Our iceberg is melting: stories that are bigger than we are

Let’s face it: climate change is no myth.

Most of us would now agree that the dramatic disappearance of our icebergs over recent years is an early warning signal we simply cannot afford to ignore.  We therefore face a change management project, the likes of which none of us have ever seen before.

And the stakes are high.

In their book, Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions (Macmillan 2006), authors Kotter and Rathgeber helpfully bring these overlapping ideas of ‘climate change’ and ‘change management’ together in the form of a pleasant, yet thought-provoking, tale about a colony of penguins faced with the immediate impact of shrinking ice caps on their way of life.

This conversation could go in any number of directions, but here’s what it left me thinking:

Some stories are almost too much to handle.  Epic tales always demand more from us.  They are not just longer, but broader in scope and force us to focus on both the details and the wider socio-political and historical themes.  Whether at the cinema or simply curled up reading a book in a favorite chair, epic tales captivate our attention and draw us into worlds that are so far beyond the scope of our day-to-day, comparatively mundane, lives.  Go too far, though, and we simply cannot take it in – any more than most of us can handle thinking too long about Einstein’s theory of relativity and the prospect of parallel universes.  The danger of the tale commonly known as Climate Change is that it can often seem too epic and, critically, we can simply no longer find our place in the story. 

So we switch off, give up and toss the ‘book’ onto a dusty shelf to sit alongside our unread copies of War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov and The Collected Writings of Proust. 

We need to start telling this story in the first person.  Only when the ‘I’ returns to climate change do we stand a chance of getting involved and staying involved. 

Climate change: it’s all about me.

The story itself is the medium of effective change.  The case for climate change was all too clear to the Penguin authorities, but they needed to find a way of creating a sense of urgency and motivating the rest of the colony to change their way of life. 

So one of the Penguins creates a 97-slide powerpoint presentation, only to find that the only thing it encourages is sleep.

(I have a book on my desk that I am about to read, entitled Wake me up when the data is over.  I suspect that it is making the same point.)

So how does change happen?

Eventually, or so the story goes, they turn their efforts to another strategy: they just keep on telling stories to one another; narrating the future that they would like to inherit.

Too simple?  Maybe.  But as the world turns its attention to a meeting of global leaders in Copenhagen in the next few weeks, wouldn’t it be good if we were to come up with a story that was good enough for us all to live by?  And then just keep repeating it.

At the very least, it would surely conjure up some fascinating possibilities!

Climate change: it’s all about a story.

The role of education in this particular change management endeavour is critical.  Interestingly, Kotter and Rathgeber have a strong view on the role of education as they narrate the fate of this colony of Penguins.  They explain (and remember this is a fable) how one of the penguin Kindergarden teachers, in the early stages of the ‘crisis’, was found to be telling terrifying stories of impending disaster.

The critical importance of the teacher was clear to the Penguins.  They were smart enough to realize that, at least.  The problem was that she was telling the wrong kind of stories – stories that closed down options and induced a paralyzing fear, rather than tales of hope, empowerment and the vision of a different, better life.

Intuitively, I think most of us realize that education is key to fighting climate change.  But are we so clear on what stories we should be telling our children?

Stories like this one...

Climate change: it’s all about education.

Most of the business management books you will pick up and read will undoubtedly chart a course towards success.  This is one, however, that charts a course for survival and narrates a tale of truly epic proportions.  I would certainly recommend it as a deceptively easy read.