Page 56 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Chapter 3

You Better Believe It

When you believe a thing, believe it implicitly and unquestionably. 9
Walt Disney

hen Walt Disney was still an infant, his family moved from
Chicago to a farm in Marceline, Missouri, about 100 miles east
W of Kansas City. Farm life is hard and demanding, and a grow-
ing boy, then as now, always has chores to do. But after the barn was mucked
out or the apples picked, young Walt would lie in the grass and gaze up at
the Missouri sky or watch insects and butterflies flit overhead. These were
memories that he treasured all his life.
From those early years growing up in a rural environment, Disney formed
beliefs and values that stuck with him throughout his life from which he never
deviated. His love of nature, handsomely depicted in numerous animated and
live action films, surely can be traced to those experiences, as can the basic
foursquare family values that still guide The Walt Disney Company today.
Perfectly complementing Walt’s firmly held beliefs was the philoso-
phy expressed by his brother, Roy: “When values are clear, decisions are
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easy.” Together, these precepts formed what is, in effect, The Walt Disney
Company’s mantra: “Live your beliefs”—or what we simply call Believe.
Carrying that theme a step further, we might add that if “seeing is believ-
ing,” then the unparalleled success of The Walt Disney Company is convincing
proof of the power inherent in the Believe principle. But as our clients know,
before success can be achieved, a personal set of core values must be formalized,

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