Page 103 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

84 The Disney Way

eventually produces a consensus, and company insiders insist that no one
ever asserts an attitude of possessiveness. The teamwork continues through-
out the long process of animation, camera work, adding sound, and editing
until, at last, the film is ready for release.
References to teamwork also are sprinkled throughout Disney films, but
none better illustrates Walt’s belief in the value of collaboration than Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs. For many of us, those seven distinctive little
fellows—Happy, Sleepy, Doc, Bashful, Sneezy (originally named Jumpy),
Grumpy, and Dopey—are childhood friends. Each was carefully drawn with
his own distinguishing characteristics, yet we remember them first and fore-
most as a team, always going off to work each morning whistling a happy
tune. Walt purposely made the notion of cooperative endeavor an integral
part of that script, with the dwarfs illustrating how different talents and per-
sonalities can be brought together to accomplish shared goals.
Many of the companies we work with have become convinced, like
Walt Disney, that it takes a multifunctional team to produce the best pos-
sible show. They are using teams in their everyday operations and deriving
benefits—such as enhanced problem solving—that help to ensure long-term
success. Look to these examples to guide your organization in tapping the
latent power of its collective wisdom.

The Signals of a Good Leader
In our seminars, we can’t seem to stress enough how critical leadership is in
producing a healthy corporate culture where teams can flourish.
The kind of leadership required in the best of cultures has been put in
a nutshell by the late Edward R. Murrow, one of the world’s most credible
broadcasters, whose story was dramatized in the movie Good Night, and Good
Luck, which was nominated for six Academy Awards. He said, “To be persua-
sive, we must be believable. To be believable we must be credible. And to be
credible we must be truthful.” Leaders have to earn their credibility through
action and through example. The only effective communication—the only
reality—is performance. And leaders must perform in order to earn trust, and
before a sense of common team purpose can emerge.
Great leaders such as Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts dem-
onstrate through their actions how maintaining a competitive edge in business
can only be accomplished by generating wealth through human resources, not
through physical assets.