Category Archives: The New Marketplace

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #9: Never Underestimate Your Customer’s Imagination

marypoppins45-06Perhaps one of the greatest rewards for any company is when they can unleash the power of their customer’s imaginations. Our imagination is a supremely powerful human gift. Imagination drives everything that is wonderful about human culture. Every achievement we’ve made, every piece of art ever created, every book written, all comes from the same wellspring – our imagination. We are never more completely, uniquely, wonderfully human than when we are imagining.

When we imagine, we create an inner reality that lives apart from the world around us. It is a world of our making, envisioned in our minds eye. But we can also use our imaginations to share the vision of another, drawing it into our inner world and ensure that it resonates with our own beliefs and views. This sharing of a vision was the special gift that Disney shared with us. From the imaginations of the Walt Disney company came spectacular visions and make believe worlds, and the door was always open to welcome us inside. Like the sidewalk chalk drawings of Mary Poppin’s Bert, these were richly imagined worlds that we could share in. We could fly and stay young forever. We could find our Prince (or Princess) and live happily ever after. We could each have our own Fairy Godmother. If we were in a darker mood, we could experience the terror of a Night on Bald Mountain, or of being transformed into a donkey on Pleasure Island.

Disney never underestimated the power of imagination. It was a corporation fuelled by imagination. But even with all the imagination that could be found within Disney, it would have all been meaningless if we did not have the imagination to share in their vision. Works of imagination are like seeds..they need to land in fertile ground to germinate and bloom. Someone without imagination can find no magic in a Beethoven symphony, a tale by Dickens or a Disney movie.

Of course, you can package entertainment in easily digestible, bit sized pieces. And certainly Disney turned out their share of mindless entertainment. It took no prodigious intellectual effort to find the meaning in a Silly Symphony cartoon short, Herbie the Love Bug or The Shaggy D.A. But Disney also asked us to flex the muscles of our imagination with works like Fantasia, Mary Poppins or even Bambi. He believed animation could be high art and he didn’t offer mental short cuts as entry points.

The more important the work of art, the more the creator asks from the audience in terms of sheer imagining horsepower. Those that underestimate that power pander to the lowest common denominator. The easy path is to rely on our animal responses. But the path that challenges us as humans raises us to a different level. It requires us to appreciate with our minds. Imagination is one of those things that pay you back for the effort you put in. If you take the easy path, you’ll be rewarded with fleeting pleasure. But if you mine the depths of your imagination, you’ll discover entire new worlds as well as new ways of looking at the world around you. When Disney was at it’s best, it offered us rich imaginary offerings that resonated at a deep and fundamental level.

Lesson #9: If imagination is your stock and trade, don’t underestimate the imagination machinery of your audience. Push the limits and both you and they will be rewarded.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #8: Adversity is the Sharpening Stone of Success

evil-queen_lIn a previous post, I cataloged the many challenges of Walt Disney’s career. It seemed to everyone, including his brother Roy, that just when things were going smoothly, Walt would find a way to court disaster yet again. Adversity became a way of life for Disney studio’s. It they weren’t struggling, they (and I use the collective team advisedly – I actually mean Walt) weren’t happy.

This is not exclusive to the Disney organization. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, used to say: “As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot”. Kroc also said, “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business”. And as any good Darwinist would tell you, there’s nothing like environmental adversity to speed up the pace of evolution. Adversity brokers no maybes. Almost good enough isn’t nearly good enough to succeed when the chips are down. You either win or you lose. You either succeed or you fail. Judgment is swift and ruthlessly accurate.

What this means, in the hands of a nimble and bold leader, is an incredible opportunity to hone the edge of a successful company. Employees can rally against a common challenge, and the bigger the challenge, the faster and more effectively they’ll rally. Great accomplishments come in the face of great adversity.

I suspect Walt knew this at a fundamental level. This is probably why he assiduously avoided comfort and complacency, seeking instead to lead his company balanced on the ragged edge of disaster. He embraced challenge and courted adversity. He thrived on it.

So Lesson # 8 is this – Don’t be afraid of adversity. Find the opportunities that lie within. And, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a serious crisis go to waste. Those that live their entire lives in their comfort zones live very small lives indeed. Those that flaunt boundaries and incite challenge live big and leave huge footprints.

