Stop Decorating the Fish: Which solutions to ignore and which problems really matter, Second Edition
Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag
The North River Press Publishing Corporation (January 2021)

How and why to focus on solving core problems while you can

This book has two Parts: the first is a business fable (more about that in a moment) and the second consists of seven mini-case studies, each of which examines one of seven “seductive” distractions. (Think of them as dry wells, dead ends, sink holes, quicksand, booby traps, false leads…you get the idea.) All of them delay and confuse if not prevent efforts to identify the right problem with the right solution.

It will come as no head-snapping revelation that, when there is a crisis, many (if not most) executives respond to its symptoms rather than to its root causes.

Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag make clever use of the business fable format when examining a crisis in in the town of Busyville. Public officials select “Bob from the Animal Reproductive Agency” to lead “an intreragency task force” to save Nordic fish, the town’s “primary revenue source.” Rather than spoil anyone’s fun, I will not say any more about the fable except that its narrative is witty as well as relevant.

Time Out. Years ago, I came upon some material from a source I have since forgotten. Described as wisdom from the Lakota tribe within the Sioux Nation, it makes fun of the judgment used by most management consultants (such as I) when solving a problem. In this instance, a C-level executive found himself astride a dead horse. What to do?

o Buy a stronger whip.
o Change riders.
o Threaten the horse with probation or even termination.
o Appoint a committee to study the horse.
o Visit other sites to see how others ride dead horses.
o Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.
o Re-classify the dead horse as “living impaired”.
o Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
o Harness several dead horses together to increase the horsepower.
o Mount multiple dead horses in hopes that one of them will spring to life.
o Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
o Conduct a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
o Declare that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
o Blame the media for the horse’s negative attitude.
o Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

I hope Cox and Ashlag will excuse this inclusion (compliments of the Lakota tribe), one that complements the insights and counsel that they provide by implication in the fable and then by explication throughout the mini-case studies.

The phrase “decorating fish” belongs in a cluster with “sweeping under the rug,” “rearranging its deck chairs after the Titanic hit the iceberg,” “looking at the world through rose-colored glasses,” and (from Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity) “doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results.”

Most (not all) crises announce their arrival with early-warning indicators that are frequently ignored, if noticed at all. Cox and Ashlag correctly stress the importance of being alert for them. I am again reminded of a passage in Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises when American expatriates are sharing memories. One says that he lost everything when his company went bankrupt. How did it happen? “Slowly and then suddenly.”

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations are involved in what Charles Darwin would characterize as “a process of natural selection.” Those who survive and thrive have leaders who adapt by solving the right problems with the right answers. Presumably Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag share my high regard for this observation by Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

Amen.