Our icebergs are melting

A few observations on ‘Our Iceberg is melting’ versus ‘Collapse’

Jan Vernee (freetrader) 10/2009
 Kotter, J. & Rathgeber,H. (2005) - Our Iceberg is melting. Changing and
succeeding under any conditions.
 Diamond, J (2005) - Collapse. How societies choose to fail or survive.

John Kotter is a ‘leadership and change guru’ from Harvard Business School. Based
on numerous studies of organizations he formulated an eight step method for change
in an earlier book. In Our Iceberg is melting he illustrates this method by telling a
fable of a colony of penguins living on an iceberg that is melting. This creates a crisis
which they overcome by implicitly using Kotter’s method. According to the booklet, it
should be applicable for organizations and nations alike. Since in the fable his
method of change management is applicated to an entire society, one could even take
it as a political philosophy (I think).
In Collapse, Jared Diamond analysis several historic societies and the way they
collapsed or survived crises that had environmental aspects. Norse Greenland and
Easter Island being amongst the ones that failed, Japan and Tokipia that succeeded.
I started reading ‘Our Iceberg’ because of changes needed in the organization where I
work. But being on a self-appointed project about the causes and solutions to the
environmental crisis, I end up looking at it in a more sociological and politico-
philosophical way.

Method
The eight step method for ‘succeeding under any conditions’ as stated in ‘our iceberg’:
1. Set the stage
1.1. Create a sense of urgency
1.2. Pull together a guiding team
2. Decide what to do
2.1. Develop the change vision and strategy
3. Make it happen
3.1. Communicate for understanding and buy in
3.2. Empower others to act
3.3. Produce short term wins
3.4. Don’t let up
4. Make it stick
4.1. Create a new culture

Although the fable is a very charming story of mostly loveable and admirable
penguins, as is the way of methods, it can be used to achieve anything. From the
loftiest (rescue humanity) to the most devilish (organize the Endlösung): It is a
means that can be used to any end. In fact I can see some parallels with ‘methods’

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used by Jesus in creating a new religion, Buddhism striving towards Enlightenment,
Lenin and the Russian revolution.
I’d like to point out a number of characteristics of this / any method for change:
 Facts play no role; they are taken to be undisputed by the change team. They
have been established once and for all by the experts. This is a technocratic
aspect.
 Morality plays no role; this method as a method is about ‘succeeding under any
conditions’, not about fair play. This is a machiavellist aspect.
 Faith in social engineering, the manufacturability (Dutch: maakbaarheid) of
people, organizations and societies. How else can you claim to succeed under any
circumstances? This is a thoroughly modernist aspect.

Content
Although the method is ‘empty’, i.e. devoid of specific personal, cultural, or any other
context, the fable works with content that seems somehow to be an essential part of
what is happening. To name a few:
 A situation is constructed where everyone is forced to have the same overarching
interest: to survive the meltdown. In real-life organizations one can always look
for another job, and examples are known where managers earned a lot of money
while the ship sank.
 The ‘guiding team’ is headed by the leader of the penguin society and rather
surprisingly this happens to be a very benevolent, able and wise leader. This
enables the telling of a story where no real revolution has to take place; at the end
of the day the old guard mostly stays on the job.
 In real-life this can be quite problematic. It is here where Diamond is much more
critical of leadership. In a number of historic cases as well as in modern US, he
identifies an elite that sticks to its own privileges and ways of living, while letting
others take the damage. They protect themselves from the impact of the changes
for as long as possible, ‘thus buying themselves the privilege of being the last ones
to die’.
 In fact (according to Diamond) in most cases, it is the elite that get entangled in a
status competition amongst themselves, which is a big part of the problem. E.g.
on Easter Island this was competition about who could have his underlings built
the biggest statue. At some point it must have been clear to the leaders that this
was using up all the forest (gliders for the statues). But none of them could afford
to stop the insanity and having the smaller statue and thus having lesser status,
being a less powerful leader. On the short term status is more important than the
fate of the island on the long term.
 What to do with such leaders is a question that in real-life cannot be avoided. It
either leads to promoting them to harmless places or to revolution.
 Epistemology of the leaders vs. the masses. The first woman and the leader of the
community are persuaded by carefully presenting facts and theories and a lot of
discussion. Opposed to that the masses seem to be a lot more intelligent; they can
be persuaded by a few facts and a few sweeping rhetorical questions of a
charismatic leader. If it where a democracy, it would have been the old tension
between enlightenment democracy (where decisions are taken on rational grounds
that everybody understands) - and mass democracy (follow the leaders and the