Google and Microsoft: Signs of Hubris, Signs of Humility

GoogleVsMicrosoftFrom my admittedly limited vantage point, I’ve noticed a subtle but significant shift in what’s coming out of the respective campuses of Microsoft and Google. And it’s not so much the innovations, although it certainly resonates there. This has to do with attitude and culture. This is the touchy-feely stuff that I chalk up to gut instinct, with no empirical backing. So, take it for what it’s worth, but I will say that my gut has a pretty good track record.

The Age of Cockiness Returns

Google has come full circle. They started with a cockiness that was understandable, given their immediate success. Google was everyone’s online Golden Child. The founders (from which the brash attitude was inherited) surrounded themselves with an equally cocky, equally audacious group of young geniuses. The collective culture was bold, arrogant and had little patience for the mediocre or mundane. They also had little respect for anything beyond the bounds of “Google-world.” If it wasn’t part of Google, it somehow was less relevant, less valuable and less interesting. This was a company that fully intended to conquer the world, and it seemed that world conquest was within reach. Google was getting their fingers into everything, and it seemed that everything they touched would turn to gold.

Then, four or five years ago, Google’s attitude changed. They started reaching outside the walls of “Google-world,” sincerely looking to forge relationships with partners. Googlers developed a quieter confidence: less bold, less brash.  They actually sought others’ opinions. Now, it appeared that Google might be accepting the fact that conquering the world might be, at a minimum, a collaborative effort.

But in the last year, I’ve seen a return to Google’s original attitude. The humility is disappearing and hubris again rules the day. It’s almost as if, now that Google is the king of the hill and is drawing more than their fair share of scrutiny, much of it negative, they’ve gone into defensive mode. They’ve circled the wagons and drawn more inside. As I said, the changes are subtle, but noticeable. I believe they’ve grown up as a company and have had to face some harsh business realities. But in the process, they have responded by becoming defiantly self-confident and dismissive of dissenting views. They seem to once again be retreating into the safe and welcoming arms of “Google-world.” Somehow, though, this time the cockiness rings a little hollow.

We Really Want You to Like Us

Contrast this with Microsoft. Microsoft was the company everybody loved to hate. For years, it was the brunt of jokes in the search marketing world. The only question with Microsoft, it seemed, was which foot were they going to shoot themselves in next? Miserable failure after miserable failure exasperated everyone, both inside and outside of the Redmond mother ship. If Mack Sennett (or the Three Stooges, or Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen — pick your cultural context) ever ran a software company, surely this would be it.

But in the last year (roughly about the same time Google started circling the wagon) I’ve seen a different Microsoft. It’s humble, but it’s also ready to deliver. They’ve knocked the chip off their shoulder and seemed to have put the bumbling behind them. They’re executing and cranking out some pretty decent stuff. Somehow, they’ve pulled back from the brink of irrelevance and are now ready to be a contender. I’ve had varying shades of criticism of Bing, but I’ve never said it wasn’t a much-needed step forward in their search offering. It’s miles ahead of anything Microsoft had done in search previously. But it’s not this battle that interests me. It’s the next fight that Microsoft chooses to pick. Given the change in attitude, I’m not sure I would be betting against them. As one Microsofter confided to me, “We’re at our best when we’ve had the crap kicked out of us.”

I have no idea what this means in the big picture, but I do know that the tone and temper of an organization is a pretty reliable indicator of future success. Perhaps I can sum it up best in this way. It’s almost as if Google is already prepared to defend themselves against future criticism. Microsoft, on the other hand, is doing everything in their power to rebuild a broken relationship by impressing the hell out of you.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #7: Surround Yourself with People More Talented than You

Walt Disney was not a particularly talented animator. In fact, if it weren’t for longtime Disney animator Ub Iwerks and many others that followed in his footsteps, the peak of Disney animation might have looked like this:

WaltsEarlyWorks

Rather than this:

Bambi_LE 0028b 5_980

It was Ub and many, many other animators that made Disney the animation powerhouse it became. Walt very quickly (and shrewdly) realized that to reach the success he envisioned, he had to step away from the sketch table and focus his talents in other areas.

