Today I have finished the very famous book all over the world, especially in management circles - "Our Iceberg Is Melting. Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions", written by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. My edition of the book was the translation into Russian, sponsored by Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia ("Наш айсберг тает, или Как добиться результата в условиях изменений. Джон Коттер, Холгер Ратберг).
Here we should stop for discussing the first peculiarity. If I translate word by word the title of the Russian translation back into English, I will get "Our Iceberg Is Melting. How to Succeed Under Changing Conditions". From my point of view, the title is absolutely different. I hope that is because of the simple fact - the necessity of constant change in organization is yet not obvious in Russian managerial community and should be advocated additionally. Which is in its turn omitted by changing the title a little bit.
The book is a joint project of Mr.Kotter and Mr. Rathgeber. John P. Kotter is a world-famous guru in change management and leadership, who already published two bestsellers devoted to the same issue before: "Leading Change" and "The Heart of Change". Ratgeber took emperor penguins from the cover of one of them and made them the main characters of seminars based on the books. After cooperation of two authors based on this trainings and additional research, the "Our Iceberg Is Melting" appeared itself to the world, comprising the knowledge of two previous books with the additional experience on the topic in question gained afterwards.
Yes, the main characters of the book are emperor penguins. For those who are sure that these creatures can't teach him anything, I can tell that unfortunately these particular penguins are more clever than most of us. The idea of introducing the concepts through these beautiful birds is to ease the atmosphere of learning managerial practices. In non-stressful form of fairytale - which is also believed to be remembered the best, and in any case better than scientific literature, especially from managerial field - the real recommendations, working in case of change management are presented, the 8-step algorithm developed by Kotter.
The algorythm is unbelievably clear:
Prepare the ground
1. Create the feeling of "great necessity"
2. Gather the strong team
Decide what to do
3. Create the vision of success and strategy for its achievement
Make it true
4. Put vision into everybody's head
5. Inspire the others on actions
6. Support quick victories
7. Don't give up
Secure the result
8. Create a new culture
The whole tale describes every step in details on example of penguins' colony - quite an abstract example and at the same time so cute, nobody will have any internal contradictions with that. If you by any chance hate penguins or know everything about change management already, still consider reading this book. You can use it as simple exercise for cheking your superior knowledge on the issue: try to imagine what penguins should do before reading the following chapter and then compare what answer Mr. Kotter has prepared for you. In any case the book is so thin, even in verbose Russian, so it will make your business trip more relaxed and entertaining.
For those who love penguins and is not acquanted with the matter, my advise will be - do not rush to get notebook and pencil to write the important issues down and do not stress on analyzing every word. The main idea of every chapter is plentifully repeated in the end of each chapter. In the last chapter the whole sequence of steps is presented once more. And finally, in the end of the book the Kotter's 8-step algorythm is summarized. So relax and enjoy. And if you will miss something, the book is so short that you can read it again in no time.
Authors recomend you to discuss the reading in any group and in any form in order to remember the ideas better. I would also like to rise the discussion in the comments thread. In my humble opinion the book is explaining the main ideas of reengineering of organization in a simple and understandable manner. The suggested algorythm is exactly the same list fo recomendations any guru on Business Process Management or Reengineering will give you.
Nevertheless the R-word is not mentioned at all. Why so? My idea is that the word "Reengineering" itself is not so popular among business people and managers or carries some bad memories and associations created by misunderstandings - I myself didn't succeed perfectly in defending Master Thesis' paper devoted to Business Process Management in Business School and am plannig to return to IT-faculties. I have only one more idea, which is even more crazy than this. May be, field of Change Management and Leadership hasn't intersected yet with Business Process Management and Reingineering yet. Then why? They state pretty much the same ideas. The only difference is in the origins: the former raises from business theories, the latter has its root in IT, quite deep roots though.
I really liked the ingenious idea of the book and the positive spirit. Authors claim that book has its success and helps in introducing management of change ideas to masses. I agree - it is impossible to describe the same useful material in more easy and entertaining way.
