Delivering the WOW

Issue No. 661 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 27, 2025) suggests you read this book and then ask your boss or board for the OK to conduct more research on creating a WOW culture—by taking a cruise! Plus, click here for recent issues posted at the NEW site for John Pearson’s Buckets Blog, including Choosing the Opposite: How the Sermon on the Mount Helps Us Rethink Our Assumptions, Recalibrate Our Instincts, and Rediscover the Way of Jesus. Also, check out the 20 management buckets (core competencies). Tired of the status quo—uninspiring programs, products, and services? Read Delivering the WOW—and then ask your boss or board for the OK to do more research on a Royal Caribbean cruise!   This Book Checks All the Buckets! Try this with your board or boss. “I just read a new book about ‘Delivering the WOW’—and to research how to improve our organization’s culture, I need to take a cruise, OK?” Step one: read this book. Delivering the WOW:  Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success by Richard Fain (Oct. 21, 2025)   Recently a leader asked if there was ONE book that I recommend to leaders. (I gave him two titles, based on his role.) But now I’ll tell him to read this one first! It checks all the leadership and management boxes (I mean “buckets”). Really. You’ll love it.  To deliver a taste of what Richard Fain learned as the chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group over 33 years, I’ve aligned his wisdom with my 20 buckets. (And by the way, Fain remains as chairman of the enterprise, but no longer has an office at the Miami headquarters. He must have read the book, The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens When CEOs Retire (read my review).    OUR CAUSE 1) The Results Bucket. The results speak for themselves. “…the market value of Royal Caribbean is now larger than any airline, hotel chain, or tour operator in American. And more than all the other cruise lines combined.” (Five brands with 68 ships!) 2) The Customer Bucket. When you read this book, whenever you see the words “cruise,” or “cruising,”—drop in your organization’s product, program, or service. Example: “We had set our goal as transformational change, but cruising [insert your program here: ______] wasn’t known for transformational actions.”  Almost every chapter would align with “The Customer Bucket,” but in Chapter 2, “’Good Enough’ Isn’t Good Enough,” you’ll find this: “Historically, our competition was viewed as being other cruise lines.” Not Royal Caribbean! Instead, the steering committee’s goal: “how to inspire guests to choose our vacations over Marriott hotels, Walt Disney World, or Las Vegas resorts.” And this: “How would we avoid making the kind of safe, incremental improvements that group decision-making is known for?" 3) The Strategy Bucket. As the just-appointed CEO in 1988, Fain met with his three new bosses (the three owners had just invested $550 million in Royal Caribbean)—and “they expected to hear me articulate exactly how we would make that vision a reality. No pressure.” He outlined the 1988 Strategic Plan (very simple):    #1. Don’t screw it up.    #2. Improve revenue.    #3. Improve revenue.    #4. Control costs. That was it! All three owners were “strong-willed,” yet “over a full day of discussions, we examined and reexamined and re-reexamined every aspect of the opportunity. We explored different strategies, tested various scenarios, and took turns playing devil’s advocates to challenge our assumptions."   4) The Drucker Bucket. I don’t know if Peter Drucker ever enjoyed a cruise, but you'll recognize his wisdom channeled throughout this fascinating book. This CEO, like Drucker, was very, very big on achieving alignment, not consensus (watch for that theme in other books). Richard Fain writes, “Consensus is much easier to achieve than alignment and feels good in the beginning because everyone is satisfied. Pleasing all feels good. But that good feeling only lasts a brief moment; the wishy-washy compromises endure forever.”  5) The Book Bucket. The author is a life-long learner and this is fascinating: Every chapter begins with a half-page maritime definition. Examples: “All hands on deck.” “Know the ropes.” My favorite: why we use “starboard” and “port” to designate the right and left sides of a ship—and how to remember that. (I learned that memory trick on our family’s sailboat while "learning the ropes" in the Pacific Northwest.) 6) The Program Bucket. “…guests on Sovereign commented that the downlights in the massage rooms glared in their eyes. As part of my due diligence, I personally tested the massage rooms and checked the lighting. After many massages diligently taken to study the issue, I concluded that the complaint was valid. We redesigned the ceilings and installed cove lighting. I booked additional massages to ensure the issue was properly resolved. (It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.) OUR COMMUNITY 7) The People Bucket. Imagine: 100,00 staff members (100,000 issues!). So note this wisdom from the author: “The real issue is usually fit, not fitness.” Fain, who was named by Barron’s as one of the “30 World’s Best CEOs”—three years running, explains: “I saw a vivid example of this when we shifted two senior executives to new roles. In the morning, one of them came to me and said his new second-in-command, Sam, was useless and that he would like to replace him with Kevin, his former number two. In the afternoon, the other executive said exactly the opposite: Kevin was useless, and she wanted to replace him with Sam. Obviously, Kevin and Sam couldn’t simultaneously be useless and fantastic. The issue wasn’t their ability; it was their chemistry with new leaders. Sam and Kevin swapped positions, and it worked out very well. The issue wasn’t performance; it was fit.” (Read more in Chief Executive magazine.)  