Most accounts indicate that Walt was not a particularly gracious boss. He was a fanatic about detail, a relentless task master and routinely demanded the impossible. One of my favorite Disney tidbits (unfortunately, I couldn’t find a source for this online, so I’m going from memory) happened during the making of Bambi, a film many consider to be the best of the Disney classics, coming at the height of the studio’s power. Walt envisioned Bambi as a classic melding of animation art , a powerful soundtrack and a simple but heartfelt story. Fantasia, made two years earlier, attempted to take the first two elements to new heights, breaking new ground in animation art set to a classical soundtrack. Never satisfied for long, Walt wanted to raise the bar even higher with Bambi. The film’s production was stretched out from 1937 to 1942 so Disney could avoid using second-string animators, maintaining the film’s rich “painterly” texture.

Because of the long timeline, the production of Fantasia and Bambi overlapped. Disney composers Frank Churchill and Edward Plumb were working on the soundtrack that would go behind the climactic forest fire scene when Walt dropped in to check progress. Churchill and Plumb played the work in progress for Walt, who listened for awhile, then interrupted with, “No..that’s not it. It’s not powerful enough. This is apocalyptic. The music has to match. Wait..I’ll be right back.”

Walt disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a reel from across the hall, where Fantasia was being scored.

“Here..we need something like this.” Churchill and Plumb listened in disbelief.

“But that’s Beethoven!”

“Yes..so?”

“You want us to compose ‘something like Beethoven'”?

“Yes.”

In the end, Disney got what he wanted, a score that still stands as a classic. Churchill and Plumb received two Academy Award nominations for the score, but unfortunately, for Churchill, the recognition came after his tragic death.

One can debate Walt’s treatment of his employees (Iwerks left Disney for a 4 years span because of a falling out with Disney and a bitter strike after Bambi led to the end of Disney’s Golden Animation era) but you certainly can’t question his eye for talent. Again and again, Walt was able to accomplish the impossible because of the talent he was able to draw to him. The lesson learned here is not how to manage your employees (as much as I respect what Walt did, he was not a shining example of employee empowerment) but rather the importance of recognizing your own limits and assembling a team that can take you farther than you could ever go alone.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #6: The Power of Stories

disneyfiguressmIn the Disney Theme Parks, two of Walt’s great loves are on open display. The first comes from Walt’s inherent gift for storytelling. Most Disney rides are more than just a jolt of adrenaline. The thrills are seamlessly integrated into a story. Whether it’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, The Tower of Terror or Indiana Jones, there is a distinct storyline to each ride, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Walt was, at his core, a natural born story teller.

Walt’s other love was his fascination with technology. Walt believed that technology was the hope for a brighter future and he had a childlike fascination for it.

With Disneyland, and with the later Disney parks, Walt’s dream was to bring his two loves together. He wanted to create an environment where great stories could come to life, allowing us to immerse ourselves in them. And, with technology, he wanted to provide a showcase for it’s promise and potential. Technology played a vital role in bringing the Disney stories to life, through innovations like animatronics and sophisticated special effects. But it was Tomorrowland and, later, Epcot, that Walt envisioned as the true shrine to the wonders of technology. And in these two examples lies a cautionary tale for us to heed.

The Power of a Story

As I said in an earlier post, humans are wired to love stories. If you have to get details to stick, the best way is to put them into a story. The human brain seems to respond naturally to the structure of a story, perhaps because stories are time tested distillations of how we see the world and what we find interesting about it. Stories are possibly the most highly evolved of all human communication forms, next to  grunts of warning or delight. Stories have lifted us to new heights, with the power of narrative being a constant through all our art forms, across all cultures. There is no society or tribe on earth that does not tell stories. And if you look at Disney’s best loved rides, you’ll find the ones that stay truest to the ideal of telling a story are the ones that stand the test of time.

