Almost everything I have read about FISH! has been positive – even on websites that aren’t about promoting FISH! So I was surprised to find a blog with at least two posts all about what a bad thing the FISH! philosophy is.
Kevin Carson’s objection seems to be that FISH! is marketed to, and enthusiastically used by, HR departments at large corporations, who hope to use it to get their workers to work harder and more enthusistically – without having to pay them more. I had certainly never thought of it that way before, and I had to stop and think about whether that might be a legitimate criticism.
I know from reading business books and magazines that some companies tend to go after the management fad-of-the-month. Rather than take a good hard look at how they do things and make fundamental changes, they try to find a quick fix using the latest buzzwords, a few seminars, and some feel-good motivational materials. Such companies probably do use FISH! as a cheap attempt to make their workers happy – or at least convince them that if they’re not happy it’s their own fault.
I am glad not to have worked for one of those companies. When I was younger, it was probably luck as much as anything else that I found work at good companies. At this point in life I consider finding a good company to work for more important than finding a good position. (That’s how I ended up in the position I now have, which I’m not happy with, but I’d rather have a job I’m not thrilled about at a good company than a theoretically wonderful position at a bad company.)
It’s not that the companies I have worked for do everything right. Far from it! And the longer I work for a company, the more I learn about its shortcomings. But each of them has been moving in the right direction, away from “do this because I said to” to “help us understand how to make this a better place for all of us.” And the FISH! philosophy, I think, is a valid part of doing that.
The company I worked for in Michigan (where I learned about FISH!) did a lot of fun things. I wish I could find the CD I kept with photos from there. There was the contest to decorate the production work areas (my favorite was the one that was made to look like Burger King, with a “menu” showing product choices, and a big box full of rolls of our product – which happened to be long and narrow – made to look like a box of French fries). There was the time each department put together a creative photo of all its people (my favorite was the one of the management team, dressed in black trenchcoats and sunglasses, against a Matrix-style black and green background).
Those weren’t efforts to make a lousy place to work feel more bearable. From the day of my first interview, I sensed a spirit of camaraderie and optimism, and I was very thankful that I got the job because that was a company I wanted to work for. When the economy went south in 2001 and the corporate office in Chicago required downsizing, morale did take quite a hit. I was laid off myself (and was happy to be able to get hired as a part-time bank teller). But when they offered to hire me back, fifteen months later, I jumped at the chance, even though I had just been offered a full-time job doing work I enjoyed closer to home (I admit, money did play a role, as the other job was for a non-profit).
The point is that the principles of FISH! make sense, even if a lot of companies push them for the wrong reason. Even at the best companies, there are jobs that aren’t much fun in and of themselves, and times when business is poor and everyone goes into cost-cutting mode. Even outside of work, it’s still true that you Choose your attitide (even if it’s by choosing to let circumstances rule how you feel) and you’ll be happier if you choose a positive one than a negative one.
And it’s true that there are ways to make even drudgery more like Play - but it takes a fair amount of creativity and the expenditure of a lot of energy. It’s the kind of energy that envigorates, though, rather than drains you. And I know that being focused on other people, to Make their day and Be present for them, leads a lot more satisfaction than thinking about just myself and what I get out of the whole deal.
If I were in management (which I don’t ever expect to be and have no ambition to be), I don’t know that I’d use the FISH! video or book or other materials. But I’d hope to lead – by example as much as by anything else – in making the principles of the FISH! philosophy an integral part of the workplace.
October 5, 2008 at 1:08 pm |
Thanks a lot for the link, Pauline.
I admit that the core of Fish! (make the best of what you can’t change), taken out of any power context, is valid.
The problem is that Fish! and its application were developed very much within a power context, and that its primary market is not individuals seeking an ethical philsophy, but corporate HR departments. And as such, like Who Moved My Cheese, it comes down very hard on the idea of change and what happens to us as things beyond our control, that we just have to have a good attitude about.
My own experiences of corporate America, both from the bottom of the pyramids in which I’ve worked and from following the news, is almost uniformly negative. Senior management strips corporations of assets, especially painstakingly acquired human capital, and guts their long-term productive capabilities, in order to game its own stock options and bonuses. Which means constant downsizing and speedups, and stagnant wages, and increasing internal authoritarianism and adversarial culture–coupled with executive salaries exploding by a couple orders of magnitude over the past 15 years or so.
Thanks again.