Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter

I came into work today to find this on my desk, a gift from my boss. Since there have been a lot of changes going on in our department she thought it would be good reading for me. I found it very interesting, but sometimes too simplistic. Still, I'm grateful she brought it to my attention.

Our Iceberg is Melting on the surface is just a little fable about a group of penguins living out their life. But the lesson shows how to work with personalities of all types and how to make things happen. This is expressed through Fred, the penguin who found that the iceberg they were living on was no longer safe and had to set out to change the top committee's minds, and also help them express the plans to the others of the community and try to convince everyone that change was good. It elaborated on the teamwork that they used as well.

Each of the penguins was supposed to be a different type of person in this book so they were all very different personality types from one another. They weren't really developed well, you were just told what their attributes were and how they meshed with the other penguins.

There was a good story to this book. But since it was geared towards adults, I found the actual storyline and penguin fable a little too simplistic. It seemed like it could have been written for kindergarteners. I know that it was just too show how easy the concept was, but it made the read so fast and I would have loved to delve more in depth to what the book was saying. It did offer good points on working with people of different types and personalities though which was the main goal of the book. It also showed how to move people to action.

Definitely an interesting read if you're trying to interact with people in the business world, but it could have been developed and expanded on more in my opinion.

Our Iceberg is Melting
Copyright 2005
146 pages