Page 194 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Make Your Elephant Fly—Plan 175

does not have to keep track of what everyone is doing every minute of the

day. There is no need to ask how the project is going. Instead, management
can safely trust that the team is keeping tabs on progress and that appropriate

appraisals will be forthcoming at specified points along the way.
Project leaders understand, of course, that if problems arise that threaten
deadlines or if some assistance is needed, management is there to help.
Otherwise, the message from management should be, “You’re on your own
until you’ve finished this phase of the project.” An interesting sidelight about
Disney’s planning process is that many times a project may not receive the
necessary funding to continue. In most companies, when this happens the
team is viewed as a failure.
At Disney, they look at these projects as assets that may be dusted off and
continued midstream as funding or technology becomes available. The story-
line for the legendary movie The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, really began
in the late 1930s with the amazing pastel and watercolor sketches of illustrator
Kay Nielson. The Disney team recently pulled some pieces out of the studio
archives and created the musical jewel that will soon be transformed with live
characters for Broadway. The Little Mermaid was the last Disney animated fea-
ture to use hand-painted cells and analog technology. The animators received
such inspiration from the Nielsen story sketches that they gave her a “visual
development” credit on the film. The movie was hailed as the phoenix of big
screen feature animation and was the first to spawn a TV series. The movie’s
music earned the Academy Award for Best Score. Additionally, “Under the
Sea” won the Academy Award for Best Song, the first Disney tune to win since
“Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” from Song of the South won in 1947.

A Planning Center Facilitates Communication

One of the most effective tools we’ve found for managing a project and bring-
ing an idea to its successful fruition is a planning center, a room where all the
various elements of an entire project and its progress can be assembled.
When The Walt Disney Company was still small—some 1,200 employ-
ees—management pinned rough drafts of drawings and story ideas to the walls
of a planning room so that the exact status of a project could be quickly
ascertained. Walt Disney didn’t care much for meetings or written reports.
He preferred to wander into the planning center alone, usually late at night,
and scan the walls for samples of work in progress. Comparing the visuals to
the vision he held in his mind told him instantly whether a cartoon or feature
film project was on the right track.