Page 287 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

268 The Disney Way

guest expectations and which demands superior performance from everyone,
holds as much sway now as it did when Walt Disney first decreed it.
That The Walt Disney Company manages continually to top itself and
delight the world with its magic year after year, decade after decade, is a tribute
to its leadership, both past and present. Part of Walt Disney’s greatness was
that he laid down a solid foundation of beliefs and values, including a standard
of performance excellence and a mechanism (Disney University) for inculcat-
ing his cast members with these values.

Committed to Beliefs
The spectacle, the excitement, the breadth of product—all of these things
contribute to the legend. Yet if there is one thing that keeps people coming
back, it is the consistency of the experience. The Walt Disney Company is
the master at creating controlled environments that never disappoint. Because
the company goes to great lengths to communicate its beliefs and traditions to
every cast member, the Disney product offers people a comforting familiarity
that is hard to duplicate in today’s fast-paced world. That’s not to say that
there are no surprises, merely that all the surprises are on the upside.
Disney’s insistence that customers be treated like guests continues to be of
paramount importance in providing that always-positive, expectation-exceeding
experience. Thus a visitor to any of the theme parks will find that a question
is answered as pleasantly today as it would have been in the Disneyland of
the 1950s and 1960s. Cast members are never too busy to stop and chat with
guests; crowd control is performed with a smile; and lost children are pampered
with small pleasures. The human touch is still very much in evidence.
Yet without a corresponding belief in and commitment to employees, the
customer philosophy would soon flounder. The two go together, as the song
says, like a horse and carriage, and you can’t have one without the other.
Maintaining the company’s focus amid enormous growth—the number
of employees has more than tripled since 1984—requires that Disney be ever
more vigilant about recognizing the significant role that each cast member
plays and then emphasizing that all the pieces are needed to ensure the suc-
cess of the entire team. By making cast members feel that their input makes
a difference, Disney inspires further contributions.
Despite a decade of boardroom turmoil, honesty, reliability, loyalty, and
respect for the individual are as much a part of the Disney culture today as they