Summary: Our Iceberg Is Melting by John Kotter

Kotter’s 8-Step approach to transformational change begins with creating a sense of urgency. Creating a sense of urgency involves examining markets and competitive realities and identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities (Weiss, 2012). At its peak, Microsoft was at the forefront of computing technology. This position led to “overnight millionaires” that eventually skewed the perspective of the once eager employees. Long time executives ended up letting new employees handle everything while they waited for the next windfall. Instead of continuing a momentum of innovation, they [Microsoft] had allowed themselves to reach a plateau while the competition past them by. Innovation gave way to employees

Step 2 is forming a powerful guiding coalition. Leadership will have to be on board and on the same page in regards to the change. Kotter and Cohen reveal the core problems people face when leading change. Their main findings are that the central issue concerns not structure or systems but behavior and how to alter it (Farris, 2008). The success of the changes will depend on the ability of the managers to show their commitment to change and motivate the employees to do the same. Without any process to track the implementation, the change can also fail.

Another researcher, John P. Kotter (2006) outlined the “Eight Steps to Transforming Your Organization,” which are:

This course has taught me a lot in terms of initiating and managing change, and Kotter’s eight-stage process is a very useful approach when it comes to making changes within an organization. This course has helped me strengthen my skills in overcoming barriers that tend to get and make it difficult to

Managing Change: The Art of Balancing“ by Jeanie Daniel Duck [1] came out in the Harvard Business Review in November 1993. It is an influential article, one that has been cited 437 times until date. Duck draws upon her years of experience as a Vice President in the Chicago Office of the Boston Consulting Group and of running her own consulting firm that focused on the emotional and behavioral impact of change on corporate performance. She can be safely called both, a management consultant as well as an organization development consultant. Presented below is a summary and key points of the article supplemented by examples, views and facts gleaned from other sources as well.

Change is a process that affects individuals and their environments. Some people choose to embrace change, while others resist it. “Macbeth”; the song “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and the episode of the Twilight Zone, “A Stop at Willoughby” all successfully convey the notion of change and demonstrate how individuals and societies can embrace or resist change.

Organizations must respond to their internal and external environment. Therefore, organizational success heavily relies on leaderships ability to manage change. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle to effectively lead change initiatives. In fact, Ashkenas (2013, para. 1) reported 60 – 70% of organizational change initiatives fail to meet their objectives.

The book The Heart of Change shows the practical side of the theories that are taught in the course textbook. It presents stories of successes and failures based in the application of concepts discussed in Organizational Behavior and Management and in class. Although we talked about several different concepts the ones that are evident in the examples in The Heart Of Change are the more progressive and individual centered approaches. The leadership characteristics that are important to successful change in an organization are those that are espoused in the transformational theory of management. It makes sense that ideals in line with the transformational management theory

Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.

The purpose of this book is to make us see that nearly all-operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths and that changes do not happen from one day to another by a miracle, the change from good to great is the result of a successful plan who

Implementing Organizational Change: Theory into Practice, Third Edition, by Bert Spector. Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education Inc.

To survive long term in competitive world, profit or non-profit organisations have required change according to the change business environment such as globalisation, technological changes and uncertain events. There are several models developed to manage and lead the change. These models are Lewin’s change model, Kotter’s 8-step model and action research. With the support of management I would like to follow kotter’s 8-step model to manage and lead to change in the organisation. By following the steps of these models

John Kotter, the author of the well known book “Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions “, taught for more than thirty years at Harvard Business School. Kotter could be considered an expert in the field of business with his many years of experience. After retiring from teaching, he then founded Kotter International and has spent his time assisting others in the area of implementing changes. He, like many others before him, observed the challenges that many businesses, organizations, and other institutions faced when trying to make changes. Over the years he observed that changes are not easily implemented or accepted because people in

In the review of the book, “Making Change Work: Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change,” I decided to summarize the major steps the book establishes. It discusses how to begin the change process by understanding your need for change, to the final step of the change process where an organization needs to implement changes. After summarizing the steps, I am going to show how the book relates to the textbook, Organizational Change: An Action-Oriented Toolkit, as well as giving a managerial implication.

In Our Iceberg Is Melting, Kotter's means 5-Empowering Others to Act, and 6-Produce Short-Term Wins are exhibited in a base up movement, particularly while considering Step 5 – Empowering Others to Act. When Louis (Head Penguin) acknowledged there was legitimacy to Fred's worries about their ice sheet home, he started the procedures of enabling others by his movement of trust in the activities exhibited by Alice and Buddy. Mate shows his comprehension of "youth control" to realize change by enabling the individuals who did not have the immediate energy to achieve change. In building up the arrangement, Buddy's significant part in the arrangement was to converse with the kindergarten instructor. This prompted the kindergarten educator to tell the understudies stories of courageous activity to help other people under troublesome and evolving conditions (Kotter and Rathgeber, 2006, p.94). This without a doubt drove the adolescent to consider ways they could effectuate change, which Alice later found when she experienced kindergarten understudy Sally Ann. Alice strengthened the seeds of progress that had been planted by Buddy's underlying discussion with the kindergarten educator, the kindergarten instructor's courageous stories sustained the planted seed, and Sally Ann's cooperation with Alice showed the growing of strengthening. These previously mentioned activities set the establishment for Stage 6-Produce Short-Term Wins when the scouts chosen to strike out and find