the Europeans did when they came to the "New World"). And there was an endless supply of great places to move to, without the conflict of moving to a place that was already occupied by other penguins. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the human race could just pack up and, after a day or two of travel, arrive on another unspoiled Earth that had no other humans?

And how does this fable work for more ordinary problems? Let's say that you, a junior employee, think your company is going in the wrong direction. Okay, so you are first supposed to create a sense of urgency within your company: You try to convince fellow key employees that the company will fail under its present leadership. I can just hear The Donald yelling, "You're Fired!"

But really, how can this story help with the serious problems we are facing today? Did the Bush administration read this book, and did they tell us about WMD in Iraq in order to create a sense of urgency, so we could "solve" the problem of terrorism? Or, did Al Gore read this book, and is he right about the catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change? Ah, but if only the evidence was as clear, and the solution as easy, as in this fable! That is where this fable fails to deliver: Defining complex problems is tremendously more difficult than this fable implies, and creating and implementing solutions is more difficult still. OF COURSE we have to define the problem, find solutions, and have good leadership and teamwork to implement it! But in the real world, it's easier said than done, and this fable doesn't help at all with how to do it. In fact, I think that this fable hurts more than it helps, encouraging people, whatever their beliefs, to try to create a sense of urgency in other people, and to take quick, drastic action. That kind of thinking can get us involved in unnecessary wars and using "enhanced interrogation techniques." It can even create suicide bombers. Think about it.

Bottom line: I think that a 5-year-old kid, and an adult, would learn more about business, leadership, and group dynamics from Sesame Street.

P.S. This book has now been out for 4 years and is still available only in the more expensive hardback edition. I'd like to convince the author of the URGENT! need to publish a less expensive paperback edition, because young kids don't have so much money to spend on books. Suggestion: Make a manga edition! :-)
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a gem!, September 8, 2006
By Warren Wilhelm (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is a wonderful gem of a little book. It uses a parable about a colony of easy-to-relate-to penguins to teach us how to understand and manage successful change. It marks a departure from the data-based research John Kotter is so respected for, and takes us into the realm of everyday life. Everyone, no matter who we are or what we do in life, should read, enjoy and learn from this gem!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A great fun read!
I knocked the book out in about 45 minutes on my Kindle for PC reader. A great read in a fable format about the dynamics around change. Read more
Published 13 days ago by William F. Poplawski

4.0 out of 5 stars The language of change
Our Iceberg Is Melting is an easy to read book with a very sticky message that makes it incredibly useful for helping people quickly understand, internalize and remember key... Read more
Published 20 days ago by C. Goldwasser

5.0 out of 5 stars No issues
I had no problems with getting the book on time. It was in great condition just as they said.
Published 1 month ago by James G. Horton

4.0 out of 5 stars Great theoretical content in a book even a child can read
Kotter uses a simple, yet powerful story to illustrate the Leading Change model from his earlier books. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Dan Burleigh

4.0 out of 5 stars Worked to bring 40 people together
We read this book at a management off-site meeting and it worked very well as a way of getting people on the same page about change. Read more
Published 1 month ago by David A. Couper

1.0 out of 5 stars Shame to Harvard Business School
What a shame to put Harvard Business School name on the cover of this book. What money can do!
Published 1 month ago by Real Critique

5.0 out of 5 stars problem-solving - the penguin style: a fable
This book is unique writing - I like it! It tells a fable involving a colony of 268 penguins, seemingly living in relative comfort on an iceberg in Antarctic. Read more
Published 2 months ago by H. V. Amavilah

1.0 out of 5 stars Watered down version of Who Moved My Cheese...
I thought "Who Moved My Cheese" was a simple, but insightful book. Our Iceberg Is Melting is just not worth the 45 min it takes to read... Read more
Published 2 months ago by T. Hacker

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a short, yet insightful fable about a group of penguins faced with a potentially devastating problem.
Heard OUR ICEBERG IS MELTING by John Kotter and
Holger Rathgeber . . . this is a short, yet insightful fable about
a group of penguins faced with a potentially... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Blaine Greenfield

3.0 out of 5 stars 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". Read more
Published 5 months ago by John R. Sedivy

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