Fish! Sticks Summary
3 min read ⌚
A Remarkable Way to Adapt to Changing Times and Keep Your Work Fresh
“Fish! Sticks” explains how.
About Stephen C. Lundin, John Christensen, and Harry Paul
Stephen C. Lundin is a writer and a filmmaker and the head counselor of Fish! Camps.
John Christensen is interested in writing and filmmaking as well, and is the CEO of ChartHouse Learning.
Harry Paul is a bestselling author and a consulting partner with Ken Blanchard Companies.
“Fish! Sticks Summary”
Congratulations!
However, your job is not done.
Keeping the change in place is a real leadership challenge.
Sustaining it asks for using different leadership techniques than those you used when you initiated the change in the first place.
A corporate culture of innovation, asks for constant attention and nurturing.
So, what can you do to maintain the transformation?
Focus on your people and strive to inspire them and motivate them daily.
When you initiate a change, you use the external energy, which can only last for a short time.
In the process of maintaining the change, you need to use your employees’ natural, internal energy to sustain the process.
In order to be more practical and efficient, and know when it is time to act, you need to recognize the signs of a declining change.
Declining change manifests as a loss of energy and enthusiasm.
There are some basic principles that you can use in your workplace and go through this process:
Once you create a healthy working environment, find a way to maintain it.
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- Define each person’s part of the vision, otherwise known as IT.
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- Write the vision in a specific language, instead of an abstract one.
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- People find their IT through conversations, so communicate.
- In your conversations, discuss the relationship between each employee and the vision, that you wish to create.
If you do these conversations right, people will start to think about how they do what they do.
Through these conversations, you will also gain knowledge on how people perceive the vision. Moreover, do not forget that the commitment to change must be internalized as well.
After you go through a round of conversations, gather a team that will help sustain change.
For an organization to be healthy, it is imperative that this team be committed.
Key Lessons from “Fish! Sticks”
1. Phases to Get Everyone’s Commitment to the Vision
2. Find IT
3. Live and Coach the “IT”
Phases to Get Everyone’s Commitment to the Vision
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- Find IT
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- Live IT
- Coach IT
Find IT
You can find the IT by talking to the employees and helping them employ the company’s vision into their working life.
Finding the IT means that you find the way that each employee personalizes the vision of the company.
Live and Coach the “IT”
Finding the IT is, of course, just the beginning. You need to also live your IT by acting on the opportunities that present themselves to you.
Finally, coaching will make the vision last.
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“Fish! Sticks” Quotes
The minute a new way of work is initiated, the gravity pull of old ways begins. Click To Tweet In the beginning, novelty can be an adequate source of energy. Over time a deeper and more sustainable source must be found. Click To Tweet After you have been operational for a while, people lose some of their focus and it takes a different set of commitments and a different type of focus to keep things going. Click To Tweet Natural energy is released when we talk about things that are important to us. Click To Tweet The only way to find our IT inside the vision is to talk about work with coworkers. Click To Tweet
Emir is the Head of Marketing at 12min. In his spare time, he loves to meditate and play soccer.
