USF Student interviews Dr. Fisher

Interview of Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr.

By

Jennifer Whitleff, Senior
College of Journalism
Major: Public Relations
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida

October 29, 2005



This is an interview with Dr. Fisher, an author, publisher, consultant and public speaker. The interview was conducted in his study.

Interviewer:

Dr. Fisher, thank you for seeing me. This is a USF class project in writing and communications, and is designed to help us better understand how public relations work in the business community.

First of all, who or what is The Delta Group Florida?

Dr. Fisher:

It is an unincorporated privately held company, formed 15 years ago, for the purposes of publishing my works, managing my speaking engagements, and organizing my consultancy in organizational development or OD with the goal of influencing structural and cultural change of the complex organization.

Interviewer:

In other words, it is a publishing and consultancy company but with a specific agenda?

Dr. Fisher:

You could say that, yes.

Interviewer:
This brings to mind several questions. What works has The Delta Group Florida published?

Dr. Fisher:

I’ve had eight books and more than 300 articles published in the course of this span. Five of the books The Delta Group published.

Interviewer:

For the record, would you mind naming the books and when they were published?

Confident Selling was published by Prentice-Hall in 1970. This book remained in print until 1990. The Delta Group Florida then published Work Without Managers in 1990, the year the group was formed, followed by Confident Selling for the 90s in 1992, The Worker, Alone! in 1995, The Taboo Against Being Your Own Best Friend in 1996, Corporate Sin in 2000, and In the Shadow of the Courthouse in 2003. This last book was a memoir of my youth.

Interviewer:

Would it then be fair to say you are a self-publisher?

Dr. Fisher:

Quite fair.

Interviewer:

Then would it be equally fair to imply that business planning, marketing, public relations and personal book signings had to be organized by The Delta Group Florida?

Dr. Fisher (chuckles):

It would not only be fair, but as it turns out, that is the hardest part of the publishing business.

Interviewer:

Would you care to elaborate?

Dr. Fisher:

Well, a book has no value if its intended audience doesn’t know about it. We have found through trial and error that this is the most time consuming and expensive end of publishing. We have retained marketing firms, hired public relation consultants and turned this responsibility over to them, only to realize that we were too small to generate the revenue to support such an elaborate marketing plan. Over 100,000 new books are published each year with this total rising with the advent of electronic self-publishing in the last five years.

Interviewer:

So, you have assumed the role of public relations as well as author?

Dr. Fisher (another chuckle):

Exactly, but with more misses than hits. I guess you could say the role, although quite necessary, doesn’t happen to resonate with me, so I do an end run, so to speak.

Interviewer:

How so?

Dr. Fisher:

You may recall I mentioned that I’ve published more than 300 articles. They have proven a useful public relations vehicle for my writing. This has even been enhanced since the advent of the Internet with these articles available to people throughout the world with a similar interest in their OD content and context.

Interviewer:

OD content and context?

Dr. Fisher:

OD is the acronym for organizational development. I am an organizational/industrial psychologist trained to treat the organization as my client as opposed to the individual for the clinical psychologist. So, these articles touch on various aspects of organizational dysfunction and possible remedies.

Interviewer:

For this project, could you share with me some of the publications in which your works have appeared?

Dr. Fisher (another chuckle):

Oh, boy! Well, let’s see, there is the National Productivity Review, The Journal of Organizational Excellence, the AQP Journal, Industry Week, the Wall Street Journal, the Reader’s Digest, Personal Excellence Journal, Executive Excellence Journal, Time Magazine, the National Review, Sales & Marketing Excellence Journal, Human Resource Journal, and the like. My works also appear in European publications. And occasionally, other authors ask to include my work in theirs, and then, of course, there are always students wanting to use empirical data for their research. It is a nice connection, and gives me a sense that people are finding the information useful for their purposes.

Interviewer:

Would you mind sharing your most recent publications?

Dr. Fisher (He goes to filing cabinets on his patio, stops, then to literally scores of boxes designated with “published works” and then the year of publication. He returns with several):

My interest is from poetry to philosophy, and I find both in culture and leadership. So, these publications should give you an idea. Leadership Excellence has an article of mine titled “Leaders at a Loss.” It is about the debacle of Hurricane Katrina. Sales & Service Excellence carried my “Soul of the Seller.” Executive Excellence had a piece of mine titled “Primer on Leadership,” and Personal Excellence published “Celebrate Life.” An Austrian journal published my “Leaders-as-Artists” translated into German. It appeared in conjunction with Dr. Manfred Kets de Vries. He is a well-known professor of business at INSEAD School of Business in Europe. I mention this because I am a fan of his writing. Meanwhile, there are about a dozen articles designed for publication in the next few months for various publications.

Interviewer:

I’ve seen some of these published works, plus several others. It appears that you write a good deal about a concept of yours you have coined “leaderless leadership.” It even appears in the title of one of your books.

Dr. Fisher:

Yes, Corporate Sin. It is part of the subtitle, along with “dissonant workers,” don’t leave that out.

Interviewer:

If I may, and your mentioning of this is a lead in to my final question: would you say that your writings dwell somewhat on the negative aspects of leadership? I hope you don’t find this question offensive.

Dr. Fisher:

Not in the least (he chuckles). Can I ask you a question?

Interviewer:

Yes?

Dr. Fisher:

Why do you think I dwell on the negative aspects of leadership as you put it?

Interviewer:

Quite frankly, I don’t know.

Dr. Fisher:

It is because few others do. We are in a remarkable age of transition and transformation and we are attempting to move into the next iteration of our collective lives as if nothing has changed, when absolutely everything has changed.

Interviewer:

Meaning?

Dr. Fisher:

Well, you, for example. You are a young lady training to be a professional in an age of professionals. Yet, you are taught as if you were a student when I was a student, trained as I was trained as a student, only you have all these wonderful electronic aids to enhance your work. But my point is that nothing else in your programming has changed. You have been quite polite, but you have had access to most of my work via the Internet, and in many respects this interview is redundant.

Chances are professors that are teaching you haven’t changed their approach or updated their lecture notes in years, and every student in your program knows it. The Internet gives you assignments; you attend lectures in which you have only remote contact with your professors, so you might as well not attend the university at all.

If you have read some of the publications in which my work appears, you know that the focus is on the positive as if ignoring the negative will see it go away. I’ve left out what it is like in the commercial and industrial setting because that doesn’t apply to you. Unfortunately, it differs little with your predicament. No one is in charge, and in frustration, the students do assignments without joy or pleasure but because they have to with the focus on attaining a degree rather than experiencing the joy of education. The same is true in the work environment. Workers work for a paycheck instead of love made visible in work. It is the shroud of cynicism that I attempt to penetrate.

Interviewer:
If I may be so bold, not wanting to end this interview on that note, what advice would you give to me as what you call a budding professional?

Dr. Fisher:

Don’t look to me or to anyone else for answers to such questions, but into your own heart. Remember Thoreau said a long time ago that we all march to our own drummer. Well, we do, but we often are not aware of it. The last person we listen to is ourselves. And why is that so? Because we are preoccupied with distractions such as an iPod or cell phone in our ear, or too busy looking for answers elsewhere.

Interviewer:

Thank you, Dr. Fisher, I appreciate your candor and look forward to sharing this interview with my colleagues.

Dr. Fisher:

Thank you.