Learning From Fish

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Learning From Fish

Columns - Clinical Supervision

Written by David J. Powell, PhD

Tuesday, 08 February 2011 15:26

Fishmongering may be viewed as an odd business – hardly the most glamorous job one might have. When one enters the workplace, fishmonger would hardly seem high on the list of career ambitions. However, there is much addiction treatment centers can learn from fishmongering – notably, John Yokoyama’s World Famous Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. In When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace, Yokoyama and Joseph Mitchell write about the secrets of success in sharing a joyous atmosphere in a unique corporate culture with employees and customers. Yokoyama tells the story of how he transformed a small company on the verge of bankruptcy into a model of success. He designed a culture that leads to excellent customer service, legendary employee morale, and a fun, energized work place.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t 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-Exupery

So, what can addiction treatment supervisor learn from fishmongering? Here are Yokoyama’s secrets to transforming a workplace into a vibrant, exciting place to work.

Yokoyama made three pledges as the owner of the Pike Fish Market:

• “Make a world famous difference in the lives of everyone who comes into my business.”

• “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.”

• “Demonstrate what is possible when you empower your employees.”

If visioning is so important in selling fish, how much more important is it in counseling, in treatment, in helping people to transform their pain before they continue to transmit it onto themselves and others? Most addiction programs have mission and vision statements hanging on the walls, often left unread and dusty with lack of attention. At Pike Market, all personnel are expected to know the vision, to commit to it, and to live it out in their daily lives.

Further, Yokoyama sought to create a World Famous Fish Market, not just a good one, but a world famous one. Shouldn’t we see our agencies as having the potential to be world famous, providing the best possible services to our customers, making a difference in everyone’s lives, empowering all we touch, and changing the world for the good?

To achieve individual commitment and team alignment (to “row as one” in Yokoyama’s terms), all personnel needed to be committed to the vision stated above of the Pike Fish Market. He states that employees do not experience a sense of ownership of the vision when they are required to subscribe to it. Commitment to the common goal of making a difference in the lives of everyone they touched was a critical element in their success. Instead of teaching people the Pike Market’s vision, they are thrown into the workplace and expected to live it from the beginning. They celebrate people and find recruitment of personnel worries minimal. People come to work at the Fish Market because it is making a difference in the lives of employees and all they touch, even the fish. Employees are not “human resources,” to be motivated or persuaded into action. Fundamentally, Yokoyama sees people as creative beings. The employer’s role is simply to present employees an opportunity to grow and generate.

The motto at the market is: “You can come to work and affect the world for the better. You can matter in the lives of others. You can share a powerful vision with your team and create breakthrough success, and yes, you can do all that while throwing and selling fish.” Imagine what would be possible if counselors and supervisors viewed the people we serve with this same degree of passion and empowerment. If Yokoyama can enliven people who throw fish, why can’t we have this same energy in touching the lives of those in pain?

All new employees at the Fish Market are asked to examine if they wish to commit to the Market’s vision. Their success at work is completely dependent on their choices. People, when hired, enter a period of three months “pre-employment” when they receive constant feedback from other team members. After this three month period, prospective hires announce publically their decision to join the team by declaring their commitment to the Fish Market. This statement is made in the presence of all other crewmembers and is a rite of passage into the community.

There are certain expectations of all crewmembers:

• To listen and speak respectfully to each other, to customers, to the community;

• To create a safe listening environment;

• To focus on the process for achieving success; Yokoyama states that “it is not about the fish, it is about the experience of fishing;”

• To distinguish between doing and being through self-motivation, living out their commitments, asking themselves if they are “being” the vision, and having a sense of ownership for their work;

• To remove the hook by choosing powerful conversations at work;

“Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one is to blame.” This means getting rid of gossip, that destructive force that undermines other people in the workplace. “Even listening to gossip creates a hostile environment and severely limits a person’s ability to make a difference for coworkers.” – Erica Jong

• To create an environment for people to have great lives.

This business approach is about selling fish. What might happen if we applied this vision to the role of counseling? Envision the potential for a second:

• People would want to be counselors because they know they are making a difference in the lives of everyone they touch.

• Perhaps, we might reduce high rates of staff turnover and burnout if we kept the passion of the vision alive in all we do.

• Perhaps, patients too would be changed in greater ways due to the parallel process of changed counselors. What transforms people is transformed people. And love of work, self and others always transforms us.

• Supervision would become less punitive through hiring creative people and then turning them loose to do their job. I believe first rate supervisors hire first rate people, and then let them do their job and try to catch them doing something right. Second rate supervisors hire third rate people, and micromanage them.

We, as a field and as supervisors, can learn a lot from the World famous Pike Place Fish Market. If throwing and selling fish can be exciting, how exciting can it be to see people recover from addictions?

David J. Powell, PhD, President, International Center for Health Concerns, Inc., is an internationally recognized lecturer, trainer and author. David has played a significant role in the development and operations of the Oya Bahadir Yuksel Rehabilitation Center.

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