But technology has not fared as well in the Disney Parks. Of all the lands in Disneyland, Tomorrowland has been the one that has required the greatest number of overhauls. What was once wonderful quickly becomes woefully dated. The challenge with technology is that it never stands still. You have to constantly re-imagine the future, because we relentlessly chase it. If you take technology and showcase it, you also freeze it in time, which soon passes it by. Even Epcot (originally standing for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) hasn’t managed to stay ahead of today. It’s no longer a glimpse of the future, but rather a quaint testimonial to what the future might have been.

Technology Fades, but Stories Live On

So, in the world of Disney, the power of stories has stayed as fresh and powerful as the day they were first told. But the lure of technology has rapidly faded, necessitating constant overhauls and retrofits. The lesson I’ve learned from that? Technology in itself is not an end goal, but rather the means to an end. Technology for humans started when we first realized that materials from our environment could be re-purposed to give us an advantage. The stone axe, the spear or the bow and arrow had no inherent magic. Their value lay in the things they let us do. Technology in and of itself is a empty promise, it only takes on meaning when it allows us to do something we couldn’t do yesterday. And that’s why we drive technology forward, pushing our advantage through the tools we adopt. Technology is a factor in the equation of human productivity, but it’s the result of the equation that matters.

Stories, however, speak to the heart of the human condition. They resonate with a different part of our brain. Technology gives us tools. Stories give us our soul. In looking at which of Walt’s two great loves eventually emerged triumphant in the hearts and minds of guests, it’s clear that stories strike closer to home. And in that is a very timely lesson for us. We have become infatuated with technology, but we should remember that it’s how we apply that technology to do very human things that matters. And it’s those things that will eventually make their way into our stories.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #5: The Importance of Simultaneous Satisfaction

If you set out to entertain families, you have an inherent challenge in front of you. Successful family entertainment has to appeal not just to one one person, but a group of distinct individuals. In the average family, you have several demographic and psychographic divides to bridge: males and females, age groups ranging from grandpas and grandmas (or great grandpas and great grandmas) to newborns, different education levels, different areas of interest, different levels of patience, different tastes in humor, different thresholds for motion sickness. The question, if you set out to keep a family happy, is how do you possibly keep everyone happy at the same time?

Everybody Laughs..Just at Different Jokes

Walt knew this. It was the challenge that led to the birth of Disneyland. Keeping both adults and children happy in a film or TV show is relatively simple. Early on, producers of successful family entertainment, including Disney, Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera learned the importance of a multi-level story line. At one level, popular cartoons would entertain children with colors, actions, pratfalls and simple humor. But writers also weaved references into the storyline that would be picked up on by adult viewers. These included pop culture references, double entendres and more sophisticated verbal gags. The device worked well, endearing Fred Flintstone, Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck not just to one generation at a time, but several. The fact that TV and film offered not just video but also an audio track allowed the creators to use the two to appeal to two audiences at once. When the kids were being entertained by the visuals, the adults could catch the more subtle references in the dialogue.

The Secret of Happy Families

But how do you maintain this multilevel appeal when you move beyond the two dimension world of TV or film to the fully immersive experience of a visit to a Disney park? Disney wanted to create an experience where both parents and children could be entertained simultaneously. First of all, the parks had to be immaculate. While children may be more tolerant of a little dirt and crease, nothing makes a parent’s stomach turn faster than the unsavory environment of the typical amusement park. Visions of weird infections, salmonella and just genera ickyness leap immediately to mind. If parent’s were to relax in a Disney amusement park, Walk knew it had to be spotless.

In the last post, I also talked about attention to detail. This becomes more important to the experience as you get older. Your appreciate the care that has gone into the engineering of your experience. It provides a sense of value for your admission price. Kids are plugged more viscerally into the thrill, the excitement and the magic of Disney. They suspend belief easier. We adults tend to be more skeptical, which makes us appreciate the lengths that Disney is willing to go to to maintain the illusion.

A Restroom around Every Corner

But perhaps the biggest reason is that it seems Disney has gone to great lengths to anticipate the needs of a family. It’s uncanny how, just when you start thinking you might need something, it magically appears around the next corner. Washrooms, food booths, sit down restaurants, benches for resting, stroller drop off areas – all these seem to be seamlessly and conveniently integrated into the experience. Yes, a day at Disneyland or Disneyworld can be gruelling for even the most diehard fans, with plenty of highs and lows, but it seems that just when frustration seems to mount to dangerous points, relief is close at hand.

