Page 150 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Dare to Dare 131

Avoiding the Short-Term Mentality

Admittedly, being able to determine whether taking an action or not taking
it will put employees and/or customers in jeopardy is not always easy. What’s
more, some managers are so determined to protect their own turfs that they
prefer the status quo to any proposition that might threaten their position,
no matter how reasonable. This is akin to the “short-term mentality” that
we discussed in Chapter 3, and it is the kiss of death for innovation and
risk taking. Many great companies have slipped into decline because of this
mindset, which combines an inability to take on challenges with a dangerous
self-satisfaction with past achievements.
Walt Disney, of course, exhibited the exact opposite of that mindset.
When it came to technological advances, for example, he knew that no one
could cling to past achievements and survive, so he always had his antennae
out for new technology. When the movie industry stubbornly refused to sell
or lease any of its products to the television networks in the 1940s and early
1950s, thinking it could stop the juggernaut, Walt took a different view. He
saw television’s potential market value, and he embraced the opportunities
the new medium offered, realizing that it presented yet another outlet for
his product.
Although Disney was clever enough to recognize the potential television
held, he still spurned the networks’ initial approach. As always, Walt was
determined to control the environment in which his work was released, and
he feared that the black-and-white screen would not do justice to his color
cartoons and films.
When he did make a television deal in 1953, he made it with the fledgling
American Broadcasting Company, in part because that network agreed to
help finance Disneyland. In return, ABC received access to Disney’s backlog
of films and cartoons. Thus, just as movie audiences were declining markedly
in the 1950s, lured away by the flickering screens right in their own living
rooms, Disney was cementing an alliance that would plant his product firmly
in the new medium. Today, Disney not only has a string of TV successes to
its credit, including its own cable channel, it also owns ABC outright.
In our work with the Mead Johnson Nutritional Division of Bristol-Myers
Squibb, we encountered a leader who had to make the courageous decision to
focus on the long term in the face of very difficult near-term problems.
When we began our talks with this leader, Dr. Bill Cross, who happened
to be the division’s vice president for quality, his reception of our proposals