The Book of the Week is “Our Iceberg is Melting, Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions” by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber, published in 2005.
SIDENOTE: Candice Bergen was the daughter of the world-famous ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen, whose dummy was named Charlie McCarthy. Born in May 1946, Bergen was just as angry about what the older generation was doing with her world as Millennials are today, with what their elders are doing.
“In six months, mine [Bergen’s parents, by 1968] had seen me go from socialite to socialist; had listened to my sermonizing them on American militarism, the massacres of the American Indian, their destruction of the ecosystem, their invention of plastics and their introduction to pesticides and preservatives.” Even so, Bergen realized she still had so much to learn, even though she had all of the advantages a child of a celebrity receives from birth onward.
Anyway, despite the unrealistic title-subhead (“… Under Any Conditions”), this fable provided a simple framework of actions to take in order to effect change on a system, whether it be overturning an oppressive situation, reversing the destruction of the environment, improving a healthcare system, or protecting everyone from cyber-attackers or other social ills.
The story started when one alert penguin informed others in his colony that their lives were endangered by an environmental threat. Other penguins helped him by convincing the community that there was a clear and present danger that needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.
The colony’s leaders formed a committee (whose members had diverse talents and skills but were still able to maintain civil discourse when they disagreed) to decide what to do. They propagandized early and often, and made everyone feel empowered by getting everyone to take action. They achieved a small victory to show the colony that the problem could be solved. Then they went at the problem whole hog, and didn’t let up– kept propagandizing and empowering to ensure that the major change stuck.
Read the book to learn of specific examples of how a group of people can learn to do the same. Of course, their experience won’t be so cut and dried as this penguin fable, as human beings and their problems are more complex, and there are always going to be some who get greedy and /or power-hungry, or angry and vengeful at those who do.