Oct. 22, 2009 - Our Iceberg is Melting

Our Iceberg is Melting is a business book written as a fable about a group of penguins who finds that their colony is in danger due to a melting iceberg. The penguins need to make a lifestyle change in order to save their lives.

The characters in the book resemble different personality types in the workforce. In fact, after reading another business book, I Hate People, I recognized some of these personalities; for example, the Nay Sayer or Stop Sign is NoNo, the penguin. The penguin characters all need to combine their talents as they work together, one step at a time, to embrace the change needed to survive.

Today's world is changing more rapidly than ever before and in this type of society we need to be flexible and more open to changing circumstances. And yet, I sometimes feel that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I don't believe that our underlying motives, desires and principles are any different than in the past but the tools and resources available to us have definitely advanced.

I'm not convinced that change for the sake of change is beneficial either. If something is working, does it necessarily need to be modified? At school, curriculum and teaching methods have changed drastically over the years but in a very cyclical fashion. Focussing on reading, writing and arithmetic was considered old-fashioned for a time. Now, EQAO testing involves exactly those subjects and therefore, with the need to improve school test scores, boards are giving more time to the "3 R's" once again. News reports about school boards experimenting with "all boys schools" is also reminiscent of days gone by.

However, students still learn in the same basic way. Bloom's taxonomy of skills from 1956 continues to be a reference in current professional development sessions for teachers. We value the arts - music, visual arts, drama - for a time, then remove it from the curriculum only to bring it back again. In short, "everything old is new again."

Although adjusting to change is a necessary part of our lives, reflection and analysis are necessary before jumping off the proverbial melting iceberg.