I remember one summer visit during an exceptionally busy long weekend. We were heading out of the park and our nerves were frazzled. Yet, I was told we had to make one more stop on Main Street to pick up a souvenir in one of the shops. While not thrilled at the prospect (getting the hell of there was my primary goal) the day was redeemed by an exceptionally friendly Disney employee who managed to bring the smile back to our faces. And that, perhaps more than anything, is the Disney secret of simultaneous satisfaction. Rather than the bored, vacant expression that’s commonly found on staff faces at the competition (Universal is particularly notorious for this) it seems that everyone at Disneyland is genuinely happy you’re there. Disney people are awesome, but that’s actually one of the 10 Things I learned from Disney, so more on that in a future post.

We’re Only as Happy as the Group We’re In

To wrap up this post, let me touch on some reasons why simultaneous satisfaction is so important if you’re targeting customers in groups rather than as individuals. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is with an example. Restaurants are another business that typically targets groups. Think about what happens if just one person in the group has a substandard experience. You talk about it. And suddenly, even if your experience was fine, you become dissatisfied. Our opinions about joint experiences are formed as part of the group. We defer to the decision of the majority, and typically, the consensus will sink to the level of the least satisfactory experience.

The other reason why group experiences are so important can be found in the way they’re recalled. Daniel Kahneman had an interesting presentation at the last TED conference about experiential vs remembered happiness. This is one of the little illogical quirks of humans. We make future decisions based not on how happy we were experiencing the actual event, but on how happy we remember being. This is critically important when we look at the group dynamic I just described in the restaurant. If we go to Disneyland as a group, we will also tend to remember our experiences when we’re with the same group. And, as we relive our remembered experience, our happiness level will sink to the lowest level of the group. If not everyone was happy, no one will be happy.

There’s a flip side to this as well. If we were all generally happy (the little annoyances tend to fade with time) the nostalgia effect tends to boost and sharpen the level of actual experience. We remember good things as great. I’m not sure Walt knew the psychology of simultaneous satisfaction when he insisted that Disneyland would be a place where both parents and children could all be happy at the same time, but it’s worked out pretty well for him.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #4: Details Make the Difference

PartnersstatueThere are a lot of theme parks in Southern California. The competition for Disneyland is tough. Yet, for over 50 years now, the pattern has been the same. People plan their vacation around Disneyland, spending 3 to 5 days at the park, and may add a day at one of the other parks – Universal, Knott’s or Magic Mountain. If you looked at the size of the theme park pie and the slice that Disney carves off, the imbalance would be remarkable. Why does Disney suck up over 80 cents of every theme park dollar spent in the region?

It’s not the rides. Universal’s rides are probably more technically impressive. Magic Mountain and Knott’s certainly has more thrilling rides. Disney’s biggest coaster, California Screamin’, is a rather mild ride for a coaster fanatic (which I am).

I believe there are several reasons, and I’ll try to deal with them in individual posts. Today, I want to talk about attention to detail.

The Hotchkiss Detail Obsessive Guide to Disneyland

My family has been to Disneyland at least 6 times. People hate visiting the park with us because we have routines (others are less kind and call them rituals, or cult-like behavior) that have to be adhered to. It’s important which side of the train station you enter onto Main Street on. And you don’t rush past the circle at the top of the street. You spend a few minutes lingering and drinking in the atmosphere. You either stroll (never rush) down main street or take the horse drawn tram. You may stop at the Blue Ribbon Bakery for a coffee. You make your way to the Partners statue at the center of the park for a few minutes with Walt and Mickey and while you’re there, pay particular attention to the flowers planted around them. Take note, because they may be completely different tomorrow. From the center in front of the Castle, we then veer to the left, usually ambling through Adventureland and head towards New Orleans Square because the first ride has to be (this is non-negotiable) Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pirates is one of our favorite rides, earning it’s place as a Hotchkiss Tradition. And it’s not because it’s thrilling (it’s not) or technically amazing (although it may have been with the ride debuted in 1967). It’s because the attention to detail on this ride is simply amazing. It’s the last ride that Walt himself personally oversaw the design of. Everything has been thought through, down to the smallest scar, gold doubloon or cobweb. And that is the Disney difference. You won’t find that fanatic attention to detail in Universal, Knott’s or Magic Mountain. It’s a Disney hallmark.

