Fishy Business: How the Wisdom of the Angler Can Help You Succeed at Work

Business, American style, is often associated with war and sports games. Many managers routinely pepper their casual conversations and meetings with such phrases as we gotta hit one out of the park, take no prisoners, and be a team player. In Fishy Business: How the Wisdom of the Angler Can Help You Succeed at Work, James and Bill Ignizio offer angling advice that applies to business as well. Through colorful fishing adages accompanied by market-proven business analogies, readers will discover the winning link between fishing and business... Fishing-- Don't fish for pike like you would for bass Business-- Know your customer Fishing-- The confident angler needs no applause Business-- The motivated manager doesn't need an audience According to James and Bill Ignizio, fishing analogies, unlike the war-and-games approach to business, fit the real world, allowing readers to draw parallels between them and real-life situations. They reveal how fishing analogies are far superior to the present war-and-games approach because fishing is universally understood and does not focus solely on winning or losing. Fishing also does not diminish self-esteem. It encourages the development of patience and persistence. With fishing there is no loser. Life goes on whether people catch their limit, a single fish, or nothing at all. Short-term goals, and their undue stress, are replaced by a long-term perspective, and a sense of peace. Business should be more than forming arbitrary lists and computing cost benefits with little or no regard to the individuals involved. Fishy Business espouses real thinking from which comes real progress.

Brothers James and Bill Ignizio--the former a university professor and corporate consultant, the latter an award-winning outdoors journalist--believe that the popular "war-and-games" approach to business is both illogical and impractical. Instead, they contend, angling analogies can be significantly more realistic and helpful. Accordingly, their Fishy Business: How the Wisdom of the Angler Can Help You Succeed at Work proffers traditional principles from the sport of fishing (such as "a depth finder won't catch fish for you"), coupled with explanations of how that advice also could benefit management (for example, "people make technology work").