Fishcamp!
How We Use “Fish!” the
Video
“Did you know you can dance with that broom?”
my granddad asked. I was five years old and struggling. I
was cleaning the sidewalk in front of my dad’s auto
parts store with a push broom but I was sweeping
kitchen-broom style. He then showed me how to dance with
a push broom and went back into the shop. Ten minutes or
so later, he emerged to inspect my progress. Seeing that
his dancing lesson had taken hold he asked me if that
just wasn’t a lot more fun. My smile and nodding
head brought forward his real lesson to me: “When
you grow up, you should always try to find a job where
they pay you not to work.” My granddad’s
lesson popped into my head when I first saw the video
“Fish!” three years ago. Five minutes into it
and I knew I’d found a missing link to my
organizational development training activities. Because
the four simple concepts or principles presented by the
video can be found as vital connective tissue for
virtually any organizational effectiveness initiative,
I’ve sketched a “fishbone” chart to
offer a quick illustration of what I
mean.
- Play.
- Make their
day.
- Be
there.
- Choose your
attitude.
These can serve as an
effective springboard for a host of training and
strategic designs or interventions. A warning: While
these concepts encapsulate the success of Pike Place Fish
Market, if not used in the spirit of the concepts
themselves, the result may well be as foul as week-old
fish.
Fishcamp is born
Charthouse International, the producers of
“Fish!” asked a bunch of us early-adopter
consultants to help them expand on what they thought
would be a particularly successful way of introducing the
four “Fish!” concepts to an
organization.
The result, Fishcamp, is an event made up of a series of
interactive exercises designed to introduce participants
(campers) to the four concepts, which the video producers
extracted while editing their documentary about the Pike
Place Fish Market in Seattle. We were encouraged as
practitioners to adapt Fishcamp to fit our particular
practice and client needs.
Our version of Fishcamp varies from one to four days
depending upon the assessed and/or negotiated needs of
the organization. A one-day simply introduces the ideas
contained in the video and gets the participants started
on their own initiative without follow up by us. At the
other end of the spectrum we use Fishcamp as an approach
to organizational transformation. We use a four-day
Fishcamp, for example, as an intense introduction
to the principles of interest-based decision making for
labor and management negotiators who have realized that
their organization’s long-term success requires a
complete paradigm shift in how they do business
throughout the organization, not just at the bargaining
table. (For an elaboration on interest-based decision
making, please see my earlier articles in this
publication.) Combined with required follow-up sessions,
organization-wide trainings, and internal capacity
building to sustain the initiative, this four-day version
seems to have had lasting impact.
We think the multi-week or months-long training academies
for middle managers and supervisors could use the
Fishcamp concept as a skeleton upon which to hang their
entire curriculum.
Almost a
Fishcamp—“Fish!” the video can be
used to introduce executive, middle, and line staff in a
conventional bureaucratic organization to a more
interactive decision making model. Viewing the video
inevitably causes change-hungry employees of all stripes
to ask, “What do you do when you want to do
business differently, but your co-workers, supervisor(s),
or executive managers don’t?”
We establish the context for our answer to this question
by introducing a systemic rather than mechanical metaphor
of an organization. The four concepts presented in the
video serve to illustrate the base-level interactions
that enable an organization to thrive or not. We have
included a tree diagram, developed as part of a training
segment, to illustrate this metaphor:
- The fruit references the
outcomes realized.
- The leaves illustrate a
desirable working environment.
- The trunk/branches/twigs
illustrate the ubiquitous structural
tissue.
- The roots stand for the
basic principles or statements of “ought”
presented in every situation.
As
an aside—the beauty of the tree metaphor is that it
can be used to illustrate the realities of an open
system. It’s all quite quantum, don’t you
think?
In our longer versions of Fishcamp, we use this metaphor
as our nature hike with each component of the training
exploring a different aspect of the metaphor. By the time
that Fishcamp is concluded and the campers are packing
their duffle bags (a Fish memory aid) each has their own
graphic much like the one seen here. It takes all four
days to completely illustrate the
metaphor/graphic.
Smelly fish?
What’s the wrong way to use the “Fish!”
video? You walk into someone’s office and say,
“Here, watch this video. You need to change.”
Probably without describing it you already understand how
the video can be (is being) used as a weapon.
Usually without intending to do harm, an uninformed
supervisor or manager spots the video, borrows a copy
from HR or the training department, throws it in the VCR
at the first staff meeting they’ve had in six
months, and admonishes the troops to do things like they
do in the video, turns off the television, and ends the
meeting. Having their worst suspicions confirmed (again),
the employees continue to flee, soldier along,
maliciously comply, or sabotage. The supervisor,
continuing to rely upon fewer people skills than God gave
a goat, goes on certain that “I tried, but they are
hopeless.”
We’ve seen and heard about this version of how
people have used the “Fish!” video both from
the disappointed supervisors who’ve tried it and
employee victims who’ve experienced it.
I’ve no doubt that had my granddad simply scorned
and scolded my nascent efforts with the push broom, told
me how to do it, and marched off that I would not to this
day, 50 years later, enjoy dancing with a broom.
STEVE BARBER’S
resume confirms that perhaps without realizing it he
followed his granddad’s advice: bowling alley pin
setter, cowboy, firefighter, fruit picker, truck
driver, oil worker, auto mechanic, machinist, teaching
assistant, political campaigner and subterranean
politico, race car driver, executive, entrepreneur,
college instructor, pilot, wooden sailboat skipper, and
now a consultant and trainer. You can reach Steve and
his Barber and Gonzales colleagues (fellow camp
counselors) at www.paradigmpilgrim.com
.
February 2002 News for
a Change Homepage
