Fire in the Corporate Belly: Renewing the Company - Body, Soul and Bottom line 

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Traditional business improvement efforts are directed at people, processes, and technology – major levers for effecting top- and bottom-line improvement.  Beyond these factors, corporate success is usually attributed to management and culture.  Though management may take steps to impact culture, working within cultural constraints is a more likely course of action.  In this book, Tom FitzGerald introduces the concept of corporate spirit or soul, which he contends wields greater power and importance than culture alone.  Preoccupied with corporate burnout, FitzGerald seeks corporate renewal through revitalization of the corporate soul. To achieve the latter, he offers a “proven” process whose basic components include:

• Diagnosis.  This means bringing to the surface the organization’s real issues, hidden issues, secrets, and, even, “daemons.”  These always have personalities and personal relationships at their root.
• Action.  This means dealing with company issues until they are resolved.  These must be addressed at this point in order for effective renewal to be achieved.
• Commitment.  This means maintaining the action in order to achieve a sustainable state with “a new behavior, a new flexibility, and a new level of performance.”

 FitzGerald claims the above process may be facilitated with the aid of a business catalyst.  The latter, he asserts, should be an objective third party whose authority is on a par with a CEO or business leader.  He takes great pains to detail the steps necessary for managing this process:

1. Assemble the leadership team in an environment that is “emotionally safe” and suitable for freely presenting and sharing opinions.  Use an arc of chairs facing very large screens in order to get everyone uniformly focusing in the same direction.
2. “Cause the key players to identify both as a group and individuals, at the emotional level, the real issues and motivators of the organization, particularly the GUT issues that suck the life energies from the company.” 
3. Allow for reactions of “revulsion” with each accepted issue.  Such reactions should flow naturally from this activity.
4. “Create a catharsis on each issue,” FitzGerald proposes, and calls for vigorously restraining the group and individuals from “sliding off.” These efforts will result in a release of productive energies previously bound up by the issues, thus causing, in effect, a beneficial catharsis.
5. Transform and invest the energies released in the previous step into a vision or “blueprint” for the future.  This transformation, described as a nearly instantaneous experience that releases suppressed energies, will cause enthusiasm to build and enable each element of the blueprint to evolve synergistically. 
6. Managers commit to specific actions to achieve the desired blueprint state.  Fitzgerald proposes a special system to record and display the necessary action steps in real time and to create an on-line action-plan.  The commitment to action that will result in the desired” end state is important for maintaining lasting buy-in.
7. Implement the action plan immediately and follow up continuously.

FitzGerald repeatedly proclaims this methodology produces successful results nearly 100% of the time.  Contrast this with improvement efforts such as business process redesign that average,   30% success rates.  To validate or dispute this claim in this medium is impossible.  Furthermore, the author claims that the firms he has worked with have experienced no less than a 10% profit improvement – an amazing feat given the large number of clients that have employed the “preemptive turnaround” that Mr. FitzGerald is clearly advocating.

Fire is a book with a purpose: namely, to sell.  FitzGerald is selling both a concept and his professional service offering.  According to his own description, he is the perfect candidate to serve as the necessary catalyst to execute effective corporate renewal.  Moreover, his concept is intriguing, because almost every executive or manager seeks the innovative, flexible, impassioned workforce that this process claims to create.  Undoubtedly, the alignment of management around common emotive goals that transcend self-serving political agendas can result in desirable ends.  Can Mr. FitzGerald deliver?  If the statements presented in the text are to be believed, clearly there is value to his offering. 

Finally, Fire is written with a passion and enthusiasm that can readily be felt by the reader.  The content is easily digested and, in some respects, palliates the tendency to view such assertions with skepticism.  It is structured in such a way that is convenient for casual skimming without deterring those readers who would like to absorb the entire work.  One could fault Fire for being repetitive but, given that the author’s goal is to drive home his personal vision and create lasting resonance for his concept of corporate change, one understands his use of repetitiveness as a tool.  Still, while FitzGerald will certainly not be confused with Hemmingway, Fire can serve to inspire managers to renew their business passion and evaluate their business environment.  Some readers may find the offering compelling enough to want to visit FitzGerald Associates’ website (www.ManagementConsultants.com) or to attempt to stage a corporate renewal process internally.