8) The Culture Bucket. “The best learning does not come from formal training programs but rather from existing employees instilling the company’s culture in the next generation. Good training can teach the mechanics, but delivering the WOW requires magic, and that can’t be taught; it can only be demonstrated by example.”  9) The Team Bucket. Before being named CEO of Royal Caribbean, one of Richard Fain’s early assignments was to inspire the board to build a fifth ship—their largest ever. “The two Norwegian owners had diametrically opposing views.” What to do? “We quickly decided that our first meeting would not focus on the project itself but on how we would work together.” He adds, “An all-day meeting just to get oriented and start to know each other was unusual in the 1980s, and it is almost unthinkable today.” (Homework: master the four social styles.) 10) The Hoopla! Bucket. This entire book will feed your hoopla! yearnings. Quick—order Delivering the WOW for your International Executive VP of Hoopla! (What—you haven’t selected this person yet?) Did you know that 16 Royal Caribbean ships have ice-skating rinks and they are the largest employer of figure skaters in America? Visit the largest cruise ship in the world! 12) The Donor Bucket. Must-read: Chapter 9 on how the company survived the COVID pandemic when global cruising was disrupted. Royal Caribbean’s “RCL Cares” program included an “empathy fund” to assist crew members that were back home, but struggling financially. “Ultimately, the fund reached $70 million.” 12) The Volunteer Bucket. Read how the company increased empathy between office employees on land and shipboard people. “In order to bridge that divide, we came up with the idea that office employees and senior ship’s officers should occasionally serve the crew a dinner on board.” (Read how a “guest” made the CEO squirm when there were only five, not six, shrimp on his dinner plate!) 13) The Crisis Bucket. On 9/11 (where were you that day?), Royal Caribbean had 50,000 guests and 20,000 crew members aboard their ships. Would any committee-created crisis plan pass muster (or cut the mustard)? “On balance, I believe our performance in handling the short-term issues after 9/11 were commendable. However, our handling of the longer-term consequences was, at best, adequate. And at Royal Caribbean, ‘adequate’ is a failing grade.” OUR CORPORATION 14) The Board Bucket. Somehow the Miami management team’s proposal for a “tiny tweak to our iconic crown-and-anchor logo,” ended up as a lengthy boardroom discussion. Fain comments, “I didn’t have a view on the logo, but I didn’t think it was right for us as a board to involve ourselves in such management decisions. My concern wasn’t about branding; it was about proper governance. It was about the proper role of the board and how decisions got made.”  15) The Budget Bucket. Penny-pinchers need not apply! Yikes! To bless and WOW their crew members who face “the hardship of long months away from loved ones,” the company bought 50,000 computer tablets! One unexpected result: a job applicant heard about the Royal Caribbean’s generosity and said, “That’s the kind of company I want to work for.” (See Chapter 5, “It’s the People, It’s the People, It’s the People.”)  One more: when surveys revealed guests liked the cabins, but didn’t love their cabins (especially the mattresses), rather than upgrading the mattresses over time (easier on the budget), Royal Caribbean replaced every mattress on every ship—in one fell swoop. (Imagine the invoice for that!) 16) The Delegation Bucket. Sure…classic delegation is a given—but what if team members (and ship architects) suffer from “incrementalism”—continuous improvement, yet slow and boring? You’ll borrow this idea: at the beginning of a project, use a “press release” as a design tool. Is the idea transformational—or same old/same old? Brilliant. (See Chapter 7, “Innovation in Ship Design.”) 17) The Operations Bucket. “Delivering the WOW” will impact all the buckets, but this one might surprise you about the art of ship design. “To ensure that we maintained a good balance, we adopted a rule of thirds. The rule of thirds calls for new projects to be:    • one-third traditional,    • one-third evolutionary, and    • one-third revolutionary.” LOL. The author reminds us of the scene in Back to the Future, “where Marty, having traveled back to the 1950s, performs Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ at a high school prom.”   