Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger

Notebook for

The Ride of a Lifetime

Robert Iger;

Citation (APA): Iger, R. (2021). The Ride of a Lifetime [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

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Prologue

• Courage. The foundation of risk-taking is courage, and in ever-changing, disrupted businesses, risk-taking is essential, innovation is vital, and true innovation occurs only when people have courage. This is true of acquisitions, investments, and capital allocations, and it particularly applies to creative decisions. Fear of failure destroys creativity.

Chapter 1: Starting at the Bottom

• Instead, it’s about creating an environment in which you refuse to accept mediocrity. You instinctively push back against the urge to say There’s not enough time, or I don’t have the energy, or This requires a difficult conversation I don’t want to have, or any of the many other ways we can convince ourselves that “good enough” is good enough.
• That’s true, and it’s significant. In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible not to make them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes. What’s not okay is to undermine others by lying about something or covering your own ass first.

Chapter 2: Betting on Talent

• He was an amiable, funny guy; his energy and optimism were infectious; and, crucially, he knew what he didn’t know. This is a rare trait in a boss. It’s easy to imagine another person in Dennis’s shoes overcompensating for the fact that he’d never worked at a network by exuding a kind of fake authority or knowledge, but that wasn’t how Dennis was wired.
• They would talk about valuing ability more than experience, and they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them. It wasn’t that experience wasn’t important, but they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.

Chapter 3: Know What You Don’t Know (and Trust in What You Do)

• There’s nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.
• I think it’s also fair to say, though, that we wouldn’t have gone to number one in prime time without my running it. Dan and Tom’s faith gave me the courage to take big risks; and if I had a strength, it was my ability to urge creative people to do their best work and take chances, while also helping them rebound from failure. It’s always a collective effort, but my years running Entertainment gave me a new appreciation for what it takes to get a group of talented people to produce at the highest level.
• I wouldn’t as a rule recommend promoting someone as rapidly as they promoted me, but I will say one more time, because it bears repeating: The way they conveyed their faith in me at every step made all the difference in my success.

Chapter 4: Enter Disney

• There were people around the table who had worked for Tom and Dan for their entire careers, and they were looking at me asking, “What happens now? What do we do?” I spoke as frankly as I could. Disney was a very different corporate culture than ours, but Tom had the interests of the entire company at heart when he agreed to the deal. It was going to be a difficult transition, though; there was no way around that. I wanted people to understand that I knew how unsettling it was. The corporate culture we were all used to was about to end. Disney was more aggressive, more creative, more a creature of Hollywood than the company we’d all worked for. I was in a position to make the transition easier, though, and I wanted them to know they could rely on me if they needed my help. As for the deal itself, a lot of people were shocked at the $19.5 billion price tag; others thought Tom could have held out longer and sold for much more. It’s impossible to say. It turned out to be a bargain for Disney, though; that much is certain. Michael never got much credit for having the guts it took to make that deal, but it was an enormous risk, and it paid off for years to come. The acquisition gave Disney the scale to remain independent when other entertainment companies were coming to the painful realization that they were too small to compete in a changing world. The assets Disney acquired in the merger—especially ESPN—drove growth for years and were a vital buffer for nearly a decade as Disney Animation struggled with a series of box-office disappointments.
• can’t recall exactly what it was in response to, but in one of our conversations about some initiative I was considering, Dan handed me a note that read: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!” He was telling me not to invest in projects that would sap the resources of my company and me and not give much back. It was such a positive way to impart that wisdom, though, and I still have that piece of paper in my desk, occasionally pulling it out when I talk to Disney executives about what projects to pursue and where to put their energy.
• Managing your own time and respecting others’ time is one of the most vital things to do as a manager, and he was horrendous at it.

Chapter 5: Second in Line

• I’ve been asked a lot over the years about the best way to nurture ambition—both one’s own and that of the people you manage. As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have. You can’t let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. I’ve seen a lot of people who had their sights set on a particular job or project, but the opportunity to actually get that thing was so slim. Their focus on the small thing in the distance became a problem. They grew impatient with where they were. They didn’t tend enough to the
• It’s important to know how to find the balance—do the job you have well; be patient; look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow; and make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, that your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises.
• The trick is to be self-aware enough that you don’t cling to the notion that you are the only person who can do this job. At its essence, good leadership isn’t about being indispensable; it’s about helping others be prepared to possibly step into your shoes—giving them access to your own decision making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them improve, and, as I’ve had to do, sometimes being honest with them about why they’re not ready for the next step up.
• I also could not have anticipated in a million years what was to come—for Disney, for Michael, and for me. As is so often the case in life, the thing I’d been striving toward was finally here, and now the hard times were about to begin.

