"Our Iceberg is Melting"

Dear Colleagues,

I’d like to share with all of you an interesting article I came across in Monday’s (July 16) Business Section of the New York Times. It’s about a new business book, “Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions”. The book, while cast as a fable ostensibly about a colony of penguins faced with the loss of their habitat, is in fact a serious exploration of how to deal with a drastically changing business environment so it is distinctly applicable to our current challenges.

The star of this tale is a feisty fellow named Fred who mobilizes the colony against the imminent threat of its melting iceberg. Author John Kotter uses this device to demonstrate a number of important business ideas. Here are just a few that are relevant to us. In an early stage Fred puts together a guiding team, acknowledging that the task is too complex for any one penguin. Kotter emphasizes that this team “needs the right kind of membership”. In a later stage the author articulates that it is essential “to empower a broad base of people to take action by removing as many barriers to the implementation of the change vision as possible”. As the author points out this was difficult for Fred to put into place since “making everyone, even the children, feel empowered, was unprecedented in the colony”

There are certainly clear analogs to our situation. I think that the emphasis on the need for a team, not an individual nor a homogeneous group, and the need for wide member empowerment in order to implement change are concepts we should take to heart. I’d also like to emphasize that, like Kotter’s penguins facing a melting iceberg, we too are facing major, secular changes. This isn’t just a gratuitous embracing of change for change’s sake.

The complete article can be accessed by clicking on the address below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/business/media/16penguin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Warren R. Procci