By Nurul Nasyrah
Edited by Siti Nur Najihah
Out of all the books that I’ve read now, this book would have the cutest storyline of all. The book titled, ‘Our Iceberg Is Melting’ by John Kotter, a business management professor from Harvard Business School. I even talked about this book in Dr Nora’s class, Stylistic, recently. My mom gave me this book and asked me to give it a try. The experience of reading this book is a total hit and far from a miss. It has totally opened my eyes to a lot of things, or maybe I’m just a fan of the dad’s jokes in the book. Probably because it demonstrates nicely how a community would act in certain circumstances of changes and how to cope with changes.
The story is very simple; it comes in the form of a fable. Yes, a fable! So just a quick rundown of the story, there’s this colony of penguins living on the iceberg for a very long time. A loyal resident, I would say. Fred, ‘the chosen penguin’, is distinct from the other big birds as he prefers to isolate himself and observe things around him. Our Fred has his own briefcase stuffed full of observations, ideas, and conclusions that keep increasingly disturbing. At one point, it starts to cry out. (Just to remind you again, this is a fable).
One day, Fred discovers that their iceberg is melting and it might break apart soon. This is surely not good news for the birds because a collapsed iceberg would lead to an unwanted disaster for them. And they only have two months at most. He feels the urge to inform the others, yet he is concerned about being discredited from the colony for being crazy; hence he decides to approach Alice, one of the leaders of the colony.
Fortunately, Fred manages to raise some attention from Alice. Fast forward, they established a group consisting of Fred, Alice, Louise, Professor and Buddy. This is the lively part of the book. The team is so colourful because each member is opposite yet complements each other wonderfully. Alice: A female, not a Karen, impossible to intimidate and practical. Louise: Strong leadership, patient and smart. Professor: Logical and well-read. Meanwhile, Buddy is boyishly handsome and definitely not an intellectual heavyweight.
As a team, they decided to listen to the thoughts of the residents, and here they thought that they might find the solution to this, but none. Till they spot a bird in the sky. A flying penguin? Nope. Fascinating, they thought, because a bird cannot fly forever, and it will still need a home. Not wasting any time, they chase after the bird (a seagull) and ask about it. The seagull explains to them that he is a scout and flies ahead of the clan, looking for their next home. A light bulb went off in their head, and that’s it. Nomadic life.
However, naturally, some will be against this idea because it is new to them, like NoNo, who always rejects youngsters’ ideas. No hate, but the NoNo character reminds me of those uncles from Parliament. Sure, they are rich with experiences, but sometimes they deny the rights of the younger generation. Lots of noise but no solutions. Up till here, you can already see the reason I love this book. It is well put in an accurate way how society would react badly when accepting new changes. But we forget that not every change is bad. At the end of the book, it shows how they slowly succeed in adapting to the new lifestyle.
Overall, I've lost count already of how many times I said this book is great. It teaches you to use early success to motivate and push yourself. But most importantly, do not wait for 100 percent for something or find an excuse. Leave your comfort circle and just do it. Doing things comes with a risk. It is impossible to have complete foresight and not have any margins for errors, my friends. But of course, we need to do some preparation beforehand. Remember the briefcase.
After all, I believe you should give it a try because your experience of reading is not the same as mine. If you’re looking for a self-enrichment kind of book, this is the one. Hopefully, you can hear my excited voice throughout this book review, and I wish the same for you.
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