Page 46 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Make Everyone’s Dreams Come True 27

Group, Inc. is a Santa Monica–based hotel company that owns and manages
nationwide properties, largely Embassy Suites and Marriott Hotels. In 2002,
Mike championed a two-day Dream Retreat for his management team in the
Arizona desert, where they turned their organizational “Dream” into concrete
objectives: track customer perceptions through feedback; contain costs; and
grow the business. “The process helped us work on our goals, corporate team
arm in arm with the hotel staff members, through the creation and visualiza-
tion of the storyboard. This really simplified our ability to communicate these
goals to the department heads and line-level employees when we returned to
our properties. After the Dream Retreat, our president provided a platform
at subsequent operations meetings for us to discuss how we were achieving
5
these goals,” commented Regina Samy, vice president. Today, WCG is one
of the leading companies in the hospitality management business with a results-
oriented approach that produces bottom-line operating numbers that are
among the best in the industry.
When Walt Disney was at the helm of the company, everyone was
invited to voice his or her opinions and to make suggestions—in fact, not
just invited but required. The corporate hierarchy dissolved when it came
to offering ideas for improving a movie script, a theme park ride, or an ani-
mated sequence. Anyone could bring suggestions for cartoons and features
to Walt himself. Basically, the same holds true today, but the size of the
company makes a casual approach impractical. The company does provide
regular opportunities to harvest good ideas from all corners of the organiza-
tion, however.
In the early days at the helm of The Walt Disney Company, Michael
Eisner instituted a thrice-yearly event known as the Gong Show, named after
a television program popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Animators, secretaries,
and anyone else who thought he or she had a good idea could formally make
a pitch to a panel of top brass that included then CEO Michael Eisner; vice
chairman of the board, Roy Disney; executive vice president of animation,
Tom Schumacher; and president of the animation division (now president
of the film division), Peter Schneider.
On average, 40 ideas were presented as succinctly as possible. It was
a tough milieu because the listeners at the table provided immediate and
honest reactions. “You must have immediate communication and not worry
about people’s egos and feelings,” Schneider says. “If you do that enough
and people do not get fired or demoted, they begin to understand that no