FISH! STICKS Make Change Stick

An allegory about a thriving Japanese restaurant is used to show how organizational change can be sustained only when individual members connect with the organization's vision. The restaurant's owner is the teacher here, while a nearby hospital--suffering every kind of institutional malaise one can imagine--is the student as it struggles through familiar bureaucratic and human problems. People impatient with narratives might glaze over at this one; it's drawn out and overacted. But the lessons have value for managers trying to motivate their troops to pull in the same direction. In spite of its excesses and length, the story does support the principles it teaches and offers a good organizational lesson. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 03]