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DOUG LIPP: Welcome.
Thank you for being here today.
And I would like to share with you some thoughts.
And [? Marjay ?] talked a little bit about my background--
a bit more is I work for Disneyland.
My first job at Disney, outside of being an intern,
was as a Japanese interpreter.
My second language is Japanese, and I
was doing some work for the newly hired,
newly brought on board executives
from Japan that were going to be starting
our first international theme park.
So while I was a college student working at Disneyland,
I was studying Japanese.
And I knew that they were going to go
into the international market.
But I wasn't sure when and where.
And when I was in grad school in Tokyo
I got a message from a colleague who said they decided on Tokyo.
So I knew I had to come back.
And the first thing out of the executive's mouth,
he said, well, you know, Disney's style
is you've got to start at the bottom.
So you can either start as a ride operator, a street
sweeper, or an interpreter.
And I said I'll be an interpreter.
That's what I'm doing.
And I got exposed to the men and women who ran the university.
I got to work with a lot of great people
and start a whole new project.
And you know what it's like to start new things.
You wear lots of hats.
So I went from Disneyland and then I went to Japan.
I was transferred back to Japan for several years.
So I got to live in Japan as a starving student and as
a ridiculously overpaid expat.
And it's a lot better to be a ridiculously paid expat.
And I spent several years there getting the park up
and running.
And I'll share with you a couple of stories from that.
And then I came back, and I went to Disney headquarters,
which is their studios.
And the whole time I was in the Disney organization,
I was exposed to men and women who
worked directly with Walt Disney.
Now, you probably don't realize how blessed
you are to be in such a young company.
What are you celebrating-- Sweet 16 this year, right?
And you have contact with Larry, with Sergey, with Eric.
I never got to meet Walt Disney.
Walt Disney passed away in 1966, and in those days
they were not hiring 11-year-olds to run
the company.
But the men and women that mentored me did
get to work with Walt.
So I'm going to share with you some thoughts about that
as we go along.
Is the slide-- woohoo!
That's why your heads are going like this right now.
As that gets set up and running, I
want to share with you something else just
to set the tone for what an amazingly qualified guy
I am to be speaking to you today.
You know, you at Google are so cocky about how
cool your culture is and how fun it is.
You got nothing on Disney.
When I worked at the studios, I participated in a voice
contest-- a voice contest-- we lovingly called it a quack-off.
Think about that.
You can't say that word in Missouri,
but you could say in California.
I participated in a voice contest
to celebrate Donald Duck's birthday.
This was put on by what's called the Mickey Mouse Activity
Center, which is the activity center for all the employees.
You have all the recreation, canoe races,
all kinds of stuff, right?
It makes Googleplex look like a boring library.
And I participated in this only because the woman who
was in charge of putting it on had kind of caught my eye.
I thought she was kind of cool looking, and she kept saying,
would you please participate in the quack-off?
We need more quackers.
We need to have more participants.
And I thought, well, maybe if I participate,
you'll go on a date with me.
So I did, and I won the competition.
And I won the girl, and she's actually
in the back of the room right there
in that beautiful blue dress.
Hello, [INAUDIBLE]!
Actually, it was kind of a surreal environment.
The man who was the emcee of the activity
was the voice of Mickey Mouse.
Well, at the time, the guy who was the voice of Mickey Mouse
was about 6' 3", had a full beard.
He looked like a lumberjack, [MICKEY MOUSE IMPRESSION]
but he talked like this.
So it was really surreal to look up at this giant guy
and think, oh my gosh, that's Mickey.
And the man who had been the voice of Donald for years
was going to retire.
He was in his mid '80s.
His name was Clarence Ducky Nash.
And so we participated in this quack-off and I won.
(DONALD DUCK IMPRESSION) Hello, everybody.
How are you today?
Ah-- ah-- ah-choo.
[APPLAUSE]
And the guy who came in second is now
the voice of Donald Duck.
Go figure.
But anyway, I really want to think about-- this is up
and running now? [? Marjay, ?] thank you-- leadership, service
magic.