Travel back to the 1950s in Back to the Future (view this 6-minute YouTube clip) and then read why Marty stops playing and says, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.” 18) The Systems Bucket. There’s a system now in 2025 for tracking guests in an emergency evacuation—but there wasn’t in 1998 when the Monarch of the Seas ran aground off St. Maarten. Imagine: “As the response team assembled, our immediate challenge was to help roughly 2,300 passengers who were about to be evacuated onto an island with no available hotel rooms.” The airline guide (remember those?) was consulted—and “the next morning’s flights had exactly eight available seats. Now, we only had to assist the remaining 2,292 people.” Yikes! 19) The Printing Bucket (aka The Communication Bucket). When developing their “GOLD Anchor Standards” for team members, they created the acronym GOLD: “Greet the guest, Own the problem, Look the part, and Deliver the WOW.”  20) The Meetings Bucket. Brilliant! When a meeting of the company’s travel agent advisory board almost capsized (the agents had serious complaints—and hijacked the meeting), the executives listened. The result: a new acronym: ETDBW (easy to do business with).  There’s more. At a later internal meeting of executives to solve that problem, not much was solved! “So, we didn’t end the meeting. Instead, we restarted it with a determination to rethink our response. As with the design of new ships, if we wanted transformational change, we couldn’t achieve that with a series of incremental improvements.” REMINDER! Go on a cruise and research how to instill the WOW into your culture. At least…read this book. (And for my camp and conference center colleagues: this is a must-read. Really.) TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for Delivering the WOW: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success, by Richard Fain. Listen on Libro. And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy. YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) What’s the best book you’ve read in the last three years that “checks all the buckets?” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at Yale School of Management praises Delivering the WOW and says it “offers a library of wise maxims to guide future leaders across industries, across sectors, across oceans, and across continents." I agree! (Sonnenfeld is the author of The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens When CEOs Retire (read my review), and the HBR article, “What Makes Great Boards Great.” 2) On a scale of one to five (five is outstanding), rate your organization on its competence in each of the 20 management buckets. Or…at least…share an example of how you’re addressing one or two competencies in creative ways. For ideas, read my review of Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys. (Order the book.)       SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Book #31 of 99: The Hole in Our Gospel For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #31 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring. The Hole in Our Gospel (2025 Edition):  What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World  by Richard Stearns (Feb. 4, 2025) I titled my 2009 review, “Not Mother Teresa in a Business Suit.” Rich Stearns, then president of World Vision U.S., writes transparently. Warning! This is not an easy book to read. You might want to skip it. But if you have the courage, read at least the first 50 pages of Rich Stearn's personal story and then you're hooked—and you’ll read the whole book. Don't delegate your reading on this one. It's that important.    • Reviewed in Issue No. 134, April 7, 2009.    • Read my review on Amazon.    • Order from Amazon (2025 edition).    • Listen on Libro (12 hours, 21 minutes) – Listen free to the first three minutes of Chapter 9, “One Hundred Crashing Jetliners.” (Yikes!)    • Management Bucket #11 of 20: The Donor Bucket. The author asks, "What does God expect of us?" Stearns carefully balances Scripture, his own pilgrimage from CEO of Lenox (the fine tableware and gift company) and his corporate Jaguar...to the Ugandan thatch hut of another Richard (this one a 13-year-old, with two younger brothers, and no parents). Along this reading journey, your heart will break often, but you'll be blessed to learn what God is doing around the world.   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      Read Chapter 2, "The Customer Bucket," about "The Engel Scale" and a fictitious pastor, Tom, "who has a gift for preaching but really doesn't know his people." Great discussion material for church boards. IMPORTANT NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived here at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Nonprofit Boards! Oct. 30, 2025 Irvine, Calif. The Barnabas Group/Orange County is hosting a seminar (no fee!) at Concordia University in Irvine, Calif., on Oct. 30, 2025, Thursday 7:30 – 11:30 a.m. Nonprofit CEOs and board members (and pastors) are invited to learn about “The 8 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board: How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance.” Presented by John Pearson, with co-pilot Mike Pate, you'll receive the new workbook at the seminar. (Or order today from Amazon.) Register here.