Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) (34 page)

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I hope I never forget Walt’s advice. It was instrumental in building and nurturing my career. It led me to develop “Mickey’s Ten Commandments” as an adjunct and expansion of Walt’s own teachings. It inspired me to communicate the opportunity we were given over and over again at Imagineering, to fill blank page after blank page with new and exciting concepts for our Disney fans around the world. It helped make us dreamers
and
doers.

As Ray Bradbury told us when we were developing Epcot Center for Walt Disney World, it made us contemporary Renaissance people. Bradbury said we were acting out what Albert Schweitzer often spoke of in his philosophies years ago. Schweitzer said, “…set a good example for the world. If you are excellent, if you are of high quality, the world will imitate you.”

Bradbury told us, “It’s a big project. But of all the groups in the world, while everyone else is busy talking, you’re doing the stuff that’s really going to count.”

Among all those “retirement e-mails,” the supreme compliment came in a familiar “top ten” format from Craig Russell, chief design and project delivery executive for Imagineering:

Pretty amazing couple of days a week ago, celebrating the fulfillment of a truly amazing career. I found myself talking with countless Imagineers past and present, about what you have meant to our company and have taught us over the years about being a disciple of Walt’s. It was at the same time humbling and melancholy to be celebrating the end of the most fruitful career in the history of our company. As I reflect upon those celebrations and the first week of the “Post-Marty” era, I feel it’s important to thank you for the many things you have helped teach me about being a great Imagineer. Stealing your idea of Mickey’s Ten Commandments, here’s a shot at the ten most valuable lessons you helped to teach me about leadership, our company, and the product we create:

1. The most valuable implements in our trade are trust, collaboration, and partnership. With these tools, you can do truly amazing things.
   
2. It’s all about creating and delivering great stories and immersive environments for our guests. No schedule, budget, or strategy measures up in importance to the value of a product that WOWs our audience.
   
3. We must trust our instincts as design professionals about projects which inspire us. When we inspire ourselves, we will certainly WOW our guests.
   
4. Imagineering is a true team sport—there indeed is only one name on the door. We either make it great or mediocre together.
   
5. We are blessed as a company with
   great
   people. It’s our responsibility as leaders to inspire and empower them to do great things.
   
6. One of our most important contributions as leaders is the acknowledgement and celebration of outstanding contribution and great achievement.
   
7. We must balance our tremendous success with an uncompromising will to improve.
   
8. We must every day remind ourselves to have fun in this business of fun.
   
9. Our heritage is important—so is the health of our culture and community.
   
10. As a group of professionals, we are set apart from most by our strength of passion for the guests we entertain and product we build. Our role as leaders is to allow that passion to flourish.
    

Thank you, Marty, for everything you’ve done to help build this amazing company and to teach those of us who are now privileged to carry on the legacy. Please stay in touch and feel free to stop by anytime you can. We’re all anxiously awaiting the book—it will most certainly be required reading for all lmagineers!

“Thanx!”

When our children, Howard and Leslie, were very young, Leah and I read many stories to them, hopefully accounting for their love of good stories and good writing today. One evening, the story I read mentioned something about the brain; Howard quickly asked, “What does your brain do?” Not being an expert in neuroscience, I answered simply: “Your brain sends messages—orders to act—to different parts of your body.”

I continued reading the story, but suddenly I realized that Howard was exceptionally still and quiet, so I asked if anything was wrong. Howard responded: “I’m waiting for a message.”

At the time, I struggled not to laugh. But as I reflected on his answer, I realized that “out of the mouths of babes” was not a cliché. Whatever message Howard received, there was also a lesson for my approach to leadership…and it found its way into my “Mickey’s Ten Commandments” in several important ways.

You will find it in
Take time to teach—mentors are mensches
. But there are few leadership skills more important to those you lead than this advice:
Be responsive and make decisions—that’s what leaders do!

We’ve all been there: everyone does his or her assignment; the time comes for the decisive meeting, and—nothing. How deflating is that? Granted, not everything is always black and white. But leadership is about making directions clear—and moving on. If you’re not willing to make a decision and move on—to be
responsive
—then leadership isn’t for you.

Shortly before I retired, a colleague at Disneyland reminded me of a note I had sent her. “We always have plenty of executives,” I wrote, “but we never have enough leaders.” Her note made me reflect on a few simple ideas I often pondered.

In leading a discussion, and especially in speechmaking, I tried always to recall this warning: “He has a way of saying nothing, in a way that leaves nothing unsaid.” In other words, remember that famous KISS: keep it simple, stupid.

