Fish! Philosophy 1

[Rhys666]

Has anyone had experience working within the IT branch, (or for an IT firm), of a company employing the fish! philosphy in the work environment?

What kind of 'activities'/'entertainments' were utilised?

How did the company employ the philosophy?

What effect did it have?

My employer, (FTSE 100 non IT, with in-house IT dept), are now showing the Fish! videos and leaving the changes to us, but are allowing us to embrace as much of/as little of this philosophy as we feel we should, (no more management dictates instructing us on how to enjoy the job! Hoorah!), but as I've only seen the vid.'s today was curious as to how this may have been utilised elsewhere...

For anyone curious as to what the hell I'm waffling on about check out

http://www.FishPhilosophy.com

It's interesting if nothing else...

Rhys
Thought out... Maybe,
Opinionated... Probably
But it is only an opinion!

 

[GreasySkillet]

We started to implement the FISH! idea and one of the big hits was the 'graffiti wall.' We hung old green bar on one wall and let people write/draw what they wanted, within professional limits. It was a hugh hit. Everyone had something on the wall.

Let me know if you think this will work.

CPG

 

[chiph]

At my last company, my manager required everyone to read the "Who Moved my Cheese" book. Obvious stuff, but coming as a dictate as it did, it didn't go over very well.

Like I've said before, hiring good people is *the* most important thing a boss can do. Making sure that they have the right skills is just the beginning - they need to have the right attitude as well - You don't want a negative whiney person to bring down everyone else.

Chip H.

 

[Twinmoon]

Please forgive my ignorience, but what is the "Fish!" policy?

 

[KenCunningham]

See the link in the first post.

 

[JeremyNYC]

The Fish Philosophy meeting I went to was the single most important insulting meeting I've ever sat through. No one in my office did a darn thing toward it and the whole thing was trashed.

I'm in NO way a do-nothing sort--I agressively seek out work to do. But I HATE corporate BS, and that's exactly what the fish thing is, in my eyes.

Might as well buy everyone a tee-shirt and expect them to work harder because of it.

Of course, that's just an opinion <g>.

Jeremy



==
Jeremy Wallace
AlphaBet City Dataworks

http://www.ABCDataworks.com

Affordable Development, Professionally Done

Please post in the appropriate forum with a descriptive subject; code and SQL, if referenced; and expected results. See thread181-473997 for more pointers.

 

[lionelhill]

Well, I visited the Fish site and it crashed my elderly copy of Netscape without even giving me the normal &quot;you would do better to view this in a more up-to-date browser&quot; warning. Indication of fish everyone-is-welcome policy?

So I went back and looked with up-to-date explorer, and nearly drowned in fishy enthusiasm spread over many colourful pages. I now know what it'll cost me to hire a fish video, but I still don't know what fish is about.

Also all the pictures were of Young happy people. Do older people not exist in the workplace, or are they just too miserable to photograph?

Improving the workplace is a jolly good idea, but the general problem with corporate improvement schemes is that they are often very exclusive (even though they usually make a point of saying they're not). Some otherwise happy, cooperative people find them gruesome and miserable. Even where a management has been good enough to say &quot;take part as much or as little as you want&quot;, there is often an underlying aura of &quot;..but of course only miserable spoilsports won't enjoy themselves.&quot;

Of course fish might be different (couldn't say from their website), but I'm deeply suspicious.

Work should be fun. People should communicate with each other. If it isn't, and they don't, then hiring a video is unlikely to change things.

 

[theoxyde]

As silly and unprofessional as their website looks, I would never give it a second thought -- that, and the obvious lack of information.

 

[lespaul]

At my previous employer, we would hold monthly international luncheons. People who had traveled would present a slide show/discussion of the country, we would have appropriate food, and also celebrate birthdays. For St. Patrick's Day we had a pitures of Ireland and corned beef & cabbage; Cinco de Mayo, we had pictures of Baja and Mexican food, we even had a Chinese luncheon! It was a nice change, we got to learn about our co-workers, other countries and food. Most people participated even with the $5 payment for lunch.

Leslie
landrews@metrocourt.state.nm.us

There are 10 types of people in the world -
those who understand binary
and
those who don't!

 

[JeremyNYC]

Leslie,

Yeah, that sounds great--it's organic, it's real, it's related to the people who are there, it's fun. The only potential problem I could imagine is if there was pressure to participate. Much better than these bogus notions of motivation put out on glossy paper. Cheers to whoever organized that.

Jeremy

==
Jeremy Wallace
AlphaBet City Dataworks

http://www.ABCDataworks.com

Professional Development for Clients Large and Small

Please post in the appropriate forum with a descriptive subject; code and SQL, if referenced; and expected results. See thread181-473997 for more pointers.

 

[lionelhill]

Yes, that sounds a very good one. So much depends on the attitudes of those organising and taking part. After all, if someone has special dietary requirements, or just knows they really hate spicy food, there's no earthly reason why they shouldn't come to a presentation about India (or wherever) and bring their own sandwiches... and still feel that they've taken part, and are part of the group.

I think it's key not to ask too much about why people do or don't do particular activities. After all, if the few dollars for the meal are someone's difference between a red and a black bank balance, they're not going to appreciate that information being dragged out of them. And if you don't pressurise people, most will enjoy a few less formal, relaxing moments at work. It's the obligation that creates resentment.

