Name: Our Iceberg Is Melting
Rating: 4.4 (259 reviews)
Author: John Kotter & Holger Rathgeber

What’s in it for me? Learn how to successfully lead through change.

Change. Terrifying as it is, it’s an inevitable part of life…and business. If you don’t know how to handle it well, you’ll never prosper. And worse, you’ll put everything you’ve built – and everyone who’s part of that – at risk.

Many business leaders who successfully navigate change do it intuitively, which is great for them but not much help for anyone wanting clear instructions on how to survive upheaval. To shed some light on managing change, author John Kotter distilled the course leaders need to take into an eight-step framework.

In these blinks, we’re going to explore this framework through four broader phases of change leadership. And we’re going to do it using a fable that Kotter wrote to illustrate the journey, a fable about a colony of penguins living in Antarctica.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why taking time-out for team-building exercises is useful, even when faced with a crisis;
how social pressure can be used as a tool to overcome obstacles; and
what to do to keep your team motivated during change.

Face facts quickly.

No one enjoys hearing that they’re teetering on the edge of disaster. The option between radically overhauling your organization or pressing on with business as usual seems like a no-brainer. But sometimes, leaders find themselves staring catastrophe in the face: a major breakdown of infrastructure; a product line made redundant by the sudden appearance of a new competitor; the realization that the knowledge your company is running on is outdated and irrelevant.

If you were an emperor penguin living in Antarctica, your version of this scenario would be a little different. It might be something like this:

Louis the penguin lived on an iceberg which had been his home, and the home of his ancestors, for countless generations. As far as icebergs go, it was exemplary. It had beautiful, towering walls of packed snow that sheltered the colony from winter storms, and seas filled with delicious fish.

Louis was Head Penguin of the colony. Along with nine other leaders, he managed the wellbeing of his 300-strong flock – everything from squabbles between neighbours to leopard seal threats. He was dedicated to his work, which is why it took him a while to pay proper attention to his fellow leader Alice. Alice kept insisting that Louis invite a random young penguin to give a presentation at the next Council meeting – some doom and gloom story. But Alice was one of those ‘dog with a bone types’ – not that Louis knew much about dogs. So, he relented and invited this young Fred to the meeting.

Despite his reservations – there was already so much to get through during those meetings – Louis approached Fred’s presentation the way he approached everything: calmly, openly and willing to listen.

Fred’s presentation shocked him. This observant young bird had discovered a huge hollow inside their iceberg, where the snow had melted away. The sea had filled the hollow, which was a major problem. Winter was two months away; that water would freeze for sure and when it did, the expanding ice inside the iceberg would shatter it to pieces.

Fred’s presentation was compelling – he’d even made a model of the iceberg, complete with a lift-off lid to show the hollow inside. Some of the other leaders resisted, saying Fred couldn’t prove his theory and claiming he was just fear-mongering. But Alice reminded Louis that the colony would hold him – and all the leaders – accountable if Fred was right. If they did nothing and penguins died when the iceberg broke apart, blood would be on their flippers.

Louis saw the sense in this. Even though not all the leaders agreed with him, he decided to call a community meeting, to tell the colony that they had two months to find a solution. Louis knew that to survive this catastrophe, they were going to need as much buy-in and brain-power as possible.

When he told the colony about their melting iceberg, he didn’t sugar-coat the truth. He put Fred’s iceberg model in a community space where everyone could examine it, and he made a point of listening to the penguins who came to take a look. They shared their fears and worries with him but also their ideas. And Louis knew that among those ideas, there would be a solution.

When you’re facing your own version of an iceberg, you can’t afford to stick your head in the sand. You need to accept reality quickly, and help your team accept it too. Instilling a sense of urgency will prevent your team from becoming complacent. Having to accept that change is coming is scary, so be present, be available and invite people to engage.

Make a decisive plan.

Now, if you’re a successful leader, you won’t need me to tell you that having a good team is essential. Louis knew this, so he invited four other penguins with diverse skillsets, strengths and personality types to form a team with him, to guide the colony through this disaster. But Louis knew that there was more to building a successful team than merely hand-picking individuals. He needed them to become a cohesive unit. So, despite the urgency they were all feeling, Louis took his team squid-hunting.

Squid – while delicious – are clever. If a penguin tried to hunt them alone, they ended up with a face full of squid-ink and an empty belly. But together, the team could catch all the squid they needed. As the penguins enjoyed their lunch, Louis asked them to share their hopes and dreams, their vision for the future. Taking some time out to form connections with each other galvanized the team and drew them close. With a sense of solidarity established, Louis knew it was time to start hunting solutions instead of squid.

Execute your plan.

With winter getting closer by the day, Louis knew action was crucial. Since observant young Fred had the deepest understanding of what made an iceberg safe, Louis appointed him to lead a group of scouts on a reconnaissance mission. Surprisingly, there were more than enough brave volunteers to form the group. But this raised one huge question.

How would these scouts have time to conduct their mission and hunt enough fish to sustain themselves through winter?

Safeguard your future.

Once the candidate iceberg received the flippers-up from the second scout party, it was time for the colony to move. The journey wasn’t easy. Penguins were lost and found. The old and the young were pushed to their limits. But on the whole, it was successful. The penguins wintered safely on their new iceberg and everyone was full of praise for Louis and his change-team.

In an ideal world, the penguins would have preferred to stay on their original iceberg and continue life as usual. But the experience of relocating had taught them an important lesson: complacency is dangerous.

About the Author

John Kotter is a management thought leader, a Harvard Professor and a New York Times best-selling author of twenty books that have been published in over 150 languages. Viewed by many as the authority on leadership and change, his books include Leading Change, A Sense of Urgency and Accelerate.

Holger Rathgeber is an author and a global manager. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, he now lives in New York, where he works for Beckton Dickinson – a leading medical technology company. He has co-authored two books with John Kotter: Our Iceberg is Melting and That’s Not How We Do It Here!