Page 200 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Make Your Elephant Fly—Plan 181

During the early retreat, the team began using storyboards to develop
an entire 18-month plan so that people could see what had to be done
and could negotiate their schedules. Someone said, “This is January and
you expect me to get this done by April. I can’t do this unless engineer-
ing produces its blueprints for this part by mid-March. I’m dependent
on them. How can I do this?” With these kinds of comments, we walked
through the whole process and established everyone’s role and when they
had to deliver a certain part of their output.

Our Featured Organization:
The Cheesecake Factory

A WELL-BAKED PLAN
The Cheesecake Factory chairman and CEO, David Overton, is a mas-
ter dreamer and a meticulous craftsman. He is, piece by piece (no pun
intended!), building an empire composed of restaurants that have become
legendary for large, something-for-everyone menus that serve huge por-
tions to vast numbers of people. After nearly three decades of business that
began in Beverly Hills, California, the company has reached $1 billion
in annual sales and 110 restaurants, including 103 Cheesecake Factory
stores and seven Grand Lux Cafes. Oh, yes, and two Cheesecake Factory
Express units inside DisneyQuest® indoor family entertainment centers
(in Chicago, Illinois, and Orlando, Florida).
How does he do it? For starters, David Overton has hand-picked a
“passionate, dedicated, hard-working group of people with good values
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and who put one foot in front of the other,” in David’s words. Those
traits were the same as those of his entrepreneurial parents, Oscar and
Evelyn, who started a small wholesale and retail bakery business in Detroit
over 50 years ago. Having built a reputation for perfect cheesecake that
could be made anywhere, and growing weary of Detroit, Evelyn and
Oscar headed to Los Angeles in 1971 to start fresh. In California, every-
thing seemed more difficult—even the professional ovens didn’t arrive
for seven months, forcing Evelyn to use her own oven which held only
four cakes at a time. The process of filling orders was often an all-day and
all-night ordeal.

(Continued)