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Andrew Greatrex |
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006 |
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Blog Entries from Global Leaders. |
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John P Kotter - Dealing With Change Faster and Better
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By Andrew Greatrex on
Sunday, October 01, 2006
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NEW YORK (Sept. 27) – The leadership and change guru at Harvard Business School, John Kotter and his co-author, Holger Rathgeber, have just published a highly engaging book that offers groups of all kinds a powerful method for dealing with change.
 Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about doing well in an ever-changing world. Based on the award-winning work from Kotter, it is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and scores of organizations.
Our Iceberg Is Melting has a lot of people talking. Here’s what some are saying:
“As a result of this book and my sharing it with a few people in the
organization, we have moved quickly on several fronts…It is making a difference for us.”
--Tom Curley, President and CEO, Associated Press
"To prepare for our Global Leadership Meeting, our management team read Our Iceberg Is Melting. It really helped us understand how we can successfully make the changes we need to make, what a positive effect change will have for our company and our people, and what an exciting journey it will be."
--William V. Hickey, President & CEO, Sealed Air
“With Our Iceberg Is Melting, everyone working in any kind of organization – and that is most people – can now discover how to use the same Eight Steps, and enjoy more success in these changing times.” From Our Iceberg Is Melting, Foreword.
--Spencer Johnson, M.D., Author of Who Moved My Cheese?
“The penguins in this book will not only steal your heart, they’ll make you a smarter person.”
--Mary Tyler Moore, Actress, producer, director and Academy Award nominee
Recently, John Humphrey, CEO Humphrey Enterprises and co-founder of The Forum Corporation, commented about Our Iceberg Is Melting for a Better Management Today web cast. He noted that Kotter’s emphasis on the see-feel-change approach, as laid out in his book, The Heart of Change, and incorporated into this fable, can help anyone grasp complex material. Humphrey said, “Putting the change process within an allegory makes it accessible to a broad range of people, and that is critical for performance because people need to be informed advocates for change.”
We asked Professor Kotter, how it is that his just published book could have so quickly helped so many. What started as asking a few people in the worlds of business and government for feedback on an early draft, he says, quickly turned his home office into a miniature publisher. “The first person I sent it to asked for 60 copies for an upcoming training program, so we rushed it through the Kinko’s across the street.”
Soon after those first copies were helping people change, demand blossomed. People were paying for draft editions. Why didn’t Kotter take the book straight to a publisher? “We weren’t satisfied with it,” he said. “We told everyone they could buy the draft only if they gave us feedback. Each time, we made improvements until finally we felt it was ready for publication.” In the process, Kotter and Rathgeber, sold 15,000 books in draft form and created 7 editions before it ever got to the publisher.
 The fable is about a penguin colony in Antarctica. A group of beautiful emperor penguins live as they have for many years. Then one curious bird discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home – and pretty much no one listens to him.
The characters in the story, Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy, the Professor, and NoNo, are like people we recognize. Their tale is one of resistance to change and heroic action, seemingly intractable obstacles and clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles.
Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on Kotter’s pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It’s a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that keeps changing at ever faster rates.
Kotter and his co-author, HR executive Holger Rathgeber, began collaborating on the book in 2004. Rathgeber had emailed Kotter about using his Eight Steps in a training exercise for his company, medical technology giant Becton Dickinson. Rathgeber was inspired to incorporate the penguins from the cover of Kotter’s best selling management book, Leading Change, in the training. “It worked
great,” says Rathgeber. “I wanted to let Kotter know we had created something really special with his work that helped people incorporate his principles in a fun way.” Kotter was intrigued and the idea for the book was born.
The collaboration hasn’t stopped there. Kotter and Rathgeber gathered the insights gained by people and organizations using the book and created a landing place for people to learn more. Their web site connects people interested in guiding change in their organizations and provides a way for others to tell their own stories about change. The website also features Kotter talking about the book and provides links to a John Kotter webinar.
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