Chapter 6: Good Things Can Happen

• Other than Animation, which he didn’t really let me in on, Michael gave me access to much of his thinking and decision making. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he taught me how to see in a way I hadn’t been able to before. I had no experience with the creative process that went into building and running a theme park, and had never spent time visually imagining a visitor’s experience. Michael walked through the world with a set designer’s eye, and while he wasn’t a natural mentor, it felt like a kind of apprenticeship to follow him around and watch him work.
• What struck me, and what was invaluable in my own education, was his ability to see the big picture as well as the granular details at the same time, and consider how one affected the other.
• I had immense respect for Michael’s tendency to sweat the details. It showed how much he cared, and it made a difference. He understood that “great” is often a collection of very small things, and he helped me appreciate that even more deeply.
• Of great interest to me was the fact that almost every traditional media company, while trying to figure out its place in this changing world, was operating out of fear rather than courage, stubbornly trying to build a bulwark to protect old models that couldn’t possibly survive the sea change that was under way.
• Michael had plenty of valid reasons to be pessimistic, but as a leader you can’t communicate that pessimism to the people around you. It’s ruinous to morale. It saps energy and inspiration. Decisions get made from a protective, defensive posture.
• This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

Chapter 7: It’s About the Future

• That may seem obvious, but it came as a revelation to me. I didn’t have to rehash the past. I didn’t have to defend Michael’s decisions. I didn’t have to criticize him for my own benefit. It’s only about the future. Every time a question came up about what had gone wrong at Disney over the past years, what mistakes Michael made, and why they should think I’m any different, my response could simply and honestly be: “I can’t do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward. But we don’t get any do-overs. You want to know where I’m going to take this company, not where it’s been. Here’s my plan.”
• A company’s culture is shaped by a lot of things, but this is one of the most important—you have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. In my experience, it’s what separates great managers from the rest. If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted. People in your organization suffer unnecessary anxiety because they don’t know what they should be focused on. Inefficiency sets in, frustration builds up, morale sinks. You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you (and therefore the people around them) just by taking the guesswork out of their day-to-day life.
• The strain wasn’t primarily because of the workload. I’ve always prided myself on my ability and willingness to put in a greater effort than anyone else.
• When I look back on that time now, I think of it as a hard-earned lesson about the importance of tenacity and perseverance, but also about the need to steer clear of anger and anxiety over things you can’t control. I can’t overstate how important it is to keep blows to the ego, real as they often are, from occupying too big a place in your mind and sapping too much of your energy. It’s easy to be optimistic when everyone is telling you you’re great. It’s much harder, and much more necessary, when your sense of yourself is being challenged, and in such a public way.
• It was impossible to completely filter out the chatter about me or to not be hurt by very public conversations about how ill-suited I was for the job. But I learned, through strong self-discipline and love from my family, that I had to recognize it for what it was—that it had no bearing on who I was—and put it in its proper place. I could control what I did and how I comported myself. Everything else was beyond my control. I didn’t maintain that perspective every moment, but to the extent that I was able to, it kept the anxiety from having too strong a hold.

Chapter 8: The Power of Respect

• The drama with Roy reinforced something that tends not to get enough attention when people talk about succeeding in business, which is: Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision. I was stung when Roy and Stanley sued the board for choosing me as CEO, and I certainly could have gone to battle with them and prevailed, but it all would have come at a huge cost to the company and been a giant distraction from what really mattered. My job was to set our company on a new path, and the first step was to defuse this unnecessary struggle. The easiest and most productive way to do that was to recognize that what Roy needed, ultimately, was to feel respected. That was precious to him, and it cost me and the company so little.
• No matter how much data you’ve been given, it’s still, ultimately, a risk, and the decision to take that risk or not comes down to one person’s instinct.

