Stop Decorating the Fish

'Stop Decorating the Fish' by Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag, is an illustrated book depicting a business fable. It is also a reader’s guide on how to identify the right problem, set an appropriate objective to resolve it, and avoid seductive solutions that won’t make any impact while doing so. The authors use the book to creatively portray the many mistakes that they have made in their fields over the decades and hope to help improve public services and private enterprise through storytelling. 

The first half of this book walks its' readers through an untold success story featuring the prosperous fishing town of Busyville. The story highlights how the town overcame a major challenge, by saving the local fish population, and ultimately restored the town’s main source of revenue. It brings attention to problems (which to ignore and which require focus and attention), and solutions (how most solutions attack the wrong problem). It's meant to encourage readers to stop looking for the core problem in the wrong places, and to avoid distractions that only “decorate the fish”. 

The second half of the book starts with the “real story of decorating the fish and the Seductive 7”. It goes on to explain the fable, the common tactics that organizations use to respond to problems, and then goes into case study examples. Seductive solutions, otherwise known as the Seductive Seven, refer to those tactics. They are distractions - seductions - that can leave you unable to tell the difference between real progress, and the illusion of progress. They often promise an easy fix while the real problem isn’t quite as obvious. 

The Seductive Seven:

1. More Money

2. More Technology

3. More Reorganization

4. More training and communication

5. More data

6. More accountability and assigning blame

7. More strategic planning

These 7 actions are quite common, and used constantly in the workplace because they feel familiar, comfortable, rewarding, and even beneficial at times. From these actions solutions can emerge, but they are often not addressing the root issue and without the right strategy they won’t be marginally impactful. Basically, you can think of each of the Seductive Seven as a different ingredient in a recipe. However, with a flawed recipe, the quality of the ingredients doesn’t really matter. Over the years, as the authors experienced the tactics more and more, a vicious cycle emerged (also referred to as the river current or the core problem).

This vicious cycle, and the seductive seven, are then dissected further with multiple case study examples. The authors provide and explain the purpose and process of each different case study, six in total, while simultaneously highlighting each of the Seductive Seven tactics used. Then, at the end of each study, they provide a vicious cycle diagram (similar to the picture above) illustrating the core problem of the study, and how the organization should go about addressing it.

The Office of Process Improvement (OPI) here at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) recommends this quick read to anyone interested in learning how to identify core problems, seeing examples of common organizational problem-solving pitfalls, and gaining meaningful leaps in performance, in a fun and creative way! To read more about these case studies, the Seductive Seven, and how your organization can avoid the vicious cycle of “decorating the fish”, the book’s website contains further information and tools as well as a 5 minute audio/video version of the business fable (stopdecoratingthefish.com)!