Page 115 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

96 The Disney Way

executives who chose to host a barbecue, actually cooking the burgers and hot
dogs and serving the team themselves. A personal effort is a particularly effec-
tive way of showing appreciation. As Dr. Bill Cross of Mead Johnson believed,
“I think that [teamwork] is making the workplace more relaxed, and work
ought to be fun, if you can use that term. And we are trying to make work fun
and it is succeeding to a large extent.” 31
We also encourage teams to develop their own celebrations. When man-
agement is comfortable encouraging this—and certainly not all management
can do it—team members gain an added sense of empowerment. They can say,
“This is really our team, so let’s decide together how we want to celebrate.”
But whether it’s a function of management or of the team itself, the important
thing is to plan at the beginning for some type of rewards as team members
reach and exceed their goals.
George Zimmer learned the value of celebrations during his college frater-
nity years in the 1960s by attending coed weekend parties and playing ball
on the lawn of Washington University in St. Louis. Adding comedic flavor to
the whole experience was fraternity brother Harold Ramis, who cowrote the
hilariously funny movie classic Animal House. Released in 1978 by National
Lampoon, Animal House starred the late John Belushi, one of the brightest
stars of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and launched National Lampoon as
the dynamo comedy machine of the 1970s. The movie’s outrageous story is
laced with just about everything that flies in the face of conservative, tradi-
tional rules, from beer bashes to toga parties and blaring music.
From the very beginning, George’s goal for his own company was to
incorporate fun (without the raunchy antics) into an annual event, now
known as the notorious Men’s Wearhouse Christmas Party. Each year, from
early November through the third week of December, in all three company
divisions, employees don their finest apparel and head for the grand ballroom
of a local hotel where a tuxedo-clad George Zimmer has staged one of the
flashiest annual events in corporate history. Everything has been meticulously
orchestrated for the elegant soireé, which costs the company nearly 2 million
dollars a year. A company tractor-trailer travels across the United States deliv-
ering the sound and light systems and party favors to every single venue. There
are approximately 50 parties in all, each thrown on only weekend nights. “It’s
wild,” George Zimmer told us. “We even have our own company DJ who
works full-time. I consider this to be the best party I go to all year.” 32
Beyond the basic premise of rewarding employees for a year of endur-
ing tough retail hours and delivering unparalleled service, the parties are in