The FISH! Philosophy

Stephen Lundin, creator of the Fish! Philosophy

In my late teens and early 20s I worked at Camp Courage, a summer camp for children with severe physical challenges. As National Marketing Director, Presidential Exchange Fellow, Executive VP of Consulting, and Business School Dean, I visited hundreds of work settings, but Camp Courage remained number one in terms of energy, fun and simple joy. Some of the places I visited could only be described as toxic energy dumps. I began to wonder if there was something about modern organisations that makes a high-quality work life unattainable. I began searching for an image to help me understand what was possible at work.

The Market

After finishing a film shoot on Whidby Island, my colleague and fellow filmmaker, John Christensen, decided to see the sights of downtown Seattle. So it was as a tourist that he encountered the most wholehearted and energetic workplace he had ever experienced: The World Famous Pike Place Fish Market. Two best-selling films and two best-selling books (titled Fish! of course) later, we have come to realise how deeply the work world longed for an image of a place where fun, joy, energy, productivity and incredible teamwork drive out stress, boredom, toxic energy and burnout.

The Fish! Philosophy

When we entered the fish market, we tried to capture on film what the fishmongers did naturally. Two films later we had an exciting formula that would allow any team to create the incredible atmosphere we discovered in Seattle. We call it the Fish! Philosophy. and the following are the four guiding principles.

Play

The fishmongers of Pike Place Fish Market are known around the world for throwing and catching large slippery fish, to the delight of their customers. It is one of the many ways they play.

You and I might do serious work and we take that work seriously, but we can choose not to take ourselves too seriously. The advanced team understands how to harness the power of fun to lighten the atmosphere and create an environment that nurtures innovation.

Make Their Day

On entering the market you could think you were just being entertained. Wrong. The fishmongers are dedicated to making your visit memorable, and they do that by finding ways of making the customer's day. You may find yourself catching a fish or being involved in a harmless practical joke.

Our work days are full of opportunities for making the day of our customers and our fellow team members; a small kindness or remembering a name; a word of support during difficult times. When you "make someone's day" you are focused on serving another. The advanced team has a bond that can be created only by serving customers and one another.

Be There

The fishmongers have discovered the power of focusing on one person and one thing at a time.

As David Whyte puts it in one of his stories, the antidote to burnout is not necessarily rest - it is wholeheartedness. It is the halfhearted things you do while juggling other things that wear you out. When advanced team members interact they are not just physically present, they are wholeheartedly present.

Choose Your Attitude

At the market there is a great deal of discussion about choice - a reminder of what the fishmongers have discovered: you choose your attitude. If you find yourself with an attitude you don't want, you can choose another.

Members of advanced teams understand and discuss the notion that each member has the power to choose his or her attitude, and that each is responsible for that choice.

Why not try some Fish! for a better life at work? Your team will thank you.

Visit To Pike Place Fish Market

On my first visit to Seattle in June 1997, my friends brought me to the Pike Place Market.

The Pike Place Fish Market is strategically located at the main entrance of the Seattle Public Market. The hand-written placards placed all over the stall, the "flying fish" antics of the fishmongers and the shoutfest gives the place a joyful, carnival atmosphere. They make dead fish come alive!

The seafood they sell here could also be found at other fish stalls in the market and elsewhere. Nothing spectacular about that. The stall is brightly lit and there is a wide variety of products, very neatly displayed though. Somehow this stall grabs your attention the moment you enter the market.

As you can see from this picture taken with the staff at the PPFM, they are friendly, gregarious and fun-loving. They will obligingly pose for pictures with anyone who visits the stall. They don't care if you don't buy anything from them after the photo shoot, and even offer you generous portions of their products for free tasting.

The place was "electrifying" not because of what they sell. Its because these guys treat the place as an 'entertainment center'. Every minute when the stall is open for business, its "showtime" and the team puts on their best performance to entertain, make friends and bring laughter to the spectators.

Unlike clowns in the circus, they do not just do funny things to make people laugh.

Its serious business selling fish, but the guys at Pike Place Fish Market do it in a fun way, to give the customers a totally "funky" experience. Not many business people, especially among conservative Asians, would be so bold as to invite their customers to join them in the fun while making a sale.

The "entertainment" factor is what makes Pike Place Fish Market an unforgettable place for visitors, I think.

It is indeed an ordinary business with an extraordinary workplace culture which makes it world famous.

What The Fish?

How did a quiet, unassuming little fish stand at No. 86, Pike Place, Seattle, USA became world famous?

It is not just the fish that make this place world famous.

There are hundreds of thousands of fish stalls all over the world which people visit everyday. But these fishmongers just go about their normal business as usual without any thought of seeking "world famous" status to attract customers to improve their business.

To find out what makes the Pike Place Fish Market special and unique, please read on.

