Fish!

We have a new director who's just joined where I work. He's... searching for best description... 'energetically enthusiastic'. Anyway, his current initiative to improve the 'vibe' around the office is to get us all reading a book called "Fish!". He bought 12 copies, stuck a list of names in the front of each and passed them around the office. It got passed to me today.

Let's just say I have already read it twice through and summarised it in a mind map... Ok, ok, I'm an unbelievable nerd! But it has really made me think.

The book is about having fun at work and using that to both "boost morale and improve results" based on the example of the Seattle Pike Place Fish Market. I'd heard about it before and added it to my list of 'stuff that could be interesting to read sometime' but never got around to it. It's a story of a (fictional) manager who gets put in charge of turning around an incredibly unmotivated poor-performing team with a really bad reputation throughout her organisation. She walks past the fish market one lunch time and gets talking to one the fishmongers who helps her out with advice... and then, of course, uses that advice to achieve fantastic results with her team and improve her personal life significantly as well.

I've been watching the books go around the office, waiting for my turn and noting how people are reacting to them. The unfortunate thing is that few people are as enthusiastic as I am. That's probably my one complaint about the book; the team in the story are immediately keen to change and to put effort in to bring it about, there's no mention of how to generate that desire in the first place. What if people (like some of my workmates) aren't all that keen on changing? Admittedly the team in the book is in a pretty extreme situation and we, in general, do rather well on the 'having fun at work' front so there's no huge shift required. On the other hand, I certainly found things in the book that I can apply to better serve both my clients and my workmates. Not only that, but to make me a little happier too :)

More fuss to happen at work I think once all of us have read the book. Another problem I can see is that it would be difficult for a manager to present most of these ideas without sounding cliched or silly. Hard to find a way around that one, except by getting the staff to read the book so they mock the book rather than you! *joking..* I'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess. I have to admit I'm looking forward to seeing where we go from here and keen to be involved.

Perhaps this is another example of me being young, naive and idealistic... I had a contractor say to me once "Oh, you're a new grad! I thought you were too enthusiastic". I thought it was pretty sad that people assume it's normal to lose your enthusiasm after you've been working for a while. I'd much rather be young and naive than old and bitter! Incidentally that's something else mentioned in the book - make sure you never stop learning and growing.

Apologies for the lack of detail in this post - I'm planning to go through each major point the book raises (there are four) in a seperate post, so watch this space!