The Ride Of A Lifetime
Bob Iger
This is the story of Bob Iger’s career. it is part memoir, part management guide. I read it in two days (233 pages). It was enjoyable and wise. His emphasis on being transparent and upfront in all business matters stuck with me.
Bob’s leadership principles
the book opens with a series of leadership principles that are nicely articulated. Number one I found particularly relevant: Optimism. He writes:
“Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. People are not encouraged or motivated by pessimists.”
Another relevant one was Decisiveness:
“All decisions, no matter how difficult, can and should be made in a timely way… chronic indecision is… deeply corrosive to morale.”
He also talks about perfectionism. I found this one really interesting having read Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” where we regularly read about perfectionism to the extreme:
“This doesn’t mean perfectionism at all costs, but it does mean refusal to accept mediocrity. If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it. If you’re in the business of making things, be in the business of making things great.”
Early Steps
He begins his career at ABC way down the ladder. He stresses how his work ethic was the thing that distinguished him during this early phase. He doesn’t come from a wealthy family and doesn’t go to an Ivy League college or do an MBA. This is refreshing and is something he shares with Steve Jobs. I like reading about successful leaders who haven’t attended the usual roll call of prestigious names.
He learns the business from the bottom up - and that counts. There’s a memorable encounter with Sinatra, who he brings some mouthwash. Sinatra gives him a crisp $100 bill and an engraved lighter. The fact Sinatra takes an interest in him despite him being so junior is a nice touch and shows class.
Early on he makes a lateral hop to ABC’s World of Sports and starts working for a guy called Roone Arledge. He describes him as having the quality of perfectionism and understanding that memorable broadcasting was about telling great stories. This idea of ‘telling great stories’ comes up again and again when getting people to buy into what you’re doing. Roone’s perfectionism meant getting the small things right, because the combination of those makes something good become something great. I’m taking that idea forward! Iger talks about Jiro Dreams of Sushi as an example of someone obsessed with their craft (he serves his rice at body temperature 98.6 fahrenheit!!!)
He devotes a bit of time to offering feedback to creatives:
“I’m exceedingly mindful of how much the creators have poured themselves into the project… I never start out negatively… and I never start small. I’ve found that often people will focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty. And if the big picture is a mess, the the small things don’t matter anyway.”
To Disney
He is promoted internally at ABC and describes working for the Co CEOs of Capital Cities after they acquire ABC. He is struck by their faith in him and that he’ll grow with the job. Much of this seems to come down to his common sense and deft touch at dealing with people - particularly when he is promoted above them. He goes to Disney when they acquire ABC and becomes Michael Eisner’s 3rd in command. He performs a careful balancing act when describing his early time at Disney working with Eisner - he’s fundamentally loyal, but shows why Eisner was no longer the right person to read the business. This passage is illustrative:
“In difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not… it’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome… The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.”
Eventually Eisner’s position becomes untenable and Bob has to present his case for the top job. He gets some advice from a political consultant (Scott Miller) who tells him: “You cannot win on the defensive. It’s only about the future. It’s not about the past.” Miller also asks Bob what his priorities are. When he reels off a list of six or seven he cuts in: “Once you have that many of them, they’re no longer priorities… you will seem unfocused… you only get three.” This leads to another important point:
“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… If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be.”
As CEO
He undergoes an incredibly length battle to move from interim to full-time CEO. Once installed, there is an impressive stretch where he has to fight Roy Disney for board confidence. Instead of going to war with him he reaches a quick compromise that saves an expensive law suit and huge distraction from running the company. The lesson here is not to let your ego get in the way. He sums it up best:
“A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it is often very costly… If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.”
His next priority following peace with Roy Disney is repairing the relationship with Steve Jobs and Pixar. It’s interesting reading the other side of this relationship in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. One of the leftovers from Eisner’s tenure is a department called ‘Strategic Planning’ that is described as being full of super smart corporate finance analysts and MBA holders. Under Eisner they had grown all-powerful and undermined the agency of individual division leaders in the business. Iger decides it needs reforming and we get a good description of an early clash:
“A meeting showed up on my calendar about ticket pricing… The request came from Peter Murphy, the head of Strategic Planning. I called the person running Parks and Resorts and asked him whose meeting it was. “It’s Peter’s,” he said… I called Peter and asked why. “We have to make sure they’re doing the right thing,” he said. “If they can’t figure out what pricing should be, the shouldn’t be in their jobs.” I said. “But if we believe they should be in their jobs, then they should be in charge of pricing.” I had the meeting cancelled, and while it wasn’t a hugely dramatic moment, it was the beginning of the end of Strat Planning.”
