Our Iceberg Is Melting

The 20th anniversary edition of the bestselling business fable

By: John Kotter, Holger Rathgeber

In Our Iceberg is Melting a simple fable about penguins illustrates how to conquer change, with profound lessons for working and living in an ever-changing world.

This charming story about a penguin colony in Antarctica illustrates key truths about how we deal with the issue of change: handle the challenge well and you can prosper greatly; handle it poorly and you put yourself at risk. The penguins are living happily on their iceberg as they have done for many years. Then one curious penguin discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home – and pretty much no one listens to him.

The characters in this fable are like people we recognize, even ourselves. Their story is one of resistance to change and heroic action, confusion and insight, seemingly intractable obstacles and the most clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles. It is a story that is occuring in different forms around us today – but the penguins handle change a great deal better than most of us.

Based on John Kotter's pioneering work on how to make smart change happen faster and better, the lessons you can learn from this short and accessible audiobook will serve you well in your job, in your family and in your community. And these lessons are becoming ever more important as the world around us changes faster and faster.

This edition celebrates twenty years since the publication of this classic business fable with a new cover.

Critic reviews

Whether you work in a business or the business of life, everyone from CEOs to high school students can gain from what they take from this story (Spencer Johnson, M.D., author of Who Moved My Cheese?)

Companies should buy a copy for everyone from the CEO to the stock clerk (Michelle Archer)

I ordered and distributed sixty copies, evaluated its effect on our change effort, and then ordered five hundred more . . . This is a gem (Heidi King, US Department of Defense)

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)

With bright, colorful illustrations and large text, Our Iceberg Is Melting looks at first glance more like a children’s book than something a chief executive might read. But the book is attracting readers and creating a penguin movement in boardrooms around the world . . . It has served as a springboard for group discussions about corporate culture, group dynamics and the challenges of change