Book review: The Ride of a Lifetime- An Adventure Trip to Disney and Robert Success Mantra

Don’t you think that the future of the company lies not only in what its leadership is doing, but more on the readiness for unprecedented tides coming at unimaginable speed going to hit the shore that are invisible? What can make that company not only ride but make a perfect sail and to be future ready . What role does the CEO play to make this happen? And this often makes it seem to the outside world looks like Magic!

Yes, this book talks about the personal and professional journey of Robert Iger from his early career days to leading the Walt Disney Corporation as CEO. First part illustrates Robert’s career journey from Studio Supervisor at ABC to CEO of Walt Disney, which Robert describes as Learning path where he describes the start at the bottom to new heights year by year and Robert created the foundation to lead Disney in the coming years.

The second part of this story lines up the details of the acquisitions and deals Disney made under the hood of Robert that included Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Fox and bringing the creative pieces together without any destruction to the core values of any of these organisation and there he takes the Disney to a very different level in a period of 14 years after becoming the CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005. During those days the competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in Disney’s history. Robert pitched as if it is all about the Future and not the past and helped himself and company to be focused on right priorities and isolated from the work done by previous leaders to remain resonant for the CEO role. His vision was to change the company with clear objectives and goals that he streamlined and pivoted as three’s that were (1)Recommit to the concept that quality matters, (2) embrace technology instead of fighting it, and (3) think global and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger have shared the lessons he learned while in Disney and leading it with various examples with different scenarios and he also mentions the ten underlying principles that are necessary for true leadership:

• Optimism Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming.
• Courage Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity.
• Focus Imperative to focus and communicate your priorities clearly and often
• Decisiveness All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale.
• Curiosity Discovery of new ideas and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity.
• Fairness Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them
• Thoughtfulness
• Authenticity
• Relentless pursuit of perfection
• Integrity

Early Career

Robert started his first job as Studio Supervisor at ABC Television with a salary of mere $150 per week where his job was to show up whenever they needed him for whatever task and sometimes as early as 4.30 am at the studio for lightning calls. He got a chance to be on onsite work for The Main Event — Frank Sinatara where he was told by Associate Producer to run out and get a bottle of mouthwash and deliver it fast as to Mr. Sintara room and got $100. There he got a chance to meet his future boss Roone in action for the First time seeing him delivering the show with perfection and never giving up attitude.

Due to conflict he had to move to a new job internally at ABC Sports where he got chances to go around the world covering Sports Events which was something new for him. Roone, his manager, he learned Innovate or Die and learned the art of connecting to users, technical advancements in use and how the sports are covered with the new ways and continue with “The relentless pursuit of perfection” Robert in his early role was Bold enough to accept the mistakes while only few people do and with Roone he was able to create that connection. While there was conflict between U.S and Korea, Robert was able Secure the rights through the host company but through the World Table Tennis Federation — putting an intermediate party to get the business and removing the hurdle.

Robert learned a lot from his bosses and he has acknowledged this while it was Roone who had a lot of impact on him from the early days. Roone taught him the dictum that guided him in every job he had held. Some of the lines that capture the values he perceived from Roone’s are: Innovate or Die and there is no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested.

Entering into Disney

Robert became part of Disney as part of the Acquisition of ABC/Cap cities by Disney in 1995 and at that point he was President and COO of Capital Cities/ABC. Walt Disney was being run by Michael Eisner and he had to sign a 5 Years running contract to be with Disney without being number two. Michael brought one of his contacts, Olivz as president but due to unprofessional ethics, Olivz was not able to continue for long. There were cancelled meetings and people had to wait and the person Michael bought was still running the company as an agent similar to what Olivz did prior to Disney. Michael had to fire Olivz and now Disney was running without any number two. After a long time, in 1998 Robert became the President,COO and member of the board.

CEO of Walt Disney

Disney — Pixer partnership started getting into trouble due to issues between Steve and Michael over the revenue and sharing rights and this resulted in revenue loss and stock fallout for Disney. Special campaigns were launched to Save Disney and this resulted in the situation to the board that Michael Eisner was unable to lead the company and was forced out through voting to resign as CEO, Walt Disney started looking for a new CEO. Robert made sure that his name was listed in the internal search to be eligible for the role and he was the only internal candidate suitable. Turning board members in his favour was not an easy task. After consulting with Scott, he started figuring out how to start turning board members to his favour. After a long process and while external candidates like Meg Whiteman were also contesting, the results came in favour of Robert Iger to be the next CEO. The internal board and the external world perceived him as workaround CEO for six months after Robert was declared as CEO.

For Robert, his priorities after becoming the CEO were to fix the problem with Disney family Roy and Stanley as he felt important for the image of the company not to be in an ongoing battle with a member of the DISNEY family, Salvage a relationship with Pixar. As the Disney — Pixer partnership was in trouble due to issues between Steve and Michael . Robert exploited the chances of getting relationship repairing with Steve Jobs and Pixer.

Another such was scaling down the Disney Strat planning group that was formulating key decisions of the company with a group of 60 to merely single in number and he looked upon the leadership to take key decisions and this was one of his initiatives to make Disney Leaders aware of their role in true essence.

He re-established Disney’s broken relationship with Pixar and Steve Jobs and they came up with Idea of allowing People to watch Video on iPods not just listen to music and the association with Pixar was live again.

Robert’s path to Disney Growth through M&A

The mergers and acquisitions that Disney did had a great impact on the growth of Disney. As Disney made major acquisitions they also approached all the stakeholders and did not hold them down and gave liberty and independence with respect and empathy. This included Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its major entities.

Projecting to the Disney Board that Disney animation was a clear mess was not an easy task. Robert projects the losses that Animation made and that it is impossible to fix in near term and making animation profitable is through buying Pixar. He did a fair analysis of Pixer and established a communication with Steve telling him about the idea of Disney buying Pixar. Robert made the decision to convince the Pixar proposal directly through Steve, John and Ed. Robert has to make another attempt to the board and get the deal through to make Disney Animation profitable for the coming years.

Similarly Robert went extra miles to conquer Marvel Studio and asked Steve to influence the deal by talking to Marvel’s owner IKE Perlmutter who was not a public figure. Robert approached him through former Disney Executive David Maisal who has joined Marvel in their Movie business. It took a few months and Disney added Marvel to its portfolio. He initiated the black Panther movie that was something new to the public against the long held view that such movies struggle at box office. There are multiple such examples to take new risks and initiate by the CEO in the unexplored space. This was followed by the takeover of Fox in the list of Disney acquisitions.

Robert Disney CEO in 2016 was in final preparations to get the Disney Shanghai inaugurated when news of an alligator attack on a young child in Orlando, media was covering it and it could have deeper impact. Handling any such catastrophic issue requires a deep sense of mindfulness and given this instance at high point was taken with full empathy and understanding.

There are many Lessons to lead by that Robert has mentioned in the Appendix while in the chapters there are mentioned scenario you could relate to that he is talking about, some of it are -

“People sometimes shy away from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case trying something before they take the first step.”

“True authority and leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else. Listen to your own instincts and take the decision instead of relying on others.”

“One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism”

Conclusion: This book provides the various aspects of leadership and a great leader and how companies with great leaders can learn, adapt and remain focussed and be relevant on their business and expansion, inspite of the variable circumstances. Given that the average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 is 24 years and Walt Disney is at rank 53 provides a remarkable inputs as the critical role Robert played in the last 2 decades.