Chapter 9: Disney-Pixar and a New Path to the Future

• PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step. One of the things I’ve always instinctively felt—and something that was greatly reinforced working for people like Roone and Michael—is that long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem. Roone and Michael both believed in their own power and in the ability of their organizations to make things happen—that with enough energy and thoughtfulness and commitment, even the boldest ideas could be executed. I tried to adopt that mindset in my ensuing conversations with Steve.
• It’s perhaps not the most responsible advice in a book like this to say that leaders should just go out there and trust their gut, because it might be interpreted as endorsing impulsivity over thoughtfulness, gambling rather than careful study. As with everything, the key is awareness, taking it all in and weighing every factor—your own motivations, what the people you trust are saying, what careful study and analysis tell you, and then what analysis can’t tell you. You carefully consider all of these factors, understanding that no two circumstances are alike, and then, if you’re in charge, it still ultimately comes down to instinct. Is this right or isn’t it? Nothing is a sure thing, but you need at the very least to be willing to take big risks. You can’t have big wins without them.
• A lot of companies acquire others without much sensitivity regarding what they’re really buying. They think they’re getting physical assets or manufacturing assets or intellectual property (in some industries, that’s more true than in others). In most cases, what they’re really acquiring is people. In a creative business, that’s where the value truly lies.

Chapter 10: Marvel and Massive Risks That Make Perfect Sense

• Our connection was much more than a business relationship. We enjoyed each other’s company immensely, and we felt we could say anything to each other, that our friendship was strong enough that it was never threatened by candor. You don’t expect to develop such close friendships late in life, but when I think back on my time as CEO—at the things I’m most grateful for and surprised by—my relationship with Steve is one of them. He could criticize me, and I could disagree, and neither of us took it too personally. Plenty of people warned me that the worst thing I could do was let Steve into the company, that he would bully me and everyone else. I always said the same thing: “How can Steve Jobs coming into our company not be a good thing? Even if it comes at my expense? Who wouldn’t want Steve Jobs to have influence over how a company is run?” I wasn’t worried about how he would act, and I was confident that if he did do something that was out of line, I could call him out on it. He was quick to judge people, and when he criticized, it was often quite harsh. That said, he came to all the board meetings and actively participated, giving the kind of objective criticism you’d expect from any board member. He rarely created trouble for me. Not never but rarely.
• There’s no good playbook for how to fire someone, though I have my own internal set of rules. You have to do it in person, not over the phone and certainly not by email or text. You have to look the person in the eye. You can’t use anyone else as an excuse. This is you making a decision about them—not them as a person but the way they have performed in their job—and they need and deserve to know that it’s coming from you. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: “I’ve asked you to come in here for a difficult reason.” And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn’t working and why I didn’t think it was going to change. I emphasize that it was a tough decision to make, and that I understand that it’s much harder on them. There’s a kind of euphemistic corporate language that is often deployed in those situations, and it has always struck me as offensive. There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest, and in being honest there is at least a chance for the person on the receiving end to understand why it’s happening and eventually move on, even if they walk out of the room angry as hell.

Chapter 11: Star Wars

• Looking back on the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, the thread that runs through all of them (other than that, taken together, they transformed Disney) is that each deal depended on building trust with a single controlling entity. There were complicated issues to negotiate in all of the deals, and our respective teams spent long days and weeks reaching agreement on them. But the personal component of each of these deals was going to make or break them, and authenticity was crucial. Steve had to believe my promise that we would respect the essence of Pixar. Ike needed to know that the Marvel team would be valued and given the chance to thrive in their new company. And George had to trust that his legacy, his “baby,” would be in good hands at Disney.

