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Our Iceberg Is Melting is a fable about a colony of penguins who realize that their home might be destroyed soon, and that they need to move the entire colony to a new iceberg. The fable teaches the necessary steps in making major changes to your company or your personal life.

In this guide, we’ll explore these topics in greater detail and present alternative theories or points of view; we’ll provide the kind of in-depth study that a short story like Our Iceberg Is Melting has to forego in favor of simplicity and clarity in its lessons.

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  • Adaptability. Your needs will change as your organization does. At first, you’ll need motivated and free-spirited people who can work well without strict guidelines. Then, as your changes solidify and become a permanent part of company culture, you’ll need people who can set down appropriate rules and abide by them.

    • You can do this either by recruiting people who are willing and able to change their approach as time goes on, or by recruiting people with the understanding that they may be replaced as the project and the organization evolve.

Step 3: Develop a Vision

The next problem the penguins ran into was the lack of a clear vision for the colony’s future. They knew that they needed to do something, but they didn’t yet know what they wanted to do. Therefore, their next step was to brainstorm solutions and pick the one that seemed most likely to work. In short, they needed a concrete plan before they started making any changes.

(Shortform note: The Leadership Challenge combines this step and the next (Spread the Word) into a single principle: Be Inspirational. In other words, both your vision and the way you communicate it are part of inspiring your colleagues to make the change that your organization needs.)

Decide on a Goal

The team of penguins started thinking about possible solutions to the expanding water inside the iceberg, and also asked other penguins in the colony for suggestions. However, none of the ideas they came up with were practical.

Eventually, a passing seagull landed on the iceberg, and Buddy and the Professor went to speak to it. They learned that the gull was a scout for a nomadic flock—the seagulls lived by constantly moving from one place to another, and this particular bird helped find places for the flock to go.

The visiting seagull gave the penguins an idea for a simple, practical solution: They would leave the iceberg.

Seeking wisdom from unfamiliar sources, as the penguins did by befriending the seagull, does more than just give you new ideas—it boosts your ability to think creatively and improves your mood as well.

In The Magic of Thinking Big, author and life strategist David J. Schwartz suggests finding friends and social groups with diverse backgrounds, religions, and political views. He describes such connections as “psychological sunshine”—both enlightening and enjoyable—and says that they’re part of building an ideal environment for yourself.

Step 4: Spread the Word

The next challenge for the team was getting the rest of the colony onboard with their plan. The penguins all knew that there was a problem (remember step 1), but now they had to agree to the team’s solution. In short, the team needed to spread the word.

Get People Talking

Louis’s first step in spreading the word about their new vision was to call all of the penguins together for an announcement.

After Louis got the penguins’ attention with a dramatic opening speech, Buddy stepped forward to share what the team had learned from the seagull and their vision for the future.

By the end of the presentation, about a third of the colony was enthusiastic about the team’s vision for the future, while roughly 10% were completely opposed to it. The rest ranged from open-minded to skeptical about the plan.

As far as Louis was concerned, that was an excellent outcome for their first presentation.

Ideas tend to spread through populations in a bell curve, sometimes known as the Idea Diffusion Curve.

The theory behind the Curve is that a small percentage of the population—the Innovators and the Early Adopters—should be the actual target of any marketing that you do, because they’ll be the ones to spread your new idea or product to everyone else through word of mouth and social media.

Therefore, having a third of the colony buying into their plan to migrate is a great start for the team. Presumably those penguins are the Innovators and Early Adopters; the ones who will (with a bit of help from the team) get the rest of the colony onboard.

Step 5: Make People Feel Important

Things had seemed to be going well for the penguins’ vision of a new, nomadic lifestyle, but unexpected problems started cropping up. The problems took a toll on the penguins’ energy and enthusiasm; many of them stopped attending meetings or working to get the colony ready. The plan, which had been going so well, now seemed doomed to fail.

As it turned out, the solution to almost all of the team’s problems was simply to make the other penguins feel involved.

For example, the colony’s schoolteacher had been telling her students horrific stories about penguins being eaten by whales or getting lost in the ocean. The team eventually discovered that she’d been doing so because she was afraid that she wouldn’t have a place in the colony after the move. The solution was to have Buddy talk to the teacher and reassure her that she’d still be needed in the new colony—if anything, she’d be even more important, as the young penguins tried to keep up with all the changes.

Once the schoolteacher felt important and empowered, she went on to solve the challenge of how to feed the scouts sent out to find a new home (they wouldn’t have time to hunt while scouting). In the process, she also made her students feel empowered. With the teacher’s guidance, the students put together a “Heroes Day celebration” in honor of the scouts, and charged each penguin two fish as the price of admission. Since most of the colony attended the celebration, they ended up with more than enough fish to feed all of the scouts.

