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Fish!
By Stephen
Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen
HarperBusiness, 2002 - 115 pages
FISH is written in a parable (short story
using fictional characters) format, reminiscent of the style
apparent in the classic, bestseller The One Minute Manager.
The goal of the FISH Philosophy is to learn how to
boost morale and improve operational results in a business
organization. As
the authors put it “Enclosed are the keys to creating an
innovative and accountable work environment where a playful,
attentive, and engaging attitude leads to more energy,
enthusiasm, productivity, and creativity.”
The four key points of the philosophy
are:
- Play
– have fun and create energy at home or at the office.
- Make
their day – how can you engage fellow employees,
customers and make each other’s day?
- Be
Present – How can you make sure you are fully available
and aware during conversations with people?
It is about create a greater sense of intimacy
between individuals.
- Choose
Your Attitude – Each day you choose how you are going to
act or which “side of the bed” you wake up on.
The choice is yours and, the way you act, affects
others.
In my opinion, this business parable,
like the rest of them, is great and horrible at the same time.
It is a great read for the following
reasons.
- It
is a quick read. I
read it in about 2 - 2.5 hours and I am a fairly slow
reader.
- The
book is able to illustrate one point extremely
effectively. For
example, in this book they show how workers attitudes can
impact a setting and how many of us don’t understand how
our attitude impacts our work setting and quality of life.
- These
are the kinds of books that employees will read as they
are 100-150 pages in length and easy to read so a massive
investment of time and energy isn’t required by
employees.
It is a poor book for the following
reasons:
1. The authors never give you ways to implement the
ideas. Once I was
done reading the book I was thinking, “WOW, this is great
stuff. Now how do
I implement it in my company and, more importantly, what will
it take for this to be successful.”
Which leads me to the next point…
2. While they illustrate certain key elements in
the book they neglect to mention that:
a. Employees must trust management.
b. Top managers must be fully committed and
“practice what they preach.”
c. Both of the above points are conveyed in the
story but the authors don’t tell you about the importance of
what academics term “social capital” in an organization.
My concluding thoughts:
This is a brief, simple, but elegant book that is an
eye opener for those of us who grew up with notions like:
"Work is serious, let's have no fooling around!" or
"Profit is 'the only' way to measure business
success." I
commend the authors on conveying this to readers.
HOWEVER, the cons outweigh the pros in this book.
Like I pointed out I really enjoyed reading the book
and thought it was pretty effective in showing how an
organization can completely turn around but, at the end of the
day no tools were presented to help the reader understand how
to implement the FISH philosophy.
If top managers don’t cooperate or “practice what
they preach” or understand why and how this philosophy works
it goes nowhere, just like most management programs designed
to attain all of the above mentioned goals of productivity,
energy, etc.
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