Behind the Concierge desk at a hotel I stayed in, I saw this sign about service:

THE ANSWER IS YES. WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?

It reminded me of the “creative service” we all learned: that we could never say “no” to Walt Disney. It was retired Admiral Joe Fowler, who headed the construction of Disneyland and Walt Disney World, who always practiced this philosophy. When Bob Gurr handed his design for the Disneyland submarines to Joe Fowler, with no idea about how they could be built and with Walt questioning their
doability
, the admiral gave this response: “Can do, Walt!” After the meeting, Bob Gurr asked Joe Fowler how he could be so positive about building the submarines, based on Bob’s simple sketch. “I don’t have a clue,” Joe Fowler responded. “But we’ll figure it out.” And “we” did.

I could easily write a new “Leader’s Bible” around these concepts. The answer is Yes—what was the question? Can do! Be optimistic—if you are not, who will be?

In our creation of enchanting and fantastic three-dimensional worlds, I often recalled that Disneyland actually grew out of Walt Disney’s
disenchantment
with the amusements he visited with daughters Diane and Sharon.

The luckiest and smartest leaders I watched as role models as I grew up at Disney always surrounded themselves with people who were smarter, and more talented and productive than they were. I wanted to be sure that my direct reports, the creative leaders of Imagineering, knew how much I valued their knowledge, insights, ideas, and experiences, so I established a weekly Creative Leaders Lunch meeting, held every Wednesday, with those project leaders. These were especially important as we grew and spread out around the world.

These lunches were both “formal” and “informal”: I wanted each leader to share something important happening on their projects; perhaps a challenge about which their colleagues could offer a new perspective. But I also provided time for anyone to talk about personal experiences: a movie or theatrical play they enjoyed, an artist whose exhibit they admired.

One key principle we practiced in those lunch meetings—in fact, in all Imagineering meetings: no idea is a bad idea! Okay, we all know that’s not true. But what happens when you put someone down in a “Blue Sky” brainstorming meeting? As soon as you tell someone, “That’s a stupid idea,” you will probably never get a fresh, excited thought from that person again. You have just said, “You have a very short leash—we don’t need your off-the-wall ideas.”

So many times, after one of these “stupid” comments, someone else in the same meeting would come to my office the next day and begin the conversation with, “You know that dumb idea Jim suggested in the meeting yesterday? Well, suppose instead of ‘xyz’ we tried ‘xyz plus zyx’—I think there’s a potential in that.” And we were off and running to test something new that “stupid idea” had sparked.

Staying in touch with the “outside world” of entertainment, museum exhibits, fashion—all the arts—was, and is, extremely relevant. I often recalled that prescient IBM advertisement I had pinned on my office wall during the development of Epcot Center:
THE FUTURE IS A MOVING TARGET
! How true! And it’s moving faster and faster. Remember: the last three letters of trend are E-N-D!

Children learn early in school about the concept of sharing experiences. Walt was right again: “Adults,” he said, “are only kids grown up.” Sharing ideas and experiences—wherever we find them—is a leader’s responsibility.

“At the end of the day” (thank you, Frank Wells) that one thought—sharing ideas and experiences—may be the most important advice I can pass on from my half century creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms, and before that, the wonderful educational opportunities I enjoyed at UCLA.

How can I possibly top the advice of Coach John Wooden in his “Preseason Letter to the Team” of July 23, 1971, reprinted in the McGraw-Hill 2007 book
The Essential Wooden
by John Wooden and Steve Jamison. Coach Wooden wrote:

If each of you makes every effort to develop to the best of your ability, follow the proper rules of conduct and activity most conducive to good physical condition, subordinate individual acclaim for the welfare of the team, and permit no personality clashes or difference of opinion with teammates or coaches to interfere with your teammates’ efforts, it will be a very rewarding year.

At the end of that season, the UCLA basketball team captured the eighth of ten national championships they won under Coach Wooden’s leadership.

I keep a framed copy of Walt Disney’s “Four C’s” on my home-office wall, and I read it every day. I had discovered a poorly written version of this and rewrote it—then got Walt to record it this way for that “Disney Image” presentation in Florida. Now I believe this is the accepted quote. It pretty much says it all:

Somehow I can’t believe there are many heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy, and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe in it all the way. Have Confidence in your ability to do it right. And work hard to do the best possible job.

Life is like a blank sheet of paper. You never know what it can be until you put something on it. So Dream It! Do It! And work hard to do the best possible job.

What are you waiting for?