I'm going to share with you some thoughts today about both
my career Disney, but more importantly,
some of the lessons that I learned,
and they are in this bestselling book.
You can use it as a door stop.
You can use it as a sleep aid.
It's really cool.
No, actually, based on subsidies,
you guys have a pretty good dealer.
And I just want to let you know, for those of you
that buy this book, we are donating
all proceeds to an organization called NAMI-- National
Alliance on Mental Illness-- to help reduce
the stigma associated with that.
But in here I have quotes.
I have ideas from many men and women,
but in particular, the man who I referred
to earlier as the mentor that helped me
for many, many years-- a guy named Van France.
Van France was hired directly by Walt Disney in early 1955.
Disneyland opened in July of '55.
And Walt was smart enough to realize
that he and his team of designers, architects,
construction people, ride engineers,
were architects of things, of science.
And they needed a person to be the architect of people
development.
Much like you have a chief cultural officer--
HR director-- Van France would've
been the chief cultural officer of the day.
And he's the one who started the Disney University.
It wasn't known as the University originally,
but he's the man who created the university.
So I want to share with you some thoughts about what Van brought
to the table and compare and contrast, seriously,
the amazing culture that you belong to.
You think about Googlers and Nooglers and Googleplex and all
of the vernacular that this young company
has created in such a short amount of time.
You have to have a tremendous amount of pride.
I feel the same way about Disney.
We had our own vernacular which has lived--
Disneyland is going on 60 years of age now-- cast member,
on-stage, backstage, good show, bad show.
But here's the point.
The culture is a lot more than just words.
It's a lot more than fanciful colored bikes.
It's a lot more than free lunches.
It's a lot of hard work.
And I'll share with you briefly how
we squandered that at Disney.
We actually almost lost the entire company
not once, but twice, in a 20-year period,
despite the name recognition, the international brand,
and love for all the characters and all the attractions we'd
built, and movies and songs and that sort of thing.
So yes, enjoy your unique culture
and your position in the world and constantly
being put on a pedestal and recognized
as one of the best employers in the world and to have such
a great environment in which to work.
I envy you.
Enjoy it while you have it right now.
Enjoy it in your youth.
Enjoy it as you get older, as well.
So I'm going to share with you a thought from Van
France in this slide I've got right now-- capturing
hearts and minds fosters trust and innovation.
Again, Walt Disney was smart enough
to realize that his team and he had to focus on the hardware,
on the rides, and on the attractions.
But who was going to get those cast members
on board that were going to create
the happiest place on earth?
People that didn't know a thing about theme parks,
because theme parks had not yet been invented.
16-year-olds to 85-year-olds, and everything in between--
how do we do that?
And so Van created this environment.
And he learned that that environment existed for decades
before he ever saw Disneyland.
Let me read one little excerpt from the book
that I use to kind of set the tone for what Van walked
into when he realized that his own quirky sense of humor
was going to fit in perfectly with Walt Disney's
quirky sense of humor.
So I say in here, "Van first met Walt in 1954.
Then he was asked to join the company.
He said, I was asked to meet Walt Disney.
And the meeting was held in the animation building."
This is where all the artists reside at the Disney Studios
in Burbank, California.
"The meeting was held in the animation building,
home to all the artists.
And it's also were Walt's office was located.
I parked in the visitor's lot and set off on foot
down Snow White Lane, past *** Drive,
until I came to Mickey Mouse Avenue and the studio's
three-story animation building."
This is from a man who worked in World War II factories.
He worked in aluminum smelting plants.
He worked in anything but a fun environment,
but he was an irascible character himself.
In fact, one of the ways the we described
Van France to our fellow colleagues
who never got a chance to meet him,
was he was a combination of a Snow White-kind of person,
but really he was more like Mary Poppins.
He was beautiful in soul and spirit.
And he was a guiding light like Mary Poppins.
He was like Jiminy Cricket guiding Pinocchio
down the right path.