In this section, the penguin colony displays what author and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls antifragility: becoming stronger after being damaged. The basis of antifragility is that people and (effective) systems overreact to hardship, and are thus better able to handle future hardships. Perhaps the simplest example is a weightlifter—he damages his muscles by lifting heavy objects, but once he recovers he’ll be able to lift even heavier ones.

In a similar fashion, once the colony recovered from its problem with the schoolteacher, it became better than it was before; the newly empowered teacher went on to solve their other major problem of feeding the scouts.

From this example, we can see how minor setbacks can lead you to major improvements. Therefore, don’t fear such setbacks or failures; instead, welcome them as chances to grow stronger.

Step 6: Don’t Get Complacent

The last issue the team had to overcome was planning for the future. They’d successfully moved the colony to a new iceberg, and the penguins were safe—for the moment. However, there was always a chance that this iceberg would eventually be threatened too, or simply that another iceberg might be even better than the one they’d found.

Therefore, instead of deciding that their jobs were done, the team took steps to make sure the colony was always ready to move again if needed.

Looking to the future and identifying potential threats is part of the commonly used SWOT analysis: Before making any major change at your company, evaluate its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Blockbuster Video is a prime example of the dangers of complacency and underestimating potential threats. In 2000, the video rental giant had a chance to buy Netflix for only $50 million. However, Blockbuster’s CEO was complacent—he thought that Netflix was a harmless novelty, rather than the future of the industry. He turned down the offer.

In 2010, just 10 years later, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy. They’d been forced out of the market by delivery and streaming services, most notably Netflix itself.

Never Stop Improving

Instead of just settling in on their new iceberg to continue life as usual, the penguins fully embraced their new, nomadic lifestyle—the scouts went out again and found an even bigger, better iceberg. The colony didn’t have nearly as much trouble moving a second time, because they’d grown used to change.

In the long run, the colony worked their new nomadic lifestyle into every aspect of their society. For example, the school started teaching scouting as a subject. Furthermore, the penguins decided that scouts should get extra fish as a sign of appreciation for their hard work—and, as a result, they had more volunteers than they knew what to do with.

However, as far as Louis was concerned, the single most remarkable change was how much the penguins had embraced the idea of change—they all understood that change was sometimes necessary, and they knew how to make it happen.

The lesson from this final section is simple: Your job isn’t done just because you accomplished your goal. You have two things left to do:

  • Make sure that the changes you’ve made are going to stick, like how the penguins reworked their society to include scouting education and incentives for future generations.

  • Be ready to undergo this whole process again.

The world is constantly changing; you must be ready to change along with it.

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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction

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Imprint: Portfolio / Penguin

The original edition of Our Iceberg Is Melting was published in 2006. The 10th anniversary edition—published in 2016—adds new illustrations, an updated afterword, and a Q&A from Kotter and Rathgeber. (This guide references the 2016 edition.)

The Book’s Context

Historical Context

The original edition of Our Iceberg Is Melting came out in 2006, around the time of the U.S. housing market crash and just before the Great Recession. It was a time of major changes in the economic world, so the lessons in this fable were especially important.

Intellectual Context

Our Iceberg Is Melting is a spiritual successor to Who Moved My Cheese, another animal-centric fable about making necessary changes. However, while Who Moved My Cheese? focused on making changes at the personal level (a mouse finding a new food source), Our Iceberg Is Melting expands those ideas to the organizational level (moving an entire penguin colony to a new location).

Who Moved My...

PDF Summary Step 1: Replace Complacency With Urgency

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Fred took his findings to Alice, one of the leaders of the penguin colony. Alice took Fred seriously, and arranged for him to present what he’d learned to the Leadership Council—including the Council head, a penguin named Louis.

Fred was grateful for the opportunity that Alice was giving him, but he knew that some of the other Council members would be harder to convince than she’d been. He considered what he knew about the penguins on the Council, and concluded that simply stating the facts wouldn’t be enough to win most of them over.

In order to make it clear why the penguins need to take action, the authors created a situation that was both extremely dangerous and easy to see: Namely, that the place the penguins lived was falling apart beneath their feet.

Unfortunately, problems in real life aren’t always so visible or so immediate—you might have trouble convincing others that there even is a problem. Creativity, Inc. offers some suggestions on how to make your coworkers see the need for change, including:

  • Discuss why you need to change (this is what Fred did in the penguin fable).

  • Examine your...

