When people ask what it was like to work at Disney (1982-2014), the response is always, “It depends on who your leader was.”
In the final decade serving at Disney, there was enough earned wisdom to thrive whether leadership was good, very good, or excellent.
Inexperience leads many to believe they have to accept their fate if they work for a good or very good leader instead of an excellent leader.
At Disney we say, good and very good aren’t good enough.
Learned to focus passion, art, energy, and purpose on being the best partner for our team, the best facilitator for our participants, and in doing those two exceptionally well, the business result (rebooking/recommending) took care of itself.
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In 1996 at Walt Disney World, we began celebrating our 25th anniversary.
Tom Elrod, our Marketing VP, announced that our new nametags would include our hometown.
Why?
To increase Guest to Cast interaction.
“Where’s Spring Grove? Is that near Pittsburgh?”
“No.”
And at this point, it doesn’t matter.
What mattered was that a conversation had begun.
Hometowns became an icebreaker.
This was all done by design.
Note: The risk was in the breaking from 41 years of nametag tradition. It was one of the simplest and best ideas we ever implemented. As an unforeseen benefit, hometowns also increased Cast to Cast interaction.
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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HQ, click here.
If you want to stay on this site and read more posts from this Blog, click here.
A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down…getting set before 400 Guests arrive to hear how we architect our massive organization for world-class customer service.
Walt Disney said, “What we do is serious business, but we should never take ourselves too seriously.”
Check.
Mate.
Yesterday.
PS. Disney Keynote Speakers should be fun (and engaging). The two are not mutually exclusive.
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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HQ, click here.
If you want to stay on this site and read more posts from this Blog, click here.
Yesterday picking up a replacement part at Apple Store.
The vibe was this: without Cheryl’s pre-authorization, i wouldn’t be leaving with her Apple Watch replacement. Neither one of us thought a pre-authorization was necessary because i had the physical ticket. Essentially then, the assumption was that i procured the ticket “unauthorized”. That’s kinda creepy. And yes, i know there are some “bad apples” that make these policies necessary – what is the employee’s latitude to use good judgement? i’ll never know because Cheryl actually answered her phone.
Was reminded how important relationships are when it comes to our emotional connection to a brand.
Emotional connections with every customer are such a challenging task for any company to scale.
And many of the 2,000 companies i saw while at Disney Institute continue to have the tremendous opportunity to:
Believe what feels impossible isn’t.
Design (architect) structure and processes to support scalable, world-class customer “wow.”
Without an emotional connection, we can’t be sure the organization loves us and values us and wants us to be ridiculously happy.
As i looked around the Apple store yesterday, i didn’t see anyone i knew. If they hadn’t been able to reach my wife in Pennsylvania while i waited, i wouldn’t have left with her new Apple Watch replacement. Apple Care replaced her damaged (from a drop) Watch with a new one. Cheryl gave me the bar-coded receipt to pick it up while she is gone.
i honestly couldn’t comprehend having to drive home without the Watch.
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This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.
On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.
The top secret to world-class culture and results.
Intentionally over-focus on the same things others under-focus on or ignore.
That’s it.
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This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.
On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.
