Page 205 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

186 The Disney Way

tool in producing picture books. It allows them to visualize what the final page
will look like and to make sure that one page leads logically to the next.
But storyboarding is not limited to artistic endeavors. We suggest to com-
panies that storyboarding is an effective method to conceptualize their mission
statements, to develop best practices for manufacturing control systems, and to
produce technical plans for improvements. Posted ideas or suggestions become
the first step in the analysis of barriers, the investigation of their root causes, and
the creation of team solutions. Any process can be mapped out in this way.
Storyboarding is a creative and efficient method for generating solutions
to complex problems—those that can sometimes feel overwhelming—because
it breaks situations into smaller, more manageable parts and focuses group
attention on specific aspects of a problem. When ideas and suggestions are
displayed on a wall where they can be read by all and moved about as story-
boarding participants see fit, the confusion that can stymie breakthrough ideas
is dissipated.
No other planning technique offers the flexibility of storyboarding. In
this chapter, we explain exactly how storyboarding works, and we look at a
number of examples of the technique in action. As you read how companies
in various settings are successfully using it to solve a range of problems, think
about putting the technique to work for your organization.

The Birth of a Technique
When Walt Disney came up with the forerunner to the storyboarding tech-
nique in 1928, cartoon animation bore faint resemblance to the complex
web of movement and color we know today. Full animation of cartoon fea-
tures was still just a dream, but it was one Disney was striving to realize. To
that end, he produced thousands more drawings than state-of-the-art anima-
tion required at that time.
The finished drawings were arranged in piles according to a predeter-
mined narrative sequence. Then the cameraperson would photograph them,
and the staff could watch them in a screening room. But with the prodigious
output of drawings, it didn’t take long before piles were stacked up in the
studio. To bring some sense of order and to make it easier to follow a film’s
developing story line, Disney instructed his artists to display their drawings
on a large piece of fiberboard that measured about 4 feet by 8 feet.
Not just finished drawings, but early rough sketches were pinned on
the board. If there were problems with the story line or if a character wasn’t