It’s What You Do Between the Rides that Counts

Disney knows that in between the momentary jolts of adrenaline, it’s the details that build an experience worthy of a 3 or 4 day investment of your family’s time. Disneyland has this down in spades. Each square foot is jammed with amazing detail, carefully crafted and maintained to add to the experience. And I’m not even talking the obscure Disney-mania touches like Hidden Mickies. I’m talking about carefully planned sight lines, well placed benches, meticulously groomed greenery and the architectural detail on buildings, to say nothing of the imagination fuelling touches found in rides like Splash Mountain, Peter Pan, the Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones. The competition cut corners. Walt absolutely forbid that in the making of Disneyland.

The post-Walt Disney Parks have struggled with this. We’ve been going to Disneyland for over 20 years now, and the overall look of the park hasn’t changed much. Toontown was added and a few new rides have debuted, but 50 years of planning and development have created an almost perfect entertainment experience. Major overhauls aren’t needed. The same can’t be said for Disney’s California Adventure. Disney is currently overhauling huge sections of the park because the same detailed magic was missing. Visitors treat California Adventure more like a typical theme park, rushing from major attraction to major attraction without lingering to enjoy the experience on the way. Of all the rides in California Adventure, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is one of the few engineered to the same standards of detail that you’ll find in the earlier rides. But this legacy of detail isn’t found so much in the rides, but rather the transition zones between the rides. It’s here where the acid test of detail is really found. It’s detail that keeps crowds amused while they’re waiting in line. It’s detail that keeps them from feeling like cattle, shunted from one chute to the next.

Most Skip the Details, Disney Doesn’t

So what’s the takeaway? Disney’s eye for detail came from an absolute certainty about what his visitor’s wanted and an iron-willed determination to deliver that without any compromise. Every last element of the visitor experience was considered and planned for. Every detail you see in Disneyland had a purpose – to make the visitor happy.

I think too many corporations rush past the details when it comes to the experiences of their customers. It’s because details take time. They’re hard work. You can get lost in a forest of detail. And obsessing over detail just doesn’t seem that profitable. In fact, if you get lost in the wrong details, it can be sure death for a corporation. But yet, details make the difference for Disney. Why? How does Disney avoid the trap of paying attention to the wrong details? They know which details are important because they take the time to understand what is important to their visitors. They spend a lot of time thinking about how visitors perceive and interact with those details. This is a legacy from Walt. It comes from a leader that obsesses about details.

Apple and the User Experience: A Lesson Learned

iPad-gallery-books1Another example of attention to detail is Apple. They obsess about the user experience. I recently watched someone demo their new iPad. You know what was one of the first things he showed me? How the iPad mimicked the look of turning an actual physical page in a book. Depending on where you place your finger on the page, the page itself curls up appropriately. It’s a silly little detail, but it was important in creating a Wow experience for this new owner. And it’s something that stood out to me as one reason why, eventually, I have to get an iPad. It’s a feature that probably took an absolutely silly number of hours of programming to implement but it was important to Apple because it was important to users.

Detail can differentiate you from the competition. It adds a premium to the value you provide. It tells the customer that you value them as users (or visitors), not just as another wallet to be emptied.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #3: Leadership Matters…a Lot!

walt-and-roy-01How many companies today are run by caretakers? How many of the Fortune 500 are run by CEO’s who are really just thinly disguised accountants?

The Leader of a company determines the heart and soul of that company. If you run the company by your profit and loss statements, you’ll end up with a fiscally responsible corporation that will slowly screw itself into the ground. If you have a reckless leader, you’ll flame and burn in spectacular style. Somewhere in between the extremes is where you have to live

Walt Disney was not overly concerned by fiscal responsibility. That was Roy, his brother’s job. Walt drove the company by embracing risk. Roy lost his hair by trying to balance Walt’s enthusiasm.

