Fish Sticks

Citation

Paswan, A. (2005), "Fish Sticks", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 235-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760510605362

What has the neuro ward of a large hospital chain got to do with sushi restaurant? On the surface, nothing, but the authors use these two very divergent settings to drive home a few crucial points about initiating and sustaining change:

External energy is necessary at the beginning of any large‐scale change initiative. To implement a new vision, you must first have everyone's attention. But the external energy is only effective for the short term. Eventually, external energy must be replaced by natural energy in order for the change to stick (p. 1).

The minute a new way of working is initiated, the gravity pull of old ways begins. In the beginning, novelty can be an adequate source of energy. Over time a deeper and more sustainable source must be found (p. 17).

This book is written like a story and is easy to read. Absence of consulting mumbo‐jumbo and academic jargon is a refreshing change. However, this could also result in the book being perceived as too mundane, and the readers could be left with an incomplete feeling of “Is this all?” The book tries to address this by having summary paragraphs (like the ones above) at the beginning of each natural break. In order to fill the “is‐this‐all?” gap, the book also presents a set of dos and don'ts in the second half of the book. This is where I feel the book starts to sound very clichéd. In the second half, at places the book takes on a pontificating and stereotypical coach‐like tone, which is somewhat distracting. However, despite these minor problems, the book is worth reading for its handling of a very tough issue facing managers – how to sustain change after the initial stormy initiation of change.

The story revolves around Rhonda, who works at a large hospital. Her much‐admired boss Madeleine energizes the unit by introducing some very unorthodox and innovative ideas. This results in Madeleine getting promoted to initiate similar changes at other units, and Rhoda takes over the neuro ward after her boss leaves. However, after the initial euphoria of promotion, she quickly finds herself in an unenviable situation of trying to maintain the changes her boss initiated. Her coworkers were starting to get bored, lose interest, and were gravitating toward the old ways, thus countering the very thing that excited Rhonda in the first place. This is where she is introduced to the sushi chef and others working at the sushi restaurant.

Through a series of dialogues and interactions, Rhonda realizes that the sushi restaurant is very similar to her workplace in many ways, such as their chaotic and uncertain environment, constantly changing work demands, and the intangible nature of what they both have to offer to their customers. She realizes that the key to enhanced customer and stake‐holder satisfaction is creating the quality of experience through vision moments. These vision moments include critical as well as some not‐so‐critical events and activities which, by themselves, may not be very significant, but together they create a feeling of “Hmm, that was very thoughtful” among the customers.

She also realizes that this is not a one‐time thing. It must be reinvented, redefined, and recreated frequently. To do this, free and open dialogue among creators of quality experience is essential. Armed with this knowledge, Rhonda starts a series of initiatives that start the ball rolling, and she finds her colleagues reinventing and revitalizing the spirit of change initiated by her boss. The story then takes on an interesting twist, and Rhonda finds herself and her department saddled with a new boss, Ms Scallpell, who is not very enthusiastic about the external symbols and anchors her department was using to keep the rejuvenated spirit going. She felt it was distracting from the core of what a hospital nursing function is about – healing people. However, with time, through a series of skirmishes, misunderstandings, and soul searching, everyone at the neuro ward starts to reach a new understanding of what the vision moment means for each one of them. This is when Rhoda is exposed to the concept of coaching as a means of defining, creating, and living vision moments. The notion of coaching introduced here is:

Coaching is a gift we give to each other and to our vision to keep IT strong. Whether it is about the way we do our work or the way we work together, the feedback needs to flow in all directions. Coaching can't be an ego trip. We only do it for the vision. We coach IT (p. 80).

Just when things seem to be heading towards a fruitful resolution, the story takes a tragic turn, which results in Rhonda getting yanked out of her obsession with the neuro ward, Ms Scallpell reaching out, and her team members taking the spirit of change into their own hands. By the time Rhonda comes back, she is pleasantly surprised by the progress her department has made. Granted, what she finds after her return is not what she had left behind or what she thought she would end up with. Her department found their own path, albeit the vision was the same – creating the quality of experience to enhance patient healing and satisfaction:

… if you see your path laid out in front of you Step One, Step Two, Step Three, you only know one thing for sure: It's not your path. Your path is created in the moment of action. If you can see it laid out in front of you, it means you can be sure it is someone else's path. That's why you see it so clearly (p. 100).

Once guiding principles are understood, it is time for action. We think we need to find the one well‐worn trail that others have followed and that it will take us where we want to go. The truth is that we must blaze our own trail and all we will ever have as a compass is a set of commitments and our faith (p. 101).

This is precisely what Rhonda's department had done. They had blazed their own trail, while keeping the vision intact. So in the final analysis Rhonda did manage to get the change to stick within her department, but not in the way she had initially envisioned. It was the vision the group had collectively developed, internalized it, and took action based on their commitment.

This is a nice and easy book to read, and holds some important implications for change managers, especially for the stage after the changes have been initiated. Several key concepts have been introduced – vision, internalization, coaching, commitment, and taking action.