Fish! a Remarkable Way to Boost Your Morale

The book relates the story of Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and a mother of two young children. Mary Jane had been working since two years for a financial company, First Guarantee Financial, as a supervisor in the operations area. After the death of her husband she was offered to engineer a turnaround at her company´s troubled operations department, which her boss described it as the “toxic energy dump”. However, considering her difficult financial situation and being the only earning parent, she is forced to accept this pay rise along with the challenge of improving this division. At first the task seemed unthinkable taking into account the lack of motivation and energy present in the workers at the operations department. But an accidental rendezvous with Lonnie, a fishmonger at the “Pike Place Fish Market” teaches her 4 ingredients or strategies that every company, small or multinational company should apply.

The fist ingredient is to “choose your attitude”. “There is always a choice about the way you can do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself. We can choose the attitude we bring to our work.” This is one of the most important lessons that a strategist should take into account. He or she should bring a “pleasant”, “fun loving”, “energetic” attitude to work which can be transmitted to other workers, like this creating a good working environment.

The second ingredient is to “Play”. It is important to be serious at work but a little play relieves stress and helps create an environment that allows for creativity, motivation very good idea, which not helps relieve stress but also helps the workers to unit with each other. Being this very important because in the corporate world the workers (employees) have to work together to achieve the mission of the company and if they are not united, the company wouldn’t reach its objective.

The third lesson is to “make their day”. This teaching doesn’t only help us in