Delivering the WOW: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success
Richard Fain
Fast Company Press (October 2025)

“To strive, to seek, to find…and not to yield!” Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses

Some of the most valuable business books — such as those that focus on how to accelerate personal growth and professional development — have been written by C-level corporate executives who speak from a wide and deep base of real-world experience.

For example, Alfred Sloan, Jack Welch, Andy Grove, and more recently, Barry Diller, Lew Frankfurt, and now Richard Fain, chairman of Royal Caribbean Group and author of Delivering the WOW. However different these CEOs and their business relationships may be in most respects, all of them stress the importance of a healthy workplace culture in order to achieve and then sustain organizational success.

To what does the title of this book refer?

Fain explains that delivering the WOW “is the central philosophy that prioritizes creating the extraordinary experiences that exceed expectations for guests and employees, serving as both a rallying cry and cultural touchstone.”

With only minor modification, most of the material in this book is relevant to almost all other businesses, whatever their size and nature may be. For example, these are among Royal Caribbean’s cultural drivers:

o Caressing the divine details
o Democratizing the process
o GOLD Anchor standards
o It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people

And these are among Royal Caribbean’s leadership principles:

o Clarity is crucial for alignment
o Good enough isn’t good enough
o Everyone gets their say; not everyone gets their way
o What gets measured gets better

Among its several strengths, the material in this book offers business wisdom that can be of incalculable value to C-level executives, yes, but also to all other workers at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Here’s an example with which I conclude this brief commentary:

“In the era of steam-powered ships, to make a ship go faster, the engineers would open the throttle to generate the maximum amount of steam pressure — full steam. Over time, full steam ahead came to be used to symbolize charging ahead with total commitment, momentum, and no looking back.”

Bon voyage!

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Delivering the WOW: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to stunning photographs located between Pages 136 and 137, to the set of “Key Takeaways” at the conclusion of each of the first nine of ten chapters, and, to the “Glosssary” (Pages 211-213). The production values of this book are outstanding and the content is even more valuable.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.