Synopsis

OUR ICEBERG IS MELTING: CHANGING AND SUCCEEDING UNDER ANY CONDITIONS is a book written by John Kotter where, through a fable about a community of penguins he tries to teach how to be resilient. Normally we tend to think about fables as childish and not worthy of serious consideration but it is with storytelling that really engages how we learn better. So, please, if you are hesitating on reading this book because the synopsis sounds kind of ridiculous, let me beg you for an opportunity.

So, this story is based in a community of savage penguins that are living in their iceberg where they have been for generations and they have their structure, their systems, their everything after all. They were there, and there was the place where the community existed. What could happen if the place of their sacred community starts to crash and seems to be extinct at some early day? Imagine that instead of an iceberg and penguins, we were talking about Valencia and Valencian people. Can you imagine a Valencia in another place instead of here, in the Mediterranean, with our orange fields, olives, rivers and sun?

Summary

The story is placed in a random iceberg in the middle of the ocean. There we have this super cute community of penguins where they have their houses, their social systems(including schools and politics), their daily issues and their culture, of course. This community is like a country or, better, like Astrea.

We are a bunch of penguins in an iceberg that we do not know actually how it works   (we are trying to find out…), creating our own culture and structures.  

So, one day, a penguin that was curious about science noticed that something was happening with their iceberg… It seemed to be melting. 

This terrorized him not just because, if he was right, this would be awful for the community but also because the community was not a safe space to share this kind of thing. If someone says something outside of the box for sure he is going to be treated differently and it is not going to be the same with the community, it has a rigid thinking system(a closed-system as Dialogue explains). 

Hence he decided to talk with one of the leaders, the warmest one of them, the one who always was up to listen and comprehend the community. She was the perfect safe space and also when she investigated and realized that the emergency was true was the first planning how to face this.

We can see here that they were facing an incredible problem, they could die if they remain as they are, if the community does not decide something. But the first step was how to explain this to the community, how to convince them. For someone as utilitarian and practical as I am this is crazy. We are going to die if nothing is done and we do not have a deadline. It could be tomorrow, so, normally, I am more likely to plan everything with the experts and then make the others act as our plan wants to. I used to think that intelligence is something that you have or not and we can not expect everyone to have it so I was sure that was better to hide and manipulate rather than being sincere and ask them for comprehension of the plan or whatever. Anyways I just found it interesting that their first step was community and talking and not the urgency.

We can see in the community that different roles arose about this issue: opposers, followers, lost people, leaders… We saw here how the community was divided. We had teams arguing about the best solutions if not the team that believed that this problem was not true.

So we have some kind of negationists that fought versus the main characters and made people misunderstand or neglect the ideas with manipulation and other techniques, and the main characters that were similar to a team of leaders. I can find an interesting parallelism between TLT and this group: they were a few people that represented the community. They are skilled and prepared in specific areas of the problem(technological, social…), they investigate and plan about their area and then create actions but do not force the community, they just guide and supervise it. 

We see these penguins facing all kinds of problems with communication and community but the most difficult one was: the fear to change. After all, everyone thought that their community was described as their society in their land with their people. They were not capable of rethinking about the meaning of community. This was the key point of everything. Once the community changed their basis, their structure, their vision of the community everything went smoothly. 

They practiced dialogue and arrived at the conclusion that community is what they wanted it to be. So, after investigating different lifestyles and options the community decided that, for now, they would migrate from time to time and community is going to be their connections, their people and their structure rather than a land. 

Analysis

Jhon shows us in this book his management model and most concise how to lead and manage in a situation that is changing. We all have faced situations similar to that iceberg melting, that friend that decides to live abroad, how time changes the relationship with your connections, when you fail in a project… And as leinners we have to be aware that melting is an option in every project. 

In this management model I really appreciated that the TLT followed a serial step-by-step guide actually:

1. Convince the community that this was urgent
2. Creation of TLT. TLT was not a group elected people instead they were the triggers of everything. I think this is a key point compared to Leinn’s TLT that is voted. Personally, I am not a fan of elections because most of the people do not know enough so their vote is easily manipulated. Democracy is only useful when everyone is educated and has interest.
3. Develop a vision and then strategies, all that vision needs a roadmap, something that helps us to get there. 
4. Once the vision is created in TLT they communicate to the community. So the vision and planning is something that is done by TLT not the whole community. But if the community has ideas they can try them as the young penguins shows usm
5. When facing obstacles like opposers they took everything seriously and planned how to finish it
6. They created long-term and short-term objectives
7. Celebrate the little victories (as we do in Leinn)
8. Constant changing 

So we have here a process that we can try if one day we face something like an iceberg melting, at least, that’s the checklist that I found in the narrative. 

Lesson

We have to be aware that everything changes, the same water does not flow in the same river twice as Heraclito says. There is nothing real stable in our lives nor Leinn. We have to learn how to face uncertainty and free us of the fear of change. We forget how the Homo sapiens sapiens arrives at this time of the story: adaptation. Darwin assured us that the species that are alive today are not the strongest ones nor the most intelligent but those who know how to adapt fast enough. 

So, first we have to learn that change is everywhere and, of course, to not be afraid. And then? What do we do? Change is going to happen but what do we do with the change? We are not viewers of this, we are participants of this. We are actors that make the change happen and adapt to it. We have all the freedom in this world. We can just sit and wait for what happens and insist that we do not adapt, that we try to stop the change or we can find alternatives. But all of these are decisions. There is no inaction. We are slaves of our freedom, everything that we do or not do in these kinds of situations are on our shoulders as responsibilities. 

So, as Leinner I really appreciate the meaningful message of do not be scared of change and when we face it we have to prioritize the community rather than being efficient. It could be hard because having conversations with the community about something that seems so logical for you is tiring but if they can not understand the reasons and if you do not pay attention enough to the community it could be a mess and they could be reluctant to change.