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 slogans), the tension between democracy and leadership. In all its innocence the
story drives home this point: enlightenment democracy is an illusion, people are
too stupid, the situation too complex. We need ‘realpolitik’ if we are to be saved.
 A number of antagonistic forces are identified and neutralized in specific ways:
o Irrational fear mongering. Nono as an exemplary of all those people that
see any change and any venture into the unknown as highly dangerous
and surround is with the vision of extreme disasters. The professor is put
to use here. However, his constant arguing with Nono, is not the free and
open discussion of the Enlightenment, but functions as a basketball player
covering another: it merely prevents Nono from acting.
o People who are afraid to be left out in the new situation. The old
kindergarten teacher. Here behavior and feelings are seen as irrational.
She is coaxed towards a more compliant and optimistic behavior by the …
o Obsolete cultural habits. Old habits might be harmful in the new
circumstances. It is irrational to hang on to them. In the fable it is the
children that push their parents towards new behavior patterns.
o This is a point that Diamond confirms with historic material. E.g. The
Norse Greenlanders that stuck to their food patterns of eating flesh
instead of fish. Would they have started eating more fish, living more like
the Inuit, they might have survived. This also has to do with status: only
poor people eat fish. And no one wants to look poor.
 Point is, that in a method where the facts play no role, any resistance to the
change team has to be identified as ‘irrational’. The only question for the change
team is how to channelize the resistance, neutralize it. Luckily a lot of methods
are available these days. On the individual, the political as well as the mass-
media level. Among my personal favorites are the Broad Societal Discussion
(Brede Maatschappelijke Discussie) (nuclear energy is save), and the objective
scientific information campaign (genetically manipulated food is good for us).
 So I think the method should have one more explicit step under ‘make it happen’:
- Deal with antagonistic forces (in a ruthless way)
 Becoming nomads. Although in the method the cultural change could be in any
direction as the circumstances ask for, the fable is highly suggestive of one
specific change. On this meta level it says that circumstances are always
changing, so the best for everyone is to be nomads – if not in the immediate
physical sense, then in our minds. Always be prepared for changes, don’t cling to
cultural habits. We should no longer see a specific culture and its values as part
of our identities. As Marx already stated, ‘all that is solid melts into air’ (and he
was not speaking of an iceberg).

Our icebergs really are melting

Latest predications are that within ten years the North Pole will be free of ice in the
summer and free of ice around the year only ten years after that. Luckily for them,
penguins live on the South Pole.
The message of this story about the penguins seems clear to me. Don’t wait until
everyone understands / is willing to understand what is happening and what we
should do about it. We need a Leninist vanguard party that understands the objective
interests of humanity and organizes the saving of the world in a ruthless way. Any

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resistance to this vanguard party will be identified as coming from ‘class enemies’
and has to be neutralized. The vanguard party is allowed to do this, because it is
working for the good of mankind.
For this vanguard party to operate, democracy as it is does not have to be abolished;
it is enough that the vanguard party takes control of it. The only question that
remains is: who is going to organize the vanguard party, where are the charismatic
leaders that will take hold of the situation? I think at one time the people of the Club
of Rome where willing to do this.
To wit, this is if you believe in unconstrained social engineering, and have no doubt
about the facts. Personally I don’t doubt the facts, but I think the 20th century has
proved that an unconstrained believe in social engineering in all cases leads to
totalitarianism. So, probably it is either that or us falling from the earth in the next
century or so.

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Citations

Marx on melting
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal,
idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous “cash payment” ... for exploitation, veiled by religious and political
illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation ... Constant
revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is
solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with
sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
(Marx & Engels / The Communist Manifesto, cit. Wikipedia)

Machiavelli - means versus ends

He praised men for knowing what they wanted and knowing how to get it, and he blamed
them for not knowing what to do or not daring to do it; he scarcely ever passed judgments on
their ultimate purposes.
(John Plamenatz / Man and Society / Machiavelli)

Leninist vanguard party according to Georg Lukács

(1) It is this that demonstrates that the Leninist form of organization is inseparably connected
with the ability to foresee the approaching revolution. For only in this context is every
deviation from the right path fateful and disastrous for the proletariat;
(2) If events had to be delayed until the proletariat entered the decisive struggle united and
clear in its aims, there would never be a revolutionary situation.
(3) But the masses can only learn through action; …
(4) For the stringency of the demands made on party members is only a way of making clear
to the whole proletariat (…) where their true interests lie, and of making them conscious of
the true basis of their hitherto unconscious actions, vague ideology and confused feelings.
(Georg Lukács - Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought)