Page 172 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Practice, Practice, Practice 153

and traditions among old hands. Such contact with senior staffers also makes
clear to new cast members that opportunities for advancement are available.
But perhaps the thing that most distinguishes the Disney training
approach is its initial concentration on making each new employee feel as if
his or her efforts will make a real difference to the company as a whole. As
the head of training and development at Disney University says, “If we want
new cast members to deliver Disney, that is, to exceed people’s expectations,
then for those first few days they’re with us, our new people better feel that
the company believes the same about them.” 55
New employees who are thoroughly grounded in what is expected of
them and who believe that the company has confidence in their abilities will
gain an amazing degree of self-assurance. Consequently, they will do their jobs
much better right from the start, increasing their value to their employers.

What Kind of Training?

A few years back, Training magazine estimated that $48 billion was being
spent annually on the training of 47.2 million employees who put in 1.5 billion
hours on professional development. That’s a lot of money and a lot of people, so
it sounds pretty impressive until you begin to scrutinize the numbers carefully.
The 47.2 million employees constituted only 37 percent of the workforce in the
United States, while 54 percent of the money spent was allocated to training
managerial candidates, who make up about 10 percent of the workforce. That’s
not such a splendid picture after all, and it gives rise to a number of questions:

■ Are we training the right people?
■ Are we getting the results we need to be competitive?
■ Is standard training enough?
■ What kind of training should be offered?

First and foremost, we must start training all employees, not just the
professional managers. That many companies fail to grasp the urgency of
implementing widespread training was brought home to us in our work with
a client. This company had agreed to sponsor a program designed to teach
both management and union employees how to improve performance. At
the end of the third day, a mid-level manager came to us and said, “Why are
you teaching these union employees management techniques?”
Somewhat taken aback by the question, we explained that we firmly believe
that customer focus has to be everybody’s job, but especially the front-line