Monthly Archives: February 2020

Book Notes: Our Iceberg Is Melting

Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John P. Kotter and Holger Rathgeber,
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set the Stage

  • Create a sense of urgency – aid others see the importance for acing
  • Pull together the guiding team – build a team with leadership skills, credibility, communication, authority and analytical skills

Decide What to Do

  • Develop the change vision and strategy – clarify the future and how to get there

Make it Happen

  • Communicate for Understanding and Buy In – ensure that you get as much buy in as possible
  • Empower others to act – remove barriers to those who want to make the vision a reality
  • Produce short-term wins – create visible success as quick as possible
  • Don’t let up – press hard and fast after the initial wins.

Make it stick

  • Create a new culture – hold on to the new behaving and make them succeed until it is strong enough to replace the old traditions

Book Notes: The Fifth Discipline

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with everything the concepts are simple but their applications are where they add real value.

Systems thinking – humans are really bad at seeing the impact of cause and effect where the effect is separated from the cause by time. There are three elements – reinforcing feedback which are engines of growth, balancing feedback which acts to slow things down near a target and delay which makes the consequences occur gradually. An important part is that people are actors in the system, not bystanders.

BuildingĀ theĀ learningĀ organisation – to be able to have a learning organisation the first thing you need are individual learners. The way to achieve this is the pursuit of personal mastery through the tension built with individuals personal vision and striving towards it from their current position.

Mental Models – we all have our own model of the world which impact us constantly. These models our base on our personal experiences. The problem is that these can limit what we can achieve and how we can work with others.

Building shared vision – building a shared vision helps align mental models to the future. With having the same vision in everyone’s mind it is much easier to travel in the same direction. Very often people are told a vision but aligning on it is key.

Team learning – very often people learn things but that knowledge does not spread. This means that the team or organisation are destined to repeat the same problem again and again which wastes the teams energy and time. Building and sharing team learning improves the effectiveness of the organisation.