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A leader has four main roles, Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner told the Harvard Business Review's Suzy Wetlaufer. "You've got to be an example. You've got to be there. You've got to be a nudge, which is another word for motivator, really. And you've got to show creative leadership — you have to be an idea generator, all the time, day and night." Here, Eisner explains what each of these roles entails.
What does leading by example entail?
Who we are as people matters as much as what we do. The company watches senior management; the cast members look to us as role models. So each one of us should work very, very hard at living up to that. I myself am inquisitive all the time — that's an essential part of the creative process. In the middle of a meeting on financial performance, I may say, "My wife and I were in Disneyland Paris two weeks ago. Alice's Maze is just not exciting enough. What can we do?" They'll look at me like, "How did Alice's Maze get into this meeting? We were talking about return on equity." But what I am showing is that any and all questions are fair game. We are open with each other, we probe, we push, we think about our company as an interrelated whole, and the quality of Alice's Maze has a direct impact on ROE.
Leading by example also means showing a combination of enthusiasm and loyalty to the institution, and it certainly means demanding excellence in the organization. We need to constantly demonstrate what we care about — synergy, for example.
What about "being there"? Can you describe what that role involves?
Sometimes you just have to be there with your people. You have to be in the same room with them, look them in the eyes, hear their voices. I'll tell you one thing. Most of the bad decisions I've made, I've made while teleconferencing. In creative companies, you have to be able to read body language — see the look in people's eyes when an idea is launched, see whether they fall asleep.
If you have an organization that is small enough, being there simply means having contact and exposure and being available. When the organization gets bigger, it is unbelievably frustrating to a leader that you can't be there for everyone. That's why you need a team of leaders running the organization, which is what we have. Our parks have a leader. Our movie and television business has a leader. Our Internet operations have a leader. ABC and ESPN have leaders. We have country managers. And what makes organizations great is the quality of that leadership spread across the top — not just at the very top.
What I do is focus on the 40 people I have an impact on every day. I'm very available to them. And then I try to get out there as much as possible. Our management team is always moving around all over the company, which is all over the country and all over the world. We walk the parks, the hotels, and the stores. The most fun is going into the hotel kitchens late at night. In the next weeks, many of us are meeting the performing cast of the Broadway musical of Hunchback of Notre Dame in Berlin, followed by the opening-night party of Lion King in London. Then I'll spend a day with our management team in the U.K.
I'm also using e-mail more to communicate with our whole cast — all 110,000 of them. Today I'm going to send something out about why we closed Walt Disney World for Hurricane Floyd. We've never closed the park before, and everyone wants to know why. They want to know what we did to protect our cast members and our guests down there. So I'll tell them. It's a great way to stay connected.
What does it mean to lead by being a nudge?
By nudging I mean that I just don't forget things. I don't keep many notes, but once something is in my head, I can't get rid of it until I think it has been stuck into somebody else's head. I am constantly reminding people of ideas. I follow up and follow up because good ideas have a way of getting lost. They fall through the cracks, or they get mired in bureaucracy, and everyone is busy in their own orbit. So I nudge. Sometimes all that good ideas or good people need is an advocate who won't shut up.
When was the last time you played the nudge role?
I do it every day. I've been doing it forever. For instance, a few years ago, I was walking around Walt Disney World, midnight, by myself. I got to a pavilion that was being renovated. I figured I would climb over the barricade and see what was going on. I started walking around, and pretty fast a junior security officer came toward me with a flashlight.
I introduced myself. Luckily he had heard of me. So, we got talking, and he knew where all the plans were. He wasn't involved in the construction at all, but he knew all about it. He was interested. He cared. He went through every page of the plans with me. He knew everything, and he really was passionate and intelligent about the project. It was obvious to me that this guy was special.
The next day, I went back to my office, and I wrote a note to the people at the park, saying, "This fellow — I think his name was Lamont — is a star. I think you should promote him." I wrote a note or mentioned him to somebody every two weeks for a long time, and every time I would say, "What's happening with Lamont?"
You were CEO when this happened?
Yes.
And you had to write note after note to get someone promoted?
There were 20 people above him.
What happened?
I think he's doing great. He certainly would have done just fine without me. But maybe I was helpful. It's not as if someone else wouldn't have noticed him soon enough. I mean, I don't want you to think that everything in this company has my stamp on it. It does not. It couldn't even if I wanted it to. We are too big, and we have too many amazingly creative people. I try to set an agenda, but I am still just a temporary manager of a great institution.
The story about Lamont suggests that being a nudge takes endurance.
Yes, sometimes you have to nudge people for years, literally. A lot of projects, especially in this business, take a long time. Beverly Hills Cop took eight years to make at Paramount. Animal Kingdom was ten years in the making. Everybody has to just keep pushing, pushing. Our corporate team, actually, has become one big nudge. I like that until they nudge me. Then I understand how annoying it can be, but I do react. We all do. The day we acquired ABC, I started nudging them about a big-money game show. We all agreed it was an idea whose time had come. So, four years of nudging, and now we have Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's a big hit for us. In fact, it may even make ABC number one in prime time. Now, I had nothing to do with the creative content of the show. In fact, I kept pushing for something like The $64,000 Question. But I had something to do with the maniacal advocacy the show happened to require. So nudging is a very annoying role to play, but critical.
The last role of a leader, you say, is being an idea generator. Should good ideas come from the top?
It's better if good ideas come from the top than bad ideas. But ideas can come from anywhere. The leader in a creative business should be creative. He or she should be spouting ideas all the time, just like everyone else. Many of us come up with ideas driving to work, walking around the house, watching our kids at sporting events, everywhere. It becomes addictive. Many of my ideas are simply bad, and, believe me, I am told so quickly. That kind of honesty in our team and in our culture must exist — a culture where your associates tell you that your last idea was all wet. I have no problem telling an associate that I hate his idea. So we must have an environment where criticism goes up as well as down. We all edit each other. Sometimes the ideas do make some sense, and we move forward with them.
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