Page 240 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Re-Creating the Magic 221

Ovitz would never have been hired, which would have eliminated another
costly and embarrassing fiasco. The animation department would still be
intact, and the string of mediocre films would have been replaced with
modern classics in the tradition of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
And finally, Disney would have purchased Pixar during its start-up days for
millions rather than the billions Disney ended up paying.
Like Walt and Roy, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells tended to the cre-
ative and business operations, respectively. Together, they produced a rare
formula, allowing for the coexistence of a childlike entrepreneurial environment
and a business-driven multinational corporation. As evidenced by Michael’s
last 10 years at the helm of Disney, hard as he may have tried, he was unable
to maintain this balance. It is interesting that Michael changed his stripes and
gave way to his latent hard-core business drive. He became the tight-fisted
bean counter, sacrificed quality, abolished creativity, and released unimagina-
tive sequels such as The Lion King 1½. However, there were several flashes
of creativity that emerged during Michael’s last 10 years: the creation of
the Disney stage show along with the renovation of Broadway, the Animal
Kingdom theme park, and the Pirates of the Caribbean film.
It’s refreshing, however, that in an era of the Enron and Arthur Andersen
scandals where corporations have failed because of criminal mismanagement
and fraud, the boardroom battle at Disney was about the culture and main-
taining the legacy of its founder Walt Disney. In the end, Michael Eisner
realized that only one man in the history of the “most magical place on
earth” could capture the hearts and minds of people everywhere, and that
man was Walt Disney.

Bring Back the Magic

Each year, we spend a good deal of time at Walt Disney World and
Disneyland in a variety of activities from keynoting conferences to sharing
the “magic” with clients, family, and friends. During the last years of Michael
Eisner’s tenure at Disney, we had detected a slight decline in the level of ser-
vice at the theme parks. Although this change may not have been discernible
to the casual observer or occasional tourist, it is certainly apparent to those of
us who have considered Disney as the pinnacle of service standards for years.
When we questioned cast members about the boardroom battles between
Michael and Roy, many reported to us that it was “an embarrassment” to the