Dream, Believe, Dare, Do.
Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson in The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company Third Edition summarizes the keys of Disney management success into these four seemingly simple words. The authors take readers
through each key word in their model explaining how to practically make each
action verb something that can be replicated in a manager's specific setting. To make these words real, the authors explain
their context within Disney history and how non-Disney companies have made
these concepts their own. They show
readers how Dream is really about creating culture and providing employees a
vision. For Believe they demonstrate how
managers can create buy-in and alignment to the accepted vision by using tools to
align action with vision, valuing customer interaction within the dream and
making forging durable partnerships. The
authors encourage their readers to take risks in Dare. And finally in Do they discuss the role of
training, planning, and even measuring success.
Within the book the authors provide numerous tools such as Storyboards
and Vision Alignment rubrics to support the eager manager.
The past editions of The Disney Way have stood the test of time.
And I expect this book will also. The third edition is clear, practical and provides tools that managers can use
in aligning their operations to Dream, Believe, Dare, Do. In some cases this will require a culture
change. For examples, which the authors
provide numerous non-Disney examples throughout, they decided to update the
text with examples of companies that are in the start-up mode. This allows the authors to show how young
companies or those in transition have been able to adopt these four little
words. The book while well-written is
really a management book. The text would
be relevant more to the manager than the non-manager amateur Disney fan. As the management content is probably the most interesting to managers and aspiring managers. However, the Disney content is well balanced
and likely of interest to anyone in a management position. As a
Disney fan/manager, I found the book both useful and interesting. Still, I would have no problem recommending it to
non-Disney addicted colleagues.
For me the chapter on partnerships really stood out. I am interested as I have mentioned before in
Roy O. Disney and how he successfully worked to support his brother’s dreaming
and innovating. And as one reviews
Disney history and considers the numerous partnerships from Roy/Walt,
Eisner/Wells, Catmull/Lasseter it is easy to quickly realize how powerful a
partnership is to making Believe happen.
And it becomes easy to see how as the authors point out, partnerships
enable an individual to expand their horizon and effectiveness.
As mentioned the text includes a number of tools that
managers can use. The Storyboard tool
and its variations appear highly useful in gathering information and making
sure that everyone can participate in the decision making process. However, I will say that the Leadership
Storyboard definitely appears to be something that is not for the faint of
heart.
The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company Third Edition is a clear and
useful management book grounded in Disney company history. It provides a clear model in Dream, Believe,
Dare, Do that is easy to understand for all managers. But
best of all the authors provide tools to make a model which can appear
highly philosophical, realistic.
Review Copy Provided
by Publisher
No comments:
Post a Comment