Sunday, February 14, 2016

Culture of John Kotter's Penguins

I read a book called Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter which it is a fable featuring with penguins. In particular, those penguins are living on an iceberg with a strong belief that “Our Iceberg will never melt” and there is a possible threat to those penguins observed by a common penguin called Fred. The whole fable is about how they went through to change that threat by applying eight step process of successful change:

Create a sense of urgency: In order to deal with stone-headed and conservative penguins to see what has happened on the ice berg and how urgent it was, Fred came up with the idea of using a model and presented to others with the help of Alice who firstly believed what Fred observed.
Pull together the guiding team: A team of five members was formed up by Louis, Head Penguin, in order to emphasize on urgency and find out solutions.
Develop the change vision and strategy: The team met with a seagull and thought of the alternative solution for the colony, however, it was totally a different life styles of penguins to become nomad colony as they did not used to so that it would be a big change for them.
Communicate for understanding and buy-In: Since the team had made up their minds for nomad colony solutions, it became a big step for them to make the colony realize as there were many penguins who still did not believe them. The team used creative ways  such as posters to communicate with those penguins.
Empower others to act: After communicating, they attempted to encourage others to be part of them and participate in reaching to the solution.
Produce Short-Term Wins: Then, they accomplished their short-term goal by getting participation from some penguins and it would lead to other left penguins to join with them.
Don't let up: When the colony had moved to other ice berg, they become not like they used to be living in one place for a long time as they would be always looking for better places for the colony.
Create a new culture: It became their new culture moving for better living conditions and they would like to keep doing so in future as well.

I feel like it is really a great exemplary to see through what an organization like and how to move to change an organization. It could be said that there is no main character in that fable, all the five members in the team are characters and they possess different potential and skills to lead to a change. It is also highlighted the possible supportive and opposing character which would both delay and push to a change. Anyway, the team does change the culture of the colony.

Could we assume that it is Culture Revolution? Culture Evolution? And what culture do the team change would it be Dominant culture? Or Subculture?


No comments:

Post a Comment