It’s fascinating that despite Peter Murphy’s phenomenal ability, his disdain of senior leaders he viewed as less able and corresponding desire to centralise decisions makes him a brake on the company: Peter and his people were viewed more as an internal police force than a partner to our businesses.
Iger uses this chapter to make a point about balancing rigorous analytics against speed of decision making and instinct.
Whatever we gained from having this group of talented people sifting through a deal to make sure it was to our advantage, we often lost in the time it took for us to act. This isn’t to say that research and deliberation aren’t important… but you have to recognize that there is never 100 percent certainty. No matter how much data you’ve been given, it’s still, ultimately, a risk.
Buying Pixar
As animation goes, so goes the company.
Once Strat Planning is dealt with Iger’s priority becomes fixing animation. He presents three options to the board: 1. Hope management can turn it around, 2. Bring in new management, 3. Buy Pixar.
Option 3 is poorly received by the board but he gets enough support to explore it. This is viewed as likely to be a phenomenal challenge given Steve Jobs is CEO and owns 50% of the Pixar stock. He nervously calls Jobs to broach the idea, assuming he’ll be immediately rejected, but Jobs doesn’t rule it out. Iger makes a point about long shots, using the Pixar acquisition as an example:
People sometimes shy away from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they event take the first step… long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem… with enough energy and thoughtfulness and commitment, even the boldest ideas could be executed.
He goes to meet Jobs in Cupertino to discuss it and they have a lengthy whiteboard session outlining the pros and cons of the deal. The cons significantly outweigh the pros and Iger feels dispirited. But Jobs says, ”A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons.”
When selling the deal to the board he channels Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech, the board approve and the rest is history.
Buying Marvel
Buying Marvel is part of Disney’s plan to increase their output of high quality branded content. The description of Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s then CEO is pretty amusing:
Ike was a legendarily tough, reclusive character, former Israeli military, who never appeared in public or allowed pictures of himself to be taken… He had a reputation of being penurious to the extreme. (There are stories of Ike pulling paper clips out of trash cans)
The penurious bit reminds me of Michael O’leary, CEO of Ryanair, who refused to authorise a stationery budget, instead encouraging employees to take the free pens banks give out.
The acquisition goes ahead but Iger has to move Ike from his CEO role due to clashes with Kevin Feige, who runs Marvel Studios. He gives some good advice on firing or repositioning employees:
You have to do it in person… 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. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation… There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest.
Buying LucasFilm
After the successful acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel, Lucasfilm is next on the list. The possibility had been raised earlier through Iger’s connection to Steve Jobs (who sat on Disney’s board). The courting process is quite coy, especially in comparison to the Pixar acquisition, showing how Iger adapts his approach to his audience. He acknowledges:
This wasn’t negotiating to buy a business; it was negotiating to be the keeper of George’s legacy, and I needed to be ultra-sensitive to that at all times.
When Lucas asks for the “Pixar deal”, Iger puts him right immediately, his reasoning thus:
The worst thing you can do when entering into a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later. You have to be clear about where you stand from the beginning.
After the acquisition the pressure is on to deliver the new Star Wars. This is a huge undertaking given the legacy of the brand and ferocity of the fandom. Iger makes a good point about how to encourage your team in stressful work conditions:
When the stakes of a project are very high, there’s not much to be gained from putting additional pressure on the people working in it. Projecting your anxiety onto your team is counterproductive. It’s subtle, but there’s a difference between communicating that you share their stress - that you’re in it with them - and communicating that you need them to deliver to alleviate your stress.
Misc
Iger talks about doing a presidential run, he watches Reagan’s Normandy landings speech
Roseanne Barr posts a racist tweet, Iger cancels her show despite it having legal implications he says:
It was an easy decision… I never asked what the financial repercussions would be, and didn’t care. In moments like that, you have to look past whatever the commercial losses are and be guided by the simple rule that there’s nothing more important than the quality and integrity of your people and your product.
On getting things done:
Don’t let ambition get ahead of opportunity. By fixating on a future job or project, you become impatient with where you are. You don’t tend enough to the responsibilities you do have, and so ambition can become counterproductive.