You must be doing something right when, as a self-professed “beer guy,” you’re asked to talk about leadership to business people. But then Gary Fish isn’t just any beer guy.

As president of Bend-based Deschutes Brewery Inc., he runs a company with nearly 300 employees, an operation he’s taken from a small pub 21 years ago to the nation’s sixth-largest craft brewer and 16th-largest among all brewers. Doing so takes more than good beer.

Which is why the Bend Chamber of Commerce called on Fish to address leadership Tuesday at one of its Professional Development Series events.

Here’s some of what Fish shared about running a company and, for the beer lovers out there, a couple of product updates.

Leadership is about risk-taking, albeit calculated risks. He believes in a collaborative process in decision-making and welcomes input from all angles.

“I like a good, vigorous debate” in the company, Fish said. “You open yourself up to all kinds of possibilities” if you hear all sides. If you only associate with people and organizations whose viewpoints align with yours, you miss out in business and life, he told the audience.

That said, after input is digested, decisions have to be made that track with the company’s systems and goals. And at the end of the day, there’s one boss, he said.

“Leaders have to be willing to stick their necks out,” Fish said.

Leaders also have to be willing to delegate, which can be hard for hands-on entrepreneurs, he said.

“In order to enable (employees) to succeed, you also have to enable them to fail,” Fish said, adding that nobody will care about Deschutes Brewery the way he does, “but I have to let them try.”

Asked about his management training, Fish said he learned a lot through operating restaurants and has read myriad business books and attended classes. He reads trade magazines. He calls Harvard Business Review “terrific” and likes The Economist for world views.

When he reads business books, he typically quits a third to halfway through because most of the good advice has been dispensed and the second half is “usually a self-aggrandizement by the author.”

Has he learned key lessons from the recession?

“Yes, all of them,” he said to laughs.

“We’re learning how to do things so much better,” Fish said. “We were really fat and happy. (The recession) has taught us the value of efficiency.” Last year, the company made more than $1 million in process improvements, he added. It’s also implementing Lean manufacturing.

How’s he interact with employees?

“Get up and walk around; I don’t do it enough,” Fish said. “Ask people what’s going on and what can I do to help.”

According to Fish, the criticism he hears is that “(employees) don’t see me enough. They like seeing me out on the floor. There’s so many things I do sitting at my desk that I shouldn’t be doing.”

Leaders who say they’re stuck at their desks, “it’s a cop-out,” Fish said. “Get up and walk around. It’s not complicated.”

Craft brewing is a creative process, but there’s no value in employees’ creativity if it’s not channeled within a structure that can be leveraged forward for the company, he said. Once that structure’s in place, creativity is channeled the right way and the company is more creative as a team than as individuals, he said.

On the product side, the company’s always looking to improve. For example, it experimented with a different hopping technique, which resulted in a goopy mess one day when the fermentation process blew the lid off a fermenter. The company took pictures of the mess, shared the experience online and some people “hit the roof” over the company tinkering with the product — feedback Fish loved. The company has learned in marketing “to embrace our conflicts” and talk about them. By talking about them on his blog, it engages the “beer geeks” in the process, he said. “This is the coolest way to communicate directly with customers.” Don’t be afraid to expose your “warts.”

In the pipeline, Deschutes is on a mission to make a good gluten-free beer, Fish said. It’s also working on a Hefeweizen.

On company culture, “you’ve got to generally care about people,” he said.

One last tip: Try to make each day better than the previous one. “Do what you can because each step leads to the next one. Small things add up.”