Page 60 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

You Better Believe It 41

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effectively convey his idea of hospitality. That’s when the company began
recruiting and training every one of its employees.
Walt wanted each and every cast member to embrace the basic Disney
belief of courtesy to customers, of treating them like guests in their own homes.
“I tell the security officers,” he once said, “that they are never to consider
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themselves cops. They are here to help people.” Setting up a security force
and training the officers in the company’s values and beliefs was no doubt
more expensive than outsourcing the job, but monetary considerations took a
backseat to ensuring that everyone exhibited courtesy.
Every new cast member must spend several days in Traditions training
before starting the job. During this orientation period, the Disney culture is
communicated through powerful storytelling. The value of the program was
proven several years ago when cost-cutting corporate types decided to reduce
the training period by just one day. Complaints from supervisors throughout
the parks began to pour in. “The quality of guest service is not the quality we
had last season,” they said. “Have you changed the hiring policy?” 14
Top management took a close look at the process and found out that only
one thing had changed. The missing day of Traditions training was added
back in and the complaints stopped. Instilling the culture takes time, but
anyone who has visited a Disney theme park is well aware of what the train-
ing program brings to the show: Questions are answered courteously, crowd
control is unobtrusive, and cast members at every turn willingly go the extra
mile to make each guest’s dreams come true.
On the face of it, our advice to strictly adhere to a formalized set of beliefs
and values may sound naïve and unsophisticated, if not downright impracti-
cal. It may come across as the kind of do-good counsel you read about in an
inspirational pamphlet. But this is not theoretical; it is practical and proven
in the stories of companies that have adopted the Believe principle.
One company that displays a strict adherence to its own values is
Lensing Wholesale. A long-standing, family-owned business in Evansville,
Indiana, which distributes building products, Lensing’s strong family val-
ues are transparent to all who enter its doors. While the company provides
outstanding service to all its customers, we were especially impressed to wit-
ness the determination of Lensing’s president, Joe Theby, to formalize the
company’s values and mission in written statements at our recommendation.
Many family businesses ignore this important step, believing that employees
are already clear about company values, since they have been in place since
the company’s formation.