Joseph Michelli - When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market

|I|
Creating a Vision of Power and Possibility: Seeing the Big Fish

|II|
Achieving Individual Commitment and Team Alignment: Rowing as One

|III|
Focusing on the Process for Achieving Success: Its Not about the Fish, Its about the Experience of Fishing

|IV|
Changing Yourself First: Breaking Free from the Net

|V|
Choosing Powerful Conversations: Removing the Hook

|VI|
Making a Difference by Listening Intently: Hush, or the Fish Wont Bite

|VII|
Coaching for Greatness: From Minnows to Whales

|VIII|
Turning Workplace Challenges into Breakthroughs: Unsnagging the Line

|IX|
Taking a Stand: Finding Your Fish Worth Catching

FOR TWENTY YEARS, I WORKED HARD to make my businessa small fish stand in Seattles Pike Place Marketsuccessful. During much of that time, I didnt take vacations and was on the job twelve hours a day, six days a week. Like many small businesses, my company wasnt a huge success. My hard work and that of my employees resulted in a decent lifestyle for all of us, but I wanted something more for the Pike Place Fish Market. I considered expanding my business.

Around 1986, I decided to venture into the wholesale side of the fish industry. It was a huge mistake! I delegated responsibility for our wholesale operation to a person who put me seriously in debt in just nine months. My business and I were in trouble. Unless I could get $50,000 quickly, the Pike Place Fish Market would face bankruptcy. Because I hadnt borrowed money from banks in the past, I couldnt get a loan when I needed it. Fortunately, my mother-in-law came through with the money. I pulled my team together and told them, Its either sink or swim. We decided to swim, and we stabilized financially.

Around the same time a friend, Karen Bergquist, called and suggested that I talk with her husband, Jim, a business consultant, about Pike Place Fishs future. When I met with Jim, he told me he had a unique approach to consulting. Unfortunately, his fee was more than I paid a full-time employee who worked sixty hours a week. I told him, You must be crazy! There was no way I was going to pay someone that much to consult with us. Jim told me that if I tried his services for three months and he didnt produce what I invested in him, I should fire him. So I took a chance that he could help me create a more profitable future. He and his company have now been working with us for seventeen years.

Jim brought our staff together in crew meetings every other week to empower us. It was at one of these meetings that he helped us appreciate that we were thinking too small and that we needed a bigger purposea bigger game. One crewmembers response to that challenge was, Lets become world famous! World famous? Us? What does that mean? It seemed like a ridiculous idea. We were a 1,200-square-foot fish stand, just recovering from financial disaster. The only way I was going to go for being world famous was if it didnt cost me any money. We had no money to market ourselves; how could we be world famous? But rather than giving up on the idea, we decided to explore it further.

We didnt want to just take some standard notion of world fame. We needed to create the concept for us, in our workplace. When we first began to brainstorm, some amusing ideas surfaced. One fishmonger imagined that if we were world famous, we would all be coming down to the market in business suits, driving our Mercedeses. We would purchase a pier and operate the fish market from an office building.

But as we continued to contemplate the meaning of world fame as it related to us, it became clear that we intended to make a world famous difference by having a positive impact upon each person we encountered. To this day, we continue to define world fame as situations come up at the market. What is it to be world famous, for example, when things are slow at work? What does world famous look like when customers treat us badly?

As we discussed world fame, we realized that by working together, we could affect each others lives and the lives of our customers in a world famous way. We could achieve limitless results. Individually, we committed to create World Famous Pike Place Fish. It was a vision that gave us a powerful purpose for doing business. What initially seemed like an outrageous idea caught fire with the team. As Jim puts it, We created World Famous Pike Place Fish, and what it meant to be world famous was to make a difference for the people we touched. The purpose wasnt just to be famous. It was to be famous for being great with peoplefor freejust for the fun of it. And thats what happened.

With the declaration of World Famous Pike Place Fish, we evolved from a company that existed totally to sell fish to one that was interested in extraordinary service to our customers and our world. Selling fish was no longer the main reason we were open for business. Dont get me wrongwhen you visit the market, we will provide you the highest-quality fish and in turn take your money and put it in our cash register. Like all small businesses, an important part of our game is to make a profit. But making a profit is not enough. If a manager or owner is interested only in making a profit, then the lens through which he looks at his employees allows him to see only their ability to help him achieve financial success. When the game goes beyond profit to a greater purpose, workers are valued for their ability to create profit and serve others. As a result of our vision, the fish are now only a means to an end. Selling fish gives us an opportunity to make a world famous differenceand for that I am grateful.

If you want to build a ship, dont drum up the men to gather up the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

ANTOINE DE
SAINT-EXUPRY

Our vision is large enough and clear enough that it guides our staff in day-to-day operations. It generates a more meaningful reality for all of our employees. They are not simply fish salespeople; they are agents of change. Anyone can sell fishfew can make a world famous difference while doing it.

I can attest to the power of a purposeful visionbreakthroughs happen. Looking past the everyday demands of the bottom line, we continually seek to live our vision, World Famous Pike Place Fish. For us, the vision is the bottom line. If World Famous Pike Place Fish is present through us, all else falls into place.

It is very clear to me what World Famous Pike Place Fish means. From my perspective as the owner, I will:

1. Make a world famous difference in the lives of everyone who comes into my business;

2. Empower the creative people I work with so that they can make a world famous difference for each other, the customers, the community, and beyond; and

3. Demonstrate what is possible when you empower your employees. (Originally, my desire was to demonstrate this only to small-business owners. These days, I also find myself sharing these possibilities with executives in large corporations, as well as with organizations and community leaders.)