Risk is the fuel that drives the future. And risk is risk. It can only be calculated up to a certain point. After that, you have to close your eyes and jump. Walt jumped again, and again, and again, each with spectacular style.

1923 – Walt moved to Hollywood from Kansas City with a short film called Alice’s Wonderland that he hoped would net him a distribution contract. The film was pretty much all Walt had. He managed to secure a contract and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy for 4 years. And just when he looked like he had a winner, in a new cartoon character called Oswald the Rabbit, the distributor stole both the rights and the animators, shutting Walt out.

1928 – After losing Oswald, Walt started from scratch with Mickey Mouse. But he only created two cartoons with the new character before deciding to risk it all with the first sound cartoon. The struggling studio dumped everything they had into the cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Luckily, Walt’s gamble paid off. Mickey was a hit.

1937 – Building on the success of Steamboat Willie, Disney turned out a series of profitable Mickey Mouse cartoons, and added the Silly Symphony series, netting himself a number of Academy Awards in the process for pushing the boundaries of animation technology and art. but Walt soon found a new dream worthy of risk – the first full length animated movie. It what was quickly becoming predictable behaviour for Walt, he risked all their profits from the animated shorts on Snow White. And, as before, it was a phenomenal success, becoming the highest grossing movie until Gone with the Wind bumped it from it’s perch.

In it’s following releases, Disney struggled with finding the right balance between budget and profitability. The war restricted access to foreign markets so profits relied on domestic audiences. Walt continued to push the envelope of what was possible with animation in Disney’s next two releases, Pinocchio and Fantasia. This came at a cost – a budget that meant these films didn’t break even until decades after their debut (thanks to eventual release on VHS and DVD). Walt continually tried to find the right balance between artistic accomplishment and profitability, eventually finding a happy middle ground with classics like Bambi, Cinderella and Mary Poppins (another technical and artistic milestone). It’s amazing to consider how quickly animation progressed, from the primitiveness of Steamboat Willie to the polished art of Show White in just 9 short years.

In the interim Walt also explored TV and live action features, finding significant success in both. Finally, it seemed, Disney had found the groove that led to sustained profitability. Almost any other leader would cling to this groove for dear life, building up the bank account and enjoying the rewards that come with success. Not Walt.

1955 – Walt got restless when he stayed in one place too long. he became bored with incremental improvement, no matter how profitable it proved to be. Walt thrived on risk and new, monumental challenges. And so, he looked for a new one. Walt was 54 years old and had been running Disney, in one form or another, for 35 years. By any measure you might want to apply, he was successful. And he risked all this, everything, on a new dream – an entertainment park. Disneyland represented Walt’s biggest roll of the dice yet, because he had everything to lose.

This restlessness and desire to push the limits epitomized the Disney company for the first 45 years of its history. Walt and the company were really one and the same. His leadership determined the soul of the company. When he died of lung cancer at the age of 66, he left a hole in the heart of Disney that took years to mend (and some might say Walt was never successfully replaced). Never let it be said that one person does not determine the direction of a huge corporation. Disney was testament to the fact that a single person’s vision and ideals can shape and guide a company for decades. This is not the job for a caretaker or bean counter. This is a job for someone who can grasp the impossible and shape the future.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #2: Values are Non-Negotiable

Walt_young_featureWalt Disney’s values were forged in the hardscrabble reality of Kansas City, growing up in a family led by a father that never was quite able to grab success by the tail. Walt was a deeply spiritual individual who held the importance of American and Family values above all else. He spent the rest of his life pursuing an ideal – that of clean wholesome family entertainment. Walt was scrupulous about it. I suspect the adult movies that are now released through Disney’s production arm, Touchstone Films, would have earned a disapproving frown from Walt. Yet of all the major studios, Disney is still the one synonymous with family entertainment.

The normally affable Walt could quickly become contentious when his values came into debate. He drove the overall moral tone of Disney entertainment with an iron will. The door was open for technical and creative innovation, but heaven help the poor Disney employee who let their moral guard slip, even for an instant. It’s only very recently that Disney Park employees were allowed to have a beard, a mustache (ironic, considering Walt himself sported one) or sideburns. Walt felt facial hair detracted from the clean, wholesome image he wanted to maintain in his parks. And the classic Disney films each strove to be more than entertainment – they each carried a strong moral message, usually about the value of a strong family unit.

