The Ride of a Lifetime

An organisation with the power and history of The Walt Disney Company, sitting at the intersection of culture, media, arts and entertainment in a time of culture wars, division and rapid change, should probably expect to find itself in frequent controversy and instability.

While Disney has certainly faced controversy from time to time, it has been remarkably successful during Bob Iger’s fifteen year tenure as CEO. Very few senior leaders last fifteen years atop the world’s most iconic organisations. To retire with those fifteen years considered an almost unquestioned success - that is a black swan. It’s why Iger was asked by the Disney board to come out of retirement in November 2022 to retake the post following eighteen months of mistake-ridden leadership under Iger’s successor, Bob Chapek, who struggled to pinpoint where Disney should sit within the intensely complex environments it operates in.

”If there were a machine that produced CEOs and all the dials were turned to eleven, Bob Iger would be the one walking out”, says Sean Bratches, a 27-year veteran of Disney’s ESPN sports network.

Like Walt Disney, Iger is a storyteller. In The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger uses his intuition for a good story to give compelling insight into what drove his success leading The Walt Disney Company.

What made Iger so effective?

Strategic clarity

Iger had complete clarity over where the organisation’s strategic advantage lay: storytelling. No other brand could create the quality of stories that Disney created. In 2016, 700 films were made in the US, and thousands globally. Disney made just ten, but they took twenty percent of the global box office, and the top five grossing films were all Disney’s. To leverage this strategic advantage, Iger knew he needed to manage creativity effectively, continue to recruit the best talent, and invest in that talent.

For Iger, managing creativity meant understanding that creativity is not a science, “everything is subjective, there is often no right or wrong.” This makes strategic decision making and direct feedback more difficult. So much of the creative process is driven by passion and relentless crafting; creators can be understandably resistant to a ”C-suiter” questioning their judgement. Iger would approach feedback carefully and thoughtfully - empathy was key.

He would start with the big stuff, because that is what really mattered. If the big stuff was great, then he would go into the details. If the big stuff was bad, the small stuff did not matter anyway. Iger would be very deliberate in tailoring his feedback: giving feedback to Steven Spielberg requires a different approach to giving feedback to an up and coming director.

Ryan Coogler began directing Black Panther at 32 years old, a film that had particular social significance with a majority black cast led by a black superhero, and this additional responsibility lay heavily on Coogler. In his first feedback session with Iger, Iger said…

”You’ve created a very special film. I have some specific notes, but before I give them to you, I want you to know we have tremendous faith in you”.

This meant the world to Coogler, immediately putting his anxiety at ease and making him more receptive to Iger’s subsequent comments.

From the micro one to one feedback, up to the macro multi-billion dollar acquisitions of Marvel, Pixel, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox among others, all of it was about creating better stories, and all of it mattered, no matter how big or small.

This is one of the places where Chapek fell short when he succeeded Iger. Chapek centralised authority and encroached on the creative process in unhelpful ways - Iger has returned in part to reinvigorate the creativity that makes Disney, Disney.

Iger’s complete clarity over Disney’s strategic advantage brought focus and mission orientation that helped drive a five-fold market-value increase.

Values-based leadership

In The Ride of A Lifetime, Iger outlines ten values that shape his approach to leadership: optimism, courage, focus, decisiveness, curiosity, fairness, thoughtfulness, authenticity, the relentless pursuit of perfection and integrity. Three of these values seem to be most important for Iger: optimism and courage, and then integrity sits at the top, like this:

Why optimism, courage and integrity?

Optimism. Iger saw one of his primary roles as instilling belief in the organisation and a sense that the future can be better. This was largely absent towards the end of his predecessor’s stint as CEO, and something that Iger flagged as needing quick improvement because Disney is meant to make the world more optimistic, but it could not do that when there was little optimism internally. Iger’s ”pragmatic enthusiasm” and strategic clarity, even in the face of complicated decisions or suboptimal circumstances, helped to reinvigorate the organisation with a belief in the mission.

”Simply put, people are not motivated or energised by pessimists.” Bob Iger

Courage. Staying true to the heritage of the organisation while adapting to the rapidly changing environment we live in is difficult, and it usually means change is constant. Change takes courage, especially when it is change away from something comfortable, or something tied to tradition.

There were three especially significant changes Iger made.

1. Expanding into online streaming with Disney+ which now has more subscribers than Netflix (though both have their challenges)

2. Building a Disney theme park in Shanghai, Iger’s proudest achievement. Disney Shanghai demonstrated how an iconic American brand can be authentically Disney, but distinctly Chinese, even amid geopolitical tensions and significant logistical challenges which frequently delayed and occasionally threatened the project.

3. Making a series of multi-billion dollar acquisitions. In Iger’s first board meeting he proposed acquiring Pixel from Apple. Initially the board thought he was crazy, but after a series of meetings with Steve Jobs, a $7.4 billion deal was made, one of the biggest in entertainment history.

Iger was unafraid to courageously pursue what he believed would tap deepest into Disney’s strategic advantage.

Integrity. Crises are one of the best testers of integrity. In crisis it is tempting to deviate from core values to meet short-term urgent demands, but this so often leads to misjudgements and contradictions which undermine the overall response.

Iger developed a reputation within Disney for acting decisively and effectively when crisis hit. He could act decisively because he and his team armed themselves with absolute clarity about their values and strategy, and that is what you need to make decisive judgements in intense situations, with integrity.

For example, Iger quickly terminated the highly lucrative ”Roseanne” show, against advice, after the host Roseanne Barr wrote a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett (senior advisor to President Obama), and he publicly and categorically denounced Florida’s proposed ”Don’t say gay“ bill. This contrasted Chapek’s response as CEO which was far more delayed and reluctant. Iger consistently did what he believed to be right by his values and Disney’s values, and when he acted, he was quick, clear and decisive.

Iger’s strategic clarity and values-based leadership brought unprecedented success to an already iconic brand. While having absolute clarity over strategy is hard, and sticking to your values even in the difficult times is hard, they are both very do-able.

If we all had greater strategic clarity, and a more values-based style of leadership, our organisations would be stronger for it.

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You can find The Ride of a Lifetime here.

My next three blogs will focus more on global challenges and will be inspired by Disorder by Professor Helen Thompson, The End of Democracy by Professor David Runciman, and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.