The following articles are excerpts from its website at http://www.pikeplacefish.com

We are the Seattle fresh fish company that everyone talks about. Besides offering only the best quality, freshest seafood, our dedication to having fun and creating excitement while we work makes us "world famous."

John Yokoyama purchased Pike Place Fish in 1965. At that time, John was one of several employees of the quiet, unassuming little fish stand. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to sell the business, John’s employer offered him the opportunity to purchase Pike Place Fish. As a young man of 25, John was at first hesitant to buy the business. The monthly payments on his new 1965 Buick Riviera, however, were taking much of his $150.00 weekly pay. He decided he could do better on an owner’s salary. John purchased Pike Place Fish to help make his car payments - amazing how things turned out!

The first step for us at Pike Place Fish was to decide who we wanted to be. In the words of John Yokoyama:“In one of our early Pike Place Fish meetings with Jim (our coach from bizFutures), we began an inquiry into "Who do we want to be? We wanted to create a new future for ourselves. One of the young kids working for me said, “Hey! Let's be World Famous!” At first I thought, “World Famous…what a stupid thing to say!” But the more we talked about it, the more we all got excited about being World Famous. So we committed to it. We added “World Famous” to our logo and had it printed on our shipping boxes

Then, after a while, we asked ourselves, “What does this mean - being world famous?” And we created our own definition. For us it means going beyond just providing outstanding service to people. It means really being present with people and relating to them as human beings. You know, stepping outside the usual “we’re in business and you’re a customer” way of relating to people and intentionally being with them right now, in the present moment, person to person. We take all our attention off ourselves to be only with them…looking for ways to serve them. We’re out to discover how we can make their day. We’ve made a commitment to have our customers leave with the experience of having been served. They experience being known and appreciated whether they buy fish or not. And it’s not good enough just to want that - it takes an unrelenting commitment. We’ve made it our job to make sure that experience happens for every customer.” To us, being ‘World Famous’ is a way of being. You can’t manualize it. It gets created by each one of us, newly every time. It comes out differently for different people. It also depends on who the customer is…how they react. It’s about taking care of people. We’re always on the lookout for how we can make a difference in people’s lives.

Originally we wondered, ‘How are we going to become world famous? We don’t have any money to advertise!’ Jim told us we didn’t have to know how to become world famous. He told us that when you’re generating a powerful vision, the future just unfolds. He told us not to believe in it. We just had to be it. He pointed out that there’s a big difference between a belief about something and the actual thing itself. Muhammad Ali didn’t say, ‘I believe I am the greatest.’ He said, ‘I am the greatest.’ He was declaring himself. It’s the difference between believing in the idea of being great, versus being your commitment to being great right now. Jim said, ‘Your commitment to being world famous will naturally give you what to do.’ So, as individuals, each of us choose to aligned ourselves with the commitment and declared, ‘I Am World Famous Pike Place Fish.’ Jim was right. Once we declared our commitment, things really started happening.

People want to copy us - to do what we’re doing. We keep telling them, ‘Your success isn’t in doing what we do; it’s in discovering your own way. Don’t do what we do - we made it all up…do what inspires you…make it up! You just have to be (yourself…what inspires you). And it means commit yourself to who you say you are: act like it, think like it, look like it, feel like it, speak it…be it! You will create your own way by just being yourself, doing what inspires you. The secret to our secret lies in our commitment to being who we say we are.

JUST BE IT. Your challenge is to ‘just be’ who you want to be…for free…just because you said so.

Back in 1986 the owner, John Yokoyama, hired a business consultant from bizFutures Consulting to work with us for three months on improving our team. Twenty years later he’s still working with us. What he brought was an unusual kind of education that has empowered us to envision an amazing future and have it happen. It’s called bizFutures’ Technology of Being.™
Early on our bizFutures coach encouraged us to commit ourselves to becoming "world famous" and we have accomplished this - not by spending any money on advertising (we’ve never spent a dime), but by being truly great with people. We interact with people with a strong intention to make a difference for them. We want to give each person the experience of having been served and appreciated, whether they buy fish or not. We love them.

At the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market, we know that it’s possible for each of us as human beings to impact the way other people experience life. Through our work, we’re out to improve the quality of life for everyone. We are working inside the possibility of world peace and prosperity for all people. This is our commitment -that’s who we are - it’s what we do.

bizFutures has coached us in how to communicate effectively and how to operate from a powerful vision and a unique set of generating principles. Out of this our company culture has become a model for other organizations. Pike Place Fish is now used as a case study in business schools and universities. There are at least four books that have been published about Pike Place Fish, one an international best-seller. We are the subject of the best selling training videos and DVDs in the world. Our vision is to see companies all over the world make it their business to improve the quality of life for people everywhere as well as for our planet, and we want to make this way of operating available to as many organizations as possible.