Whether or not you agreed with Walt’s highly idealistic views, you had to admire the ardor with which he defended them. Walt felt that a corporation without real values was a soulless organization without direction. And his values still live in Disney’s corporate values today:

Values Make Our Brands Stand Out

    * Innovation
          o We follow a strong tradition of innovation.

    * Quality
          o We strive to follow a high standard of excellence.
          o We maintain high-quality standards across all product categories.

    * Community
          o We create positive and inclusive ideas about families.
          o We provide entertainment experiences for all generations to share.

    * Storytelling
          o Every product tells a story.
          o Timeless and engaging stories delight and inspire.

    * Optimism
          o At The Walt Disney Company, entertainment is about hope, aspiration and positive resolutions.

    * Decency
          o We honor and respect the trust people place in us.
          o Our fun is about laughing at our experiences and ourselves.

Are they defended as strongly as they were when Walt was alive? I suspect not, yet it’s a testament to the man that for must of us, Disney and family values are synonymous.

Values are a highly personal thing. You might not subscribe to the same values that Walt did. But the fact is, values have to live at the heart of an organization. They breathe life into it and give it a purpose that’s not open to negotiation or compromise. They are the bearing points that can always be relied on. They stand above profit statements and quarterly earning reports. If they don’t, all you have is a bunch of people standing around trying to figure out the best way to make money. And there are better things in life than that.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #1: Dreams Make a Difference

waltdisneyMy friend and fellow Search Insider columnist, Aaron Goldman, has gained a lot of mileage from one column. Sometime ago, he wrote a column entitled “Everything I Need to Know about Marketing I Learned from Google”. Since then, he’s managed to stretch that out into dozens of columns and an upcoming book. For the next few weeks, I’d like to take inspiration from Aaron and share a few things that Disney has taught me. I don’t expect to get nearly the same mileage that Aaron did (possibly because I don’t have the same attention span) but it’s certainly not because Disney is any less inspirational than Google. For me, Disney presents one of the great corporate histories of the 20th century and Walt has always been one of my personal heroes. But, I will restrict myself to 10 blog posts, one for each of the lessons that Disney has taught me about life and business success. So, let’s start with Lesson One:

Dreams Make a Difference

Walt Disney was possibly the biggest dreamer of the 20th century. Walt always had his gaze firmly focused not the future, quickly moving on from past successes. The next “thing” was always the most important “thing.”  He knew if you spent too much time patting yourself on the back, you’d have your sights focused on where you’ve been, not where you’re going.

In behavioural economics, there’s a saying, “Loss looms larger than gain.” Most of us, faced with a decision of protecting what we have vs. risking it all for a potential future gain tend to circle the wagons and protect the piggy bank. Not Walt. Walt drove his brother Roy crazy by constantly betting it all on a bigger and better dream. For much of it’s history, Disney rode a roller coaster that came frighteningly close to bankruptcy on more than one occasion.

Walt knew that dreams are the fuel that drive us forward. Dreams that focus forward can be achieved with passion and purpose. Dreams that look backward are just one step away from regret. We can do nothing about the past, but we can do something about the future.

Walt was much more than a dreamer, however. Unrealized dreams have not influence on the world beyond the holder of the dream. And that was the magic of Walt. Somehow, he was able to make dreams come true. He knew how to sell dreams, infusing them in others and thereby inspiring them. His dreams were highly contagious, spreading from him (and eventually his brother) through his company outwards to a circle of financiers and partners. Eventually, his dreams reached far enough to touch each one of us.

Disney has not dreamed quite as big or successfully since Walt’s passing, but it’s still a corporation that knows the power of a dream. It has a history of recognizing dreamers and providing the superstructure required to lift those dreams up to the heights.

In Disneyland there is a plaque that says, “It all started with a mouse.” But really, it started with a dream. Walt Disney knew how to take a dream and leverage it to move the world. Powerful stuff indeed!