 

[lespaul]

all of our presenters were volunteers, no one was forced to attended and everyone was welcome whether they ate the provided meal or brought there own. Now this was a fairly small company (less than 50 employees), but it was a nice optional gathering with good food and good conversation.

Leslie

 

[MasterRacker]

Now I've seen it all. I think FISH stands for [red]F[/red]inger [red]I[/red]n [red]S[/red]inus [red]H[/red]ole.

This looks like another pie in the sky program that trys to create morale by decree. In other words, commanding everyone be happy makes them happy. The other thing these programs do is to try and teach common sense (which, for the most part, you're either born with or not). It's amazing to me how much market there is for this stuff. I guess it shouldn't be surprising at all though. Everyone is always looking for the quick fix that will magically solve everything with little or no effort on their own part.

It's an amazing hypocrisy that business schools teach aspiring managers (rightly so) that their own creativity applied to the one of a kind problems of their own unique business is what creates lasting success. But, faced with the real world, so many of these same visionaries flock to buy these programs, shell out a fortune to bring in some motivational speakers, launch with a huge fanfare then expect to be ruling the world in a month.

I know of a group that were huge believers in &quot;magic bullet&quot; solutions. They went through a half dozen kinds of [red]S[/red]pecial [red]H[/red]igh [red]I[/red]ntensity [red]T[/red]raining over the course of a few years.

The saddest thing about it all is how unnecessary it is. Common sense, treating the workforce with respect enough to explain management decisions, showing respect for something other than the short term stock price and treating everyone fairly is about all you need to create good morale and a world class organization. To a large degree these programs are demeaning to management by making them think there are simple, easy solutions and demeaning to staff by assuming they can't get fired up without resorting to rah-rah programs.

Most of these programs have some good ideas buried in with the chaff, but this FISH thing looks like an especially new age and unprofessional waste to me.


Jeff
If your mind is too open your brains will fall out...

 

[Mattyj]

We've recently 'rolled' out the FISH philosophy in our IT department.
Divided up the department (randomily) into the 4 ideals and then had a task to compete for a half day off. The task was to demonstrate(present) how we would implement our ideals into the department while taking into account the other 3.
It was fun, we were given 1 hour a week per person and 8 weeks to complete it. In the end all of us 'won', of course as everyones was brillant.
Overal I think about 60% of the department participated ...a bit disappointing. We now have to implement the presentation. Watch this space...

 

[theoxyde]

Heh...

http://www.despair.com/demotivation.html

 

[IntlBA]

Ok, I read the entire thread about Fish! and may get booo'd off the thread but we actually implemented Fish! in our IT department about 18 months ago.

Result: very mixed opinions.

We were stung with very bad morale problem due to the not having what MasterRacker says is 'common sense' - treating the workforce with respect and treating everyone fairly.

It was implemented using a team of 4 volunteer "Fish Mongers" who were assigned to plan something for a quarter of the year, iow 4 teams per year. One team setup the "You Made Someone's Day" award which put a huge hanging sign over a staff's cube for 3-months, the next team placed white boards up and periodically switched out topics on the white board. They started out like "what is your favorite X" and we had everyone putting their answer (along with their name) on the board. Every week or so the topic changes... this has been a huge success and is still going strong. We did a traveling award, whereas you could take the big stuff fish and place it on the desk of someone who did something good for you, they then passed it along to the next awardee. Our meeting room has glass walls and when we put up cling-on fish to initially promote the program the conference room was nicknamed the aquarium and many agreed with the posters in this thread that this is an extremely juvenile program and it made us look like a pre-school.

Other problems... you run out of ideas after a while and its harder for the teams to come up with quick, easy ideas. The teams are also starting to have their second go around being a Fish Monger, and feel that despite their efforts the real problem still isn't fixed.

We are ready for a new kick start... anyone?

 

[jaymaechtlen]

Web browsing restrictions keep me from viewing the fish site. (shows up as "shopping")
Step one (at this point) is to figure out what your "real problem" is. (are?)
Are there problems with percieved lack of respect and unfairness? Figure it out- maybe the 'fish' program can help you address it, or maybe not.
What do YOU think needs to be done?

 

[russellbcopeland]

It amazes me that some managers/companies seem to think that these moral boosting programs can work in the long term. If done right they can make people feel a little better for a short time but if the workload is too high, expected time put in is too high, salaries too low, bonuses lacking, and management full of micromanagers it won't work.

I experienced this at one point in a company when we had a big project that was running late and were all working many extra hours to catch it up. The company went and had their mandatory yearly meeting during this time which is supposed to be a bit of a moral boosting thing. the whole time sitting in the meeting all I could think of is that every hour in that meeting was an extra hour of my personal time that I had to put in to get my work done.

My point is that these programs are crap on to themselves. I do think that if conditions are already good at a company then moral boosting programs can be good. The company has to invest their time into these programs.. not impose additionally on the employees already limited time. Most of us do have lives and families outside of work.

 

[Rhys666]

Wow - is this thread still alive ?!?

Rhys

"Vampireware /n/,a project, capable of sucking the lifeblood out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless refuses to die."

"I see dead pixels!

 

[FearsomeFastFemale]

So Thys666, how did it go then ?