Page 180 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Practice, Practice, Practice 161

When creating personal development plans, the first requirement is that
each employee understand the company’s vision and its values and how they
relate to the individual’s responsibilities. Job scope and guidelines for per-
formance must be clarified. Everyone from the mailroom employee—whose
speedy and accurate job performance precludes stopping to chat at every
office—to the middle manager—whose in-box should be emptied expedi-
tiously—must understand his or her part in the process. It should be made
clear that one person’s failure to carry out assigned duties has an impact on the
whole process and that the organization is only as strong as its weakest link.
One of our clients took an interesting approach to developing guidelines
for employees. Rather than defining procedures, the company identified areas of
known failure, ideas that had been tried in the past without success. Other than
these particular paths, employees were free to exercise their own initiative in
order to obtain desired results. Having an understanding of how and why some-
thing failed in the past enabled the employees to accomplish their goals more
efficiently. With this example in mind, we encourage our clients to go heavy on
guidelines and light on procedures, particularly when training employees.
A second imperative for setting up effective development plans is that
desired outcomes be jointly defined by management and employees. Avoid
specifying methods and means. Doing so only leads to undesirable and
unproductive micromanagement. What’s more, tightly prescribed approach-
es give employees a built-in excuse for failure; for example, “I did what
you told me to do, so it’s not my fault if something went wrong.” Often a
simple example of what quality output looks like is the best motivator. At
the moment of understanding, all those necessary measurable objectives and
expected results will make sense to them.
At Disneyland, Jungle Cruise Boat cast members are given a script that
suggests telling certain jokes but still allows cruise leaders to inject their own
personalities into the performance. By giving cast members guidelines rather
than dictates with prescribed expectations for the outcome, The Walt Disney
Company is encouraging employees to exercise good judgment, which is a
hallmark of empowerment.
A third area of importance in designing individual development plans is
an evaluation of processes. According to sociologist Kurt Lewin, effectively
changing behavior requires consideration of the environment and the process
as well as the person. “Behavior,” he observed, “is a function of the person
times the environment.” 60