So we kept us on track to keep Walt Disney's dream alive.
But he was also like an angry Donald Duck.
And Donald's known to have a short temper.
And if you gave excuses, he would get in your grill
immediately and let you know in no uncertain terms what
was wrong and how you had to fix it.
In fact, one of Walt's favorite quotes-- and Van
taught this to me-- was "don't come to me with no, because.
Come to me with yes, if."
And that opened up all kinds of doors
of creativity and opportunity.
So this thing about capturing hearts and minds-- and one
of the things we tried to do-- and I think
did it pretty well in the Disney University--
when we would have new hire orientation every week
before a busy season at Disneyland or Walt Disney
World.
We'd have 60 to 80 to 90 new hires.
We didn't call then Nooglers like you do,
but they were just called new hires-- new cast members.
And we had eight hours to inculcate them,
to get them excited.
And in addition a sprinkling a lot of pixie dust
on their heads, we did a lot of other things
to capture their hearts and minds.
And one of the most important things that we did
was this-- we talked about the importance of teamwork,
of cleanliness, and friendliness that our customers paid
a premium for.
They'd pay a premium to come to Disney, because it's clean.
It's safe, and the rides work.
Yes, Universal Studios might have faster, sexier rides,
but they break down all the time.
And they might have more employees, but they're snarky.
If you ask a Universal employee, where's the washroom,
they're going to say, it's over there.
Can't you smell it?
But if you ask a Disney employee,
they're going to stop.
They're going to look at you, and say, sir, ma'am,
it's right this way, with an open palm.
But we would talk about this.
We would show videos.
But it's still at the cognitive level.
It's just at the brain level.
How do we capture their hearts?
And so the last hour of orientation,
we would take them through the park.
We would talk about the architecture.
We would talk about the theming, but our primary goal
was for them to see with their own eyes
multiple examples of non-custodial personnel bending
over and picking up trash, executives going
to and from staff meetings, cast members-- obviously
not custodians-- going to or from breaks,
bending over and picking up trash,
and as soon as my new hires saw that, I
know that I've captured their hearts.
Now they're thinking, oh, yes, what
they talked about there in the Never Never Land of Disney
University actually happens.
Where, all too often I see organizations--
and I'm not saying Google-- but a lot of organizations
try to emulate the Google culture, the Disney
culture, and metaphorically-- like I have on the slide here--
try to put up a coat of paint on a dilapidated, run-down
building.
The culture isn't strong, or it's not even set up yet.
But they think just by having fanciful names,
colorful t-shirts, or really cool posters
on the wall, that'll make people buy in.
Ultimately those posters become the butt of jokes
if people aren't living and breathing that culture.
To this day, I can't walk across the property,
see a piece of trash on the ground,
and not go into the automatic robot rote of must bend over
and pick up trash.
So kudos to you, for in a short amount of time,
creating such a strong culture, because culture
happens in one of two ways-- either by design,
or by benign neglect.
And all too often I see benign neglect
taking the stage, people not really trying to mold it,
just letting it happen.
I also want to open up, and I talked
to [? Marjay ?] about this-- if you have questions,
if you have comments, let's open up right now
and say it's OK to do that.
We have a microphone we're going to run around.
Please don't hold back.
If you're sitting there thinking, well, yeah,
Doug, it sounds great, but how do you do it,
or what does that really mean, or I agree, or I disagree,
let me know.
Does anybody have any questions-- any clarification
necessary at this time?
We've got mic runners.
Where's the mic?
Right there.
All right, anybody?
Yes, sir, in the back.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
I'd love to hear more about how you
got beyond the cognitive level of helping people absorb
that culture and even the reinforcement.
DOUG LIPP: Getting beyond the cognitive level is really--
what was being said in the classroom in the Disney
University was happening every day on the job.
And so it didn't remove it from the cognitive level.
It just blended the cognitive and the gut level into one.
There was congruence between the message,
because in the University, we had
people who had operations background.
Operations people always filtered
through the University.
