Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions - by John Kotter

Date read: 2011-01-08
How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)

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Great story on the 8 stages of change that companies go through told through pengiuns and a melting iceberg.

Contents:

1. 8 STEP PROCESS OF SUCCESSFUL CHANGE

My Notes

Handle the challenge of change well, and you can prosper greatly. Handle it poorly, and you put yourself and others at risk.

Reducing complacency and increasing urgency are the right first steps to institute change.

The Professor was disinclined to just talk about life without structure around the conversation to give it some RIGOR. So he kept his beak shut and let his analytical brain work quietly. Melting iceberg. Fred finds it. Tough sell to a complacent group. Goes to Alice first. Shows her the problem. The ice model. The bottle. The group meeting. Complacency reduced. Louis picks group to guide the effort. Interesting makeup. Turning non-team into team with squid and talk.

Pull together a team to guide the needed change.

We need to just face up to the fact that what sustains us cannot go on forever.

Create a vision of a new future.

Expect your employees to be anxious, preoccupied, skeptical, tradition bound, or unimaginative.

Communicate the new vision.

Make everyone, even individual contributors, feel empowered.

Social pressure works as well in penguin colonies as in human colonies.

Create "short-term wins."

Because of his effective leadership, Louis became greatly admired by the colony. Yet, to his credit, he did not allow his pride to slide into arrogance.

Not becoming complacent again and not letting up.

Tradition dies a hard death. Culture changes with as much difficulty in penguin colonies as in human colonies.

Were learning the specific steps needed to make any large adjustment to new circumstances, and worked well together to keep leaping into a better and better future.

Am I living on a melting iceberg or an iceberg that could melt?

Who are the NoNos around me?

Who are the Alices and Freds? Who am I?