Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

Excellent book for facing change: I work as a psychiatrist with persons with intellectual developmental disorder(IDD) (earlier called mental handicap) and their families. The chief challenge of my work is to bring a positive approach to training efforts by the parents. As parents with a ‘special child’ parents face many challenges in bringing up and in planning for the child’s future. This responsibility is not what parents wanted, when the child was born into their family. The needs of ‘special child’ requires parents to think completely differently about a number of areas like day to day care, training the child, schooling, health care, planning for the future etc. It is these challenges that require you to take up the challenges and find new ways of succeed. The central theme of my work, is to EMPOWER YOUR CHILD AND YOUR FAMILY TO FACE THE CHALLENGES. It is in this context, that the book ‘Our iceberg is melting’ has a special meaning to you and your family. Most parents pass through life denying the ‘special’ needs of your child. From the book, parents learn to accept the situation, by accepting your child’s ‘special’ needs that they can be of greatest help to him/her. The book introduces the 8 principles of problem solving, which is useful to parents in a slightly modified form, as below. 1. Recognise the special needs of your child and importance of training 2. Pull together all members of your family 3. Develop a vision for your child and a Strategy 4. Reach out professionals for help and support 5. Acquire skills to train your child 6. Plan for Short-term gains 7. Don't give up 8. Make effort continuous and regular.

Great book. Well written for a quick, effective read.

I enjoyed the fable penguin story that still brought to life the problems we deal with on regular basis and how we handle them. Some great points were made and it was a quick / easy read!

I was attracted to this book because... I’m researching leading with a sense of urgency and I have been reading a lot of John Kotter. I was intrigued by the fable concept. This book was about One penguin releases the iceberg they are living on is melting. This is the story of how he gets others involved to discover what they should do as a group to avoid disaster. Things I liked about this book As a fable, it tells a great story of these penguins,coming together and finding a way to reasonably work and find a solution to their community’s impending problem. Why you should read this book This book is a great encouragement that if we listen to each other and find ways to work together, we can solve many problems in community. This book lived up to the back cover copy The fable is a great illustration of how problems can be identified, tackled and solved by working together. If you enjoyed Who Moved My Cheese? you will enjoy this story, too.

Why write a business fable about penguins to champion change management? In the author Q&A section of “Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions,” John Kotter explains: “I’ve been studying for a long time how people learn. And I think it is pretty clear that our brains are hardwired for stories. A good story is easy to absorb and remember, especially if it has emotional components.” He notes that interesting animal stories have “some basic points in them that, because they stick around in your mind, can actually change what we do.” Coauthor Holger Rathgeber adds, “The whole thing started when I was asked to spend two to three hours with a large audience of managers and executives focusing on John’s Eight Steps from his ‘Leading Change’ book. It was clear to me that a PowerPoint presentation wasn’t a good way to do this. So I created a very rough plot about a colony of penguins sitting on an iceberg that is melting.” You’ll love the humor—because you’ve likely heard similar suggestions in recent team meetings! What should the penguins do about their melting iceberg? “Another bird suggested they find a perfect iceberg. No melting, no exposed caves, no fissures, just wonderful in every way so that their children and grandchildren would never, ever have to face a crisis like this again. Perhaps if they appointed a perfect-iceberg committee?” We've served on those committees, right? (LOL!) This book prompted me to reflect on presentations, speeches, and sermons I’ve heard recently. Unfortunately, there were more PowerPoints than stories. I’m wondering if the first century’s technology had included PowerPoints, would Jesus have used that tool—or would he have continued to use parables? (I’m guessing parables.)

My Pastor requested that we purchase this book for Bible Study, he is never wrong when he suggest great reading and studying material. Our church ENJOYED this book, tremendously! It was a fun book to read, but each chapter had a purpose in its story, Truly Recommend this book for your Book Club! This book talks about not wanting to accept change. Because the abnormality was lying underneath, in the foundation of the iceberg, everybody went about their day not knowing something tragic was getting ready to happen. All changes aren't bad, some changes are great and pushes us closer to our destiny. We can lose a lot just because we don't want to accept change, which will come whether we want it or not!

"Our iceberg is melting" is a small and very (too?) easy to read book that mainly consists of a fable about penguins who notice that they need to change. The penguins then happened to follow Kotter's eight-step process of successful change, so you can learn this eight-step process by learning from the penguins :) The first 100 pages in the book is the fable about penguins who need to move to a new home as they discovered their iceberg is melting. They convince the senior management penguins and plan the change with a selected team of change agents. They manage to convince the other penguins that action is needed, get a quick win and manage to successfully change. After that, there are a few pages explaining the eight-step process for change that was taken from John Kotter's research and his earlier books on managing change. The pages aren't enough to get an in-depth understanding of Kotter's research, but for that, you will need to read Kotter's other work. The story was easy to read as it was simple (simplistic?). I found it mildly interesting. There wasn't much news in this book if you are already familiar with Kotter's research, but then again it doesn't take much time to read as the book is very thin. The book wasn't bad, but I would probably not recommend it to anyone either as it was definitively not a book that impressed me. I was thinking about 2 or 3 stars. Decided to go with 3 as it does seem to achieve its own purpose. Just ok.

The case was smashed up the CD seems to be in place

It is amazing book, i believe anyone will read it for sure will love it..., you learn the Eight Steps to a Successful Change

One of the best books to read. If you want to become a manager. Give you boost of confidence

A good book to read - makes it very easy to grasp basic concepts on change management. Usually management books are filled with jargon and boring examples - this one tries it a little differently by putting it across as a story. Not a very long read, can easily be completed in a couple of hours.

This is good for students, business people, scientists, lawyers and any people who do with the partner or team.

Cette fable, agréable et rapide à lire, est d'une efficacité remarquable pour sensibiliser le lecteur à l'articulation des stratégies et des réactions des individus qui font face à l'éventualité d'un changement.