Our Iceberg Is Melting By Holger Rathgeber And John Kotter

In Larry Lankton’s text, “Beyond the Boundaries” we gradually enter an unknown world that is frightening yet filled with immense beauty for miles. Due to the copper mining industry, a gradual increase of working class men and their families start to migrate to the unknown world with unsteady emotion, yet hope for a prosperous new life. In “Beyond the Boundaries”, Lankton takes us on a journey on how the “world below” transformed the upper peninsula into a functional and accepted new part of the world.

In Robert Cormier’s novel, We All Fall Down, is a young-adult thriller that explores the evil side of humanity through a number of corrupt characters. Cormier, to a large extent, accurately depicts manipulative and dishonest behaviour whilst also showing the evil lurking within the prominent characters of Harry Flowers, Buddy Walker and Mickey Stallings who showcase the dark side of humanity. Cormier explores this through Harry Flower’s manipulative actions that result in the suffering of others. Additionally, the constant dishonest behaviour is shown predominantly through the main protagonist of Buddy Walker, who deceives the one he loves. Cormier continues to depict the evil lurking in society through the theme of appearance

Foreword by Spenser Johnson: One the surface, the story of this book appears to be a fable that is relatively easy to grasp, but it does subtly impart an invaluable lesson on change. The book covers John Kotter’s Eight Steps to bring about successful organizational change and can be equally useful for a high-school student as it is for a CEO of a multi-national organization.

Kotter’s 8-Step approach to transformational change begins with creating a sense of urgency. Creating a sense of urgency involves examining markets and competitive realities and identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities (Weiss, 2012). At its peak, Microsoft was at the forefront of computing technology. This position led to “overnight millionaires” that eventually skewed the perspective of the once eager employees. Long time executives ended up letting new employees handle everything while they waited for the next windfall. Instead of continuing a momentum of innovation, they [Microsoft] had allowed themselves to reach a plateau while the competition past them by. Innovation gave way to employees

James McBride can tell you firsthand about man verse racial identity. Journalizing his experience in his New York Times Bestseller novel the Color of Water simply outlined his struggles of finding who he was. His upbringing included a black father and a Jewish white mother. His background made it hard for him to understand why his home was different than others on the street. Although McBride experience shows an older outtake of racial identity, some may say this still is a problem today. Offspring feels the need to pick a race in society to succeed in the generation and it may be the step to understands them more. Notice in the subtitle of the book "A black Men tribute to his white mother" he label himself as just black as if there was a barrier between his mother and himself because the so different. Today we need to not let racial identity become a big part of our lives.

Step 2 is forming a powerful guiding coalition. Leadership will have to be on board and on the same page in regards to the change. Kotter and Cohen reveal the core problems people face when leading change. Their main findings are that the central issue concerns not structure or systems but behavior and how to alter it (Farris, 2008). The success of the changes will depend on the ability of the managers to show their commitment to change and motivate the employees to do the same. Without any process to track the implementation, the change can also fail.

When people are treated unfairly or unjustly, how should they perceive it and how do they generally react to this? In The Color of Water by James McBride, prejudice shapes James and Ruth in many ways, James has different stories than Ruth, due to the fact that he lived in a different time period, which makes his scenario different from Ruth’s. Both faced adversity, and stood up for themselves and defended themselves in many different ways just to make sure that they could survive in society. Ruth had always taught her children to be independent. She comes from an interesting background, she was starving of love and affection as a child. Ruth has experienced a lot of grief in her life due to all of these bad events that occurred. Even growing up, her father had treated her unfairly by taking advantage of her sexually. This was definitely not a right thing to do, Ruth’s father was an abusive man who had a sex addiction. He was found to have an affair with another woman even though Mameh knew about it the entire time. Due to her rough past when practicing Judaism, she decided to practice Catholicism after marrying Andrew Dennis McBride. She felt as if she was a freer person, she gained a personal connection to the religion which was good because it helped for her to get her mind off of things. James is a very confused boy, being black and white. He’s unsure where he fits in when it comes to society. A personal connection that I have to

This course has taught me a lot in terms of initiating and managing change, and Kotter’s eight-stage process is a very useful approach when it comes to making changes within an organization. This course has helped me strengthen my skills in overcoming barriers that tend to get and make it difficult to

Reading the book, The Other Side of the River, by Alex Kotlowitz, the author writes about the relationship between two towns in Michigan, and the death of a young boy named Eric McGinnis. The two towns, Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, are called the “Twin Cities”, but are ironically not related in any way. St. Joseph is 95 percent white, while Benton Harbor is impoverished and is 92 percent black. Throughout the book Kotlowitz questions the residents from both towns and how they are affected by the environment around them. The author also starts with the climax on the first page of the book – the death of Eric, and uses this as an technique to tell the story of the disagreements between the two towns.

Women have often played an important role in advocating social justice. However, they have rarely been credited for their efforts and actions. Indeed, the research or narratives on social movements too often focus on male experiences. Yet, a gendered approach to social movements is crucial, because women’s experiences differ from men’s, as do their reasons for becoming involved with any type of activism, be it political or social. The movie Salt of the Earth by Michael Wilson (1954) illustrates those differences and emphasizes the importance of understanding the role played by individual and collective identity in political action. How does one’s social identity shape one’s involvement in political action? In this movie, women get involved in a strike; they become visible activists and no longer just the shadows of their husbands. Yet, their depiction in the movie presents them as essentially mothers and wives, inscribing their actions in the realm of domesticity. Thus, their actual agency remains in question.

The short story On The Bridge by Todd Strasser is about two boys, Adam and Seth, who are hanging out after school on a bridge that overlooks the highway. Seth was the character that demonstrated maturity towards the end of the story. He showed some examples of this when Adam got them into some trouble. For example, when Adam flicked his cigarette onto the windshield of a car below the bridge, the drivers came up behind them. “But suddenly he [Seth] noticed that all three guys were staring at him. He quickly looked at Adam and saw why. Adam was pointing at him.” It was this point where Seth started to question his friendship with Adam, because they had gotten into trouble because of Adam, and then he blamed it on Seth. After the men left, Seth

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “My Father as a Guitar” by Martin Espada, and “Digging” by Seamus Heaney are three poems that look into the past of the authors and dig up memories of the authors fathers. The poems contain similar conflicts, settings, and themes that are essential in helping the reader understand the heartfelt feelings the authors have for their fathers. With the authors of the three poems all living the gust of their life in the 1900’s, their biographical will be similar and easier to connect with each other.

We all know that why oceans are important for us and why we need to take actions towards the preservation and keeping our oceans clean from plastic. In article “Our oceans are turning into plastic… are we?” Susan Casey has tried to inform the general audience about the problems caused by plastic in oceans. Susan Casey has strong credentials for writings this article because she already has wrote many works about the oceans and marine life such as The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Furthermore she also worked in editorial tams of two movies Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm. So this shows that she is well experienced in writing works about oceans and marine life. Using her previous

This fable was a great way to promote the importance of a team and its functions. This book had many highlights throughout the context and I would highly recommend it to leaders of a corporation or of that of a team like setting. This book offered many great implications of the model and how to use it in many diverse settings when trying to build and manage successful teams.

In the review of the book, “Making Change Work: Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change,” I decided to summarize the major steps the book establishes. It discusses how to begin the change process by understanding your need for change, to the final step of the change process where an organization needs to implement changes. After summarizing the steps, I am going to show how the book relates to the textbook, Organizational Change: An Action-Oriented Toolkit, as well as giving a managerial implication.