That's Not How We Do It Here!: A Story about How Organizations Rise and Fall--And Can Rise Again - Hardcover

by John Kotter (Author), Holger Rathgeber (Author)

What's the worst thing you can hear when you have a good idea at work?
"That's not how we do it here!"

In their iconic bestseller Our Iceberg Is Melting, John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber used a simple fable about penguins to explain the process of lead­ing people through major changes. Now, ten years later, they're back with another must-read story that will help any team or organization cope with their biggest challenges and turn them into exciting opportunities.

Once upon a time a clan of meerkats lived in the Kalahari, a region in southern Africa. After years of steady growth, a drought has sharply reduced the clan's resources, and deadly vulture attacks have increased. As things keep getting worse, the har­mony of the clan is shattered. The executive team quarrels about possible solutions, and sugges­tions from frontline workers face a soul-crushing response: "That's not how we do it here!"

So Nadia, a bright and adventurous meerkat, hits the road in search of new ideas to help her trou­bled clan. She discovers a much smaller group that operates very differently, with much more teamwork and agility. These meerkats have developed innova­tive solutions to find food and evade the vultures. But not everything in this small clan is as perfect as it seems at first.

Can Nadia figure out how to combine the best of both worlds--a large, disciplined, well-managed clan and a small, informal, inspiring clan--before it's too late?

This book distills Kotter's decades of experi­ence and award-winning research to reveal why organizations rise and fall, and how they can rise again in the face of adversity.

Author Biography

John Kotter, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, is often called the world's fore­most authority on leadership and change. His many previous books, including Leading Change and Our Iceberg Is Melting, have been translated into more than two hundred foreign-language editions and have been bestsellers around the world. He is a founder of Kotter International, a consulting firm that specializes in helping leaders transform their organizations.

Holger Rathgeber is the coauthor of Our Iceberg Is Melting, a former executive at a medical products firm, and a principal at Kotter International.