Why This Book Exists
Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag wrote The World of Decorating the Fish because they kept seeing the same pattern everywhere: smart organizations investing massive resources into initiatives that produced marginal improvements. Busy teams. Impressive presentations. Negligible results.
Their central metaphor is perfect: we’re decorating raw fish instead of cooking it. We’re making things look better without making them be better.
I’ve read Drucker, Collins, Sinek, Clear, and a dozen other management thinkers. They all circle the same problem from different angles. Cox and Ashlag name it directly and give you a diagnostic framework to spot it in your own organization.
Here’s what they taught me.
The Diagnostic: Are You Decorating the Fish?
Cox and Ashlag give you clear signals. If any of these sound familiar, you’re decorating:
“It’s complicated”
If you or your team respond to questions with “it’s complicated,” you’re decorating the fish. Complexity is often a smoke screen for unclear thinking. Real clarity is simple enough that anyone can understand it.
Chasing technology for technology’s sake
“If you believe that rushing to embrace technological trends is innovative, you are decorating the fish.”
I see this constantly. Organizations adopt AI, cloud, or the latest platform without asking: What customer limitation does this remove? New technology with old practices doesn’t create breakthroughs. It creates expensive chaos.
They’re blunt: “Technology frequently brings the promise of increased productivity and efficiency, but it can also introduce complexity into processes and compound problems… It can also make the workflow invisible, which hides the source of backlogs, quality issues and needless tasks.”
Targeting measures you can’t control
“The more removed an organization is from the goal it pursues, the lower the impact it will have. If your organization is targeting measures it cannot directly impact, then it is likely decorating the fish.”
How many times have I seen teams measured on outcomes they can’t influence? You’re measured on “customer satisfaction” but have no control over pricing, product features, or support staffing. That’s not accountability. That’s theater.
Living on lag indicators
“If your organization is focused on lag indicators that do not provide real-time feedback, it is likely decorating the fish.”
Lag indicators tell you what happened. They’re autopsies. By the time you see the number, it’s too late to fix it. You need lead measures—the daily or weekly actions that predict the outcome.
Massive investment, marginal improvement
“If your organization is making significant investments of either time or money into an initiative but is getting marginal improvements, then it is likely decorating the fish and not addressing the core problem.”
This one hits hard. We launch a six-month organisation wide initiative. Spent serious budget. Got a 3% improvement. We decorated the fish beautifully, but we never addressed the real constraint.
The Three Classic Traps
1. No Clear Goal
Cox and Ashlag are ruthless here:
“If you have to try to explain what your goal means, you are fish decorating. If you have no way to determine if you are making progress towards the goal, you are fish decorating. If your strategy is your goal you are decorating the fish.”
They give you the test for a real goal. It must have four elements:
- Easy for anyone to understand; you shouldn’t have to explain it
- Measurable
- Focused on outcomes, not strategy
- [Implied: directly actionable by the team]
Most organizational goals fail at least two of these. “Be the market leader in customer experience.” Sounds great. Means nothing. What does success look like Tuesday? No one knows.
2. Confusing Strategy with Goals
This is everywhere. Teams present their strategy, “we’ll implement agile, adopt AI, restructure the team” and call it a goal.
Strategy is how. Goals are what. If your goal is your strategy, you have no goal.
3. Solutions That Mirror Problems
“When the solution mirrors the problem, you are likely decorating the fish. For example, we fight addiction with another form of addiction, or respond to cost-cutting with more cost-cutting, or try to solve a lack of jobs with incentivizing jobs. Trying to get what we lack is not the solution.”
This is subtle but devastating. We’re behind schedule, so we add more meetings to coordinate. We have quality issues, so we add more inspection steps. We’re moving slowly, so we add more process to “ensure rigor.”
The solution looks like the problem. We’re adding complexity to solve complexity.
What Actually Works
Start with the customer’s primary need
Cox and Ashlag insist: “Distinguish between the customer’s primary and secondary needs using their perspective.”
Not what you think they need. Not what’s easy to measure. What they actually need, in their language, from their perspective.
This forces clarity. Your customer doesn’t need “a robust ticketing system with AI-powered routing.” They need “my problem solved in under four hours.”
Set ambitious targets
“Setting ambitious targets and going after big improvements will force you to redefine the problem.”
Small targets let you optimize current processes. Big targets force you to question whether you’re solving the right problem at all.
If you’re trying to reduce support tickets by 5%, you’ll optimize your current system. If you’re trying to reduce them by 50%, you have to ask: Why are people filing tickets in the first place?
Focus on what you can directly impact
Measure things your team can actually change through their daily work. If you can’t draw a straight line from their actions to the measure, pick a different measure.
Find the real constraint
Stop decorating. Find the one thing that, if removed, would unlock disproportionate improvement. That’s where your energy goes. Everything else is decoration.
Why This Book Matters Now
I’ve read the management classics. Drucker taught me about objectives and results. Collins taught me about clarity and understanding. Clear taught me about systems. Sinek taught me about infinite games.
Cox and Ashlag gave me the diagnostic.
They gave me language to spot the pattern in real time: “We’re decorating the fish.” They gave me questions to ask: “Can you directly impact that measure?” “Is this technology removing a customer limitation?” “Are we getting marginal returns on major investment?”
In an era of AI hype, digital transformation initiatives, and agile everything, this book is the necessary counterweight. Before you adopt the next technology, launch the next initiative, or restructure the team, ask:
Are we cooking the fish, or just making it prettier?
The Bottom Line
Most organizations are decorating. Impressive activity. Marginal results. Cox and Ashlag show you how to spot it, why it happens, and what to do instead.
The real question isn’t whether you’re busy.
It’s whether the fish is actually cooked.
Book Details:
The World of Decorating the Fish by Kristen Cox and Yishai Ashlag
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