So when you walked out as a newly hired employee,
or as a mid-level manager, or when Michael Eisner
joined the company-- and I had him in the Disney University.
In fact on the back of that book,
you'll see Michael wrote a testimonial saying, when
I joined Disney as the CEO, I had to go back to school,
to the University-- when the CEO walks into the University
as the equivalent of a Noogler, that
sends a massively powerful message to everybody
else in the organization.
When I was in charge of training at Disney Studios, that's
a whole different ball game, training 35-
to 85-year-old Hollywood executives--
they're a tough crowd-- versus the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed
kids you get at Disney World or Disneyland.
I wasn't going to fight the battle of having
a discussion about creativity with them.
I would call in the chairman of Disney Studios, *** Cook, who
was in charge of running a huge corporation.
He's the man who brought in Johnny Depp
to do all the "Pirates" series.
When he walked in a room and said,
hey, let's have a discussion for 30 minutes
about the creative process of creating a film,
you capture people's hearts and minds.
And that was the message is that, if it's
good enough for a 16-year-old new hire,
it's good enough for that senior executive
and everybody in between.
So that became part of the culture.
And when it becomes part of the culture,
you take it out of the cognitive realm
and you put it right in the heart.
All right, so let's push on.
Again, in short, the Disney University
is not a standalone fix-it operation.
It's a vehicle for the culture of the organization.
It's part and parcel to what the company's all about.
So what I'm showing you right now--
and it really does feed in nicely, in fact.
Thank you for the cue.
You'll get your bonus after the presentation's
over-- Van France, again, my mentor, talked
about why does the University survive?
And I have to tell you as a training and development OD
specialist-- I consult with companies
all around the world-- all too often
I have people who will challenge me and say, well, of course,
the Disney University has success.
I mean, if I had Mickey Mouse leading
a cheer for my employees, I'd have
no problem getting people in the room.
If I had posters of Walt Disney holding all of his Oscar
awards, I'd have no problem.
In fact, the Oscar the Walt won for "Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs" is really cool.
Has anybody ever seen it?
It's-- of course the AV guy's seen it--
the other old guy in the room has seen it--
it's a single Oscar with seven baby Oscars lined up next
to it, representing the seven dwarfs-- posters of that,
pictures of that, all over the company.
So their point-- non-Disney people will say, well, yeah,
if I had those fanciful names and the soundtrack of "Lion
King" and "Hakuna Matata" playing in the background
when I go in to orientation, of course
I'm going to be thrilled.
And I say, yes, but what if that message that you learned in
that training program is not alive and well on the front
lines?
And that new hire, or that senior executive,
goes into the park, or goes back to his or her job,
and somebody else says, I don't care
what they say in that brainwashing factory called
Disney University.
The real message is right here, so forget all that crap.
That would be a complete waste of time.
And all too often, I go into organizations,
and I actually recommend they get rid of their training
department, or at least their training curriculum,
because it's not in tune with real life.
And I'm a firm believer in training.
Everybody should have training.
But it doesn't always have to be in a classroom.
It could be one-on-one.
It could be mentoring.
It could be in five-minute bursts throughout the day
or throughout the week.
But this is what-- again getting back to these four
circumstances that Van France talked about,
and I write about extensively in "Disney U,"
because "Disney U," the book, is about values that
are timeless and applicable in the organization.
And I work with hospitals.
I work with mom and pop stores, and everything
in between-- so Van said this new baby
in the corporate family would not have survived,
were it not for four circumstances-- essentially
four values, and these values represent, I think,
the essence of the Disney organization,
and I think of all the companies that I've
worked with over the years, you can relate to this
more so than anybody.
So the first one is that Disney as an organization
of innovation.
You know about innovation.
There's nothing to talk about here,
but what I want you think about is
with your own approach in sales or services, how much
do you innovate?
Yes, the company is known for this.
You've got Google X. You've got innovation time.
You've got all kinds of things, but how much are
you personally challenging yourself every day
to innovate and take calculated risk?
It's about support-- leadership support--
the example