Technology+Leadership+Book+Summary

                        Summary: My selected leadership book was “Our Iceberg is Melting”, by John Kotter. It is a fable which takes places in a penguin colony on an iceberg. This easy read is very illustrative of many different challenges an organization faces when change is forced upon it. There are very typical characters illustrated which also exist in real organizations. Some of these characters will be key in implementing change and finding creative ways to do so. Some characters will be obstacles, and must be convinced to buy into the process, or defeated. In the story, a low-level penguin discovered a likely threat to the entire colony which must be addressed. He convinced a more politically-savvy administrator to go to the penguin leaders and convince them of threat. With persistence and drive, the tremendous resistance to change was overcome and the colony overcame the challenge, changed their way of life, and survived. Overview: The lessons from this book are not exclusively applicable to education or educational technology, but to any organization which must change successfully. In the end the author summarizes the essentials of successful change as: //1.// //Create a sense of urgency// //2.// //Pull together the guiding team// //3.// //Develop the change vision and strategy// //4.// //Communicate for understanding and buy-in// //5.// //Empower others to act// //6.// //Produce short-term wins// //7.// //Don’t let up// //8.// //Create a new culture.// (Kotter, & Rathgeber, 2005, p. 130) Three memorable characters in the book were Fred, Alice and NoNo, the head penguin Fred is a shy bird, introspective and studious, with a strong sense of duty. However, he is relentless in documenting the threat to the colony which he discovers, and in communicating it to others. He overcomes his lack of leadership experience and presentation skills by his persistence and drive to do the right thing. The character Fred first approaches to warn of the danger to the colony is Alice, a tough but reasonable administrator of the penguin colony. After producing the evidence, Fred was able to convince Alice, who understood the political difficulty of convincing the others in the Penguin Leadership council, much less the public. The major obstacle to the entire plan, were those most intransigent leaders, such as Nono, the stubborn naysayer on the council. He is totally uncomfortable with change, and would prefer to delay any decision indefinitely, while the issue is studied. His first priority is to remain in control of the situation and to have the final word. This is the main antagonist to the protagonist, Fred. The strategy employed by Fred and Alice to convince the colony that the iceberg was melting, and that relocation of the colony was necessary, was ultimately achieved by following the 8 steps to change quoted above from the book. These steps can be achieved by any organization, recognizing the need to consider political factors which need to be overcome. Since these political challenges also exist in education, and specifically educational technology, there are many lessons to be learned from this book. In my district, we are finding resistance to implementing education technology from Administration (primarily due to the cost and competition for funding) and from teachers, due to their lack of technical proficiency and confidence that they can implement something radically new into the classroom. Bibliography: Kotter, J, & Rathgeber, H. (2005). //Our iceberg is melting//. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.