Page 217 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

198 The Disney Way

Every year, John Robert’s uses storyboarding to identify 24 items that
are critical to the organization’s overall success. Once a month, the entire
staff meets to discuss and reinforce these strategic initiatives.
Taking storyboarding to the next level, John teaches all new employees
how to use visualization to help accomplish long-term goals. His Dream
Retreats have evolved into a training ground for what he terms “the picturiza-
tion process.” As John described them, “They require a lot of homework.
Employees must come to the process with their goals, pictures of their
dreams, even their eulogy.” The Dream Retreat affords people an opportu-
nity to learn how to see the value of visualizing and setting personal goals
through activities such as producing a scrapbook of self-promotions. They
band together in “Dream teams” and vow to hold each other accountable for
achieving their goals. The grand finale is an awards dinner where everyone is
required to dress according to how they envision themselves in five years.
Some rent costumes, some wear Tommy Bahama shirts with a tie; whatever
their “character,” they must remain true to their role during the event. On
the previous day, John calls employees to find out which “roles” they have
chosen. He gives each employee an award based on their personas. Awards
may be “father of the year,” “new entrepreneur of the year,” “best-selling
author,” and so on. John told us, “Each employee must make a detailed five-
minute acceptance speech on how they accomplished their Dream.”
As John Robert’s discovered, the storyboarding process serves as a
springboard for unleashing creative energies, and ultimately contributes to
achieving positive results for employees, customers and business alike.

USING STORYBOARDS TO CAPTURE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Many of our clients are unable or unwilling to spend thousands of dollars on
professional marketing studies to find out just what customers are thinking
and what they really want. In our Dream Retreats and “Creating the Magic
with Dream, Believe, Dare, Do” seminars, we teach a relatively simple varia-
tion of storyboarding to accomplish this goal within structured groups.
Here are the steps for obtaining customer feedback:
1. Invite a group of 15 to 20 customers whom you believe have a
vested interest in helping you improve one or more of your products