Middle of the last year (2019) when I came across Robert (Bob) Iger’s interview with Oprah. It immediately caught my attention because of the way he speaks and his calm aura despite a huge responsibility at Disney. In that interview was the launch of his book The Ride of a Lifetime and I bought his audiobook right away a few months before he stepped down as the CEO of Disney. I have nothing but admiration of his life, work, and business ethics.
Here are the 5 unique lessons I learned from him in his book.
- The human factor is most important than anything. In the Prologue, Bob narrated how after many years of hard work, and the actual launching days of Disneyland in Shanghai China in 2016, he received a message from his colleague that an alligator attacked a child at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort while he was in front of 100 VIP guests. This pressure was not to mention the mass shooting that happened in Orlando a few before this incident where a few Disney employees died. He hid his sense of horror in the middle of delegates, and what he did, without hesitation, was to call the parents himself. Be decent to people, treat everyone with fairness and empathy.
- Know what you don’t know and trust in what you do. Your inexperience can’t be your excuse for failure. But don’t fake anything. You can’t pretend to know something you don’t. Ask questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work you need to learn as quickly as you can.
- Be bold. Even the Disney CEO gets nervous in business calls and making bold decisions. When Bob became the 6th CEO of Disney, his first order of business was to call Steve Jobs to buy Pixar and save Disney animation. On his first board meeting, he proposed the initiative to acquire Pixar and after careful thought and debates with the board, he got the go-ahead. He narrated how he spent an entire morning building up the courage to call Steve Jobs and how he felt relieved when he didn’t reach him. Steve returned the call eventually, and while sweating heavily due to nerves, he said, “Hey, I have a crazy idea, what do you think of the idea of Disney buying Pixar?”, he waited for Steve to hang up or erupt in laughter. Steve responded, “You know, that’s not the craziest idea in the world.”. And everything was history. Disney bought buying Pixar 7 plus billion dollar deal at that time Steve announced his cancer came back.
- Now more than ever, if you don’t innovate, you die. There can be no innovation if you operate with the fear of the new. Have a relentless pursuit of perfection. It’s about creating an environment where people refuse to accept mediocrity. Take responsibility when you screw up in work and life. Own up to your mistakes, it is impossible to avoid them, but it is possible to acknowledge them and learn from them and set an example that it is okay to get things wrong sometimes. Creativity is an art and not science. Be comfortable with failure, not for lack of effort, but if you want innovation, you need to grant permission to fail. Don’t be in the business of playing it safe, but be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.
- If something doesn’t feel right to you, it won’t be right for you. In decision making, you have to do the homework, and you have to be prepared. Recognize that there is never 100% certainty. No matter how much data is given, it is still ultimately a risk. And the decision to take that risk comes down to one person’s instinct. Yours.