Chapter 12: If You Don’t Innovate, You Die

• At some point over the years, I referred to a concept I called “management by press release”—meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company. The investment community’s reaction in 2015 was overwhelmingly negative, but speaking candidly about the reality punctured our denial and motivated people within Disney to conclude, He’s serious about this, so we better be, too. The 2017 call had a similarly bracing effect. The team knew how serious I was about doing this, but hearing it communicated broadly, particularly to investors, and witnessing the reaction to it, fueled everyone with the energy and the commitment to move forward.
• It’s a lot to manage, from a personnel perspective, and the need to be present for your people—which is a vital leadership quality under any circumstances—is heightened even more. It’s easy for leaders to send a signal that their schedules are too full, their time too valuable, to be dealing with individual problems and concerns. But being present for your people—and making sure they know that you’re available to them—is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company.
• I went to our board’s compensation committee and explained the dilemma. When you innovate, everything needs to change, not just the way you make or deliver a product. Many of the practices and structures within the company need to adapt, too, including, in this case, how the board rewards our executives. I proposed a radical idea—essentially, that I would determine compensation, based on how much they contributed to this new strategy, even though, without easily measured financial results, this was going to be far more subjective than our typical compensation practices. I proposed stock grants that would vest or mature based on my own assessment of whether executives were stepping up to make this new initiative successful. The committee was skeptical at first; we’d never done anything like that. “I know why companies fail to innovate,” I said to them at one point. “It’s tradition. Tradition generates so much friction, every step of the way.” I talked about the investment community, which so often punishes established companies for reducing profits under any circumstances, which often leads businesses to play it safe and keep doing what they’ve been doing, rather than spend capital in order to generate long-term growth or adapt to change. “There’s even you,” I said, “a board that doesn’t know how to grant stock because there’s only one way we’ve ever done it.” At every stage, we were swimming upstream. “It’s your choice,” I said. “Do you want to fall prey to the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ or do you want to fight it?”
• I went back to our executives and explained how the new stock plan would work. I would decide at the end of each year how much stock would vest, and that it was going to be based not on revenue but on how well they were able to work together. “I don’t want any politics,” I said. “This is too important. It’s for the good of the company, and it’s good for you. I need you to step up.”

Chapter 14: Core Values

• I’m comforted by something I’ve come to believe more and more in recent years—that it’s not always good for one person to have too much power for too long. Even when a CEO is working productively and effectively, it’s important for a company to have change at the top. I don’t know if other CEOs agree with this, but I’ve noticed that you can accumulate so much power in a job that it becomes harder to keep a check on how you wield it. Little things can start to shift. Your confidence can easily tip over into overconfidence and become a liability. You can start to feel that you’ve heard every idea, and so you become impatient and dismissive of others’ opinions. It’s not intentional, it just comes with the territory. You have to make a conscious effort to listen, to pay attention to the multitude of opinions. I’ve raised the issue with the executives I work most closely with as a kind of safeguard. “If you notice me being too dismissive or impatient, you need to tell me.” They’ve had to on occasion, but I hope not too often.
• Determining principles of leadership is impossible to do without experience, but I had great mentors. Michael, for sure, and Tom and Dan before him, and Roone before them. Each was a master in his own way, and I’d absorbed everything I could from them. Beyond that, I trusted my instincts, and I encouraged the people around me to trust theirs. Only much later did those instincts start to shape themselves into particular qualities of leadership that I could articulate.
• Maybe this is the case for many of us: No matter who we become or what we accomplish, we still feel that we’re essentially the kid we were at some simpler time long ago. Somehow that’s the trick of leadership, too, I think, to hold on to that awareness of yourself even as the world tells you how powerful and important you are. The moment you start to believe it all too much, the moment you look yourself in the mirror and see a title emblazoned on your forehead, you’ve lost your way. That may be the hardest but also the most necessary lesson to keep in mind, that wherever you are along the path, you’re the same person you’ve always been.

Appendix: Lessons to Lead By

• My former boss Dan Burke once handed me a note that said: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!” He was telling me not to invest in small projects that would sap my and the company’s resources and not give much back. I still have that note in my desk, and I use it when talking to our executives about what to pursue and where to put their energy.
• We all want to believe we’re indispensable. You have to be self-aware enough that you don’t cling to the notion that you are the only person who can do this job. At its essence, good leadership isn’t about being indispensable; it’s about helping others be prepared to step into your shoes—giving them access to your own decision-making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them improve, and sometimes being honest with them about why they’re not ready for the next step up.
• Too often, we lead from a place of fear rather than courage, stubbornly trying to build a bulwark to protect old models that can’t possibly survive the sea change that is under way. It’s hard to look at your current models, sometimes even ones that are profitable in the moment, and make a decision to undermine them in order to face the change that’s coming.
• People sometimes shy away from big swings because they build a case against trying something before they even step up to the plate. Long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem. With enough thoughtfulness and commitment, the boldest ideas can be executed.
• Deal with this kind of uncertainty by going back to basics: Lay out your strategic priorities clearly. Remain optimistic in the face of the unknown. And be accessible and fair-minded to people whose work lives are being thrown into disarray.