PDF Summary Step 2: Make a Team

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  • Infighting that results from the clashing egos of people who aren’t willing to prioritize the group’s needs.

The next step is trickier: Do you hire people with a lot of experience or less experienced people who are driven and may view problems from a fresh perspective? You need both:

  • At the beginning of a major change, prioritize hiring team members who are driven— you need them when the pace is fast and there’s a lot to get done.

  • After the dust has settled, you need a balance of both experienced members and less experienced members. Experienced members have likely guided organizations through change before and can competently direct growth; inexperienced members think outside the box and can keep the organization from settling into a rut.

Finally, you need people who can adapt over time to meet your team’s changing needs.

  • In the early days of a major project, you need people who can stay flexible and work within changing guidelines—or no guidelines.

  • As your project evolves and grows, you’ll naturally establish rules and best practices for your team. Therefore, you’ll need people who can accept those guidelines and work within them.

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PDF Summary Step 3: Develop a Vision

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Had the penguins remained stuck like those companies, they’d have stayed on the iceberg until it shattered, and the colony would have been wiped out.

The Vision

The visiting seagull gave the penguins an idea for a simple, practical solution: They would leave the iceberg.

The Professor wondered why nobody had thought of that as soon as they realized that the iceberg was in danger. Louis responded that it wasn’t so surprising—they’d only ever known life on the iceberg, so leaving would be completely outside of their experience. They’d needed inspiration from an outside source in order to think of it.

Seeking wisdom from unfamiliar sources, as the penguins did by befriending the seagull, does more than just give you new ideas—it boosts your ability to think creatively and improves your mood as well.

In The Magic of Thinking Big, author and life strategist David J. Schwartz suggests finding friends and social groups with diverse backgrounds, religions, and political views. He describes such connections as “psychological sunshine”—both enlightening and enjoyable—and says that they’re...

PDF Summary Step 4: Spread the Word

... </td> </tr>

  1. Use vivid imagery. Engage people’s imaginations with visual descriptions, metaphors, and symbolism.

</td> Fred’s bottle demonstration from Step 1 gave a clear picture of what could happen to their iceberg, and it’s an image that the team will repeatedly come back to as they spread the word about their plan. </tr>

  1. Harness people’s emotions. An emotional connection to your project won’t just boost people’s enthusiasm, it’ll keep the project fresh in their minds for a longer time.

</td> The team harnesses both the fear of what will happen if they don’t leave, and excitement about the opportunities that await them in their new home. </tr>

  1. Show excitement. Your teammates and employees won’t show energy if you don’t. Speak quickly (but clearly), and move around while you talk; within reason, of course.

</td> This step is a large part of why Buddy is the team’s people-penguin. He has a natural energy and enthusiasm that gets...

PDF Summary Step 5: Make People Feel Important

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  • Recognize individual accomplishments

    • It’s often tempting to give all of your employees the same rewards and incentives so that nobody feels left out. However, doing so tells your best employees that you don’t really value their hard work or their accomplishments. Therefore, it’s helpful to reward those people with something that your other employees don’t get. Even a small gesture, like an extra-long lunch break one day, goes a long way toward letting people know that you appreciate them.

The Problems

Things had seemed to be going well for the penguins’ vision of a new, nomadic lifestyle, but unexpected problems started cropping up.

For example, penguins need to eat a lot of fish to survive, and the scouts wouldn’t have time to find food while they were exploring. Also, some of the younger penguins had started having horrible nightmares about leaving the iceberg; Alice eventually learned that the kids’ teacher had been telling them horrific stories about killer whales attacking and eating penguins while they swam.

These issues and others took a toll on the penguins’ energy and enthusiasm. Many of them stopped attending meetings or working to get...

PDF Summary Step 6: Don’t Get Complacent

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The penguins had realized their vision.

Manage Your Fear Response

For people (and penguins), fear is a survival instinct—it’s hardwired into us because it saved our ancestors from deadly dangers. Even though most situations we face nowadays probably aren’t matters of life and death, the fear response doesn’t know that. That’s why we tend to jump to worst-case scenarios and blow our worries out of proportion; because we’re trying to protect ourselves from dangers that don’t exist anymore.

Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles suggests a two-step process to examine your fears, and recognize that they’re coming from you, rather than any external danger:

  • Write down your fear. Be sure to focus on what you’re afraid of doing, rather than just what you’re afraid of.

  • For example, instead of saying “I’m afraid of phone calls,” write “I’m afraid of talking on the phone.”

  • Reframe your fear. Complete the following sentence using the fear that you wrote down in step 1: I want to __, but I scare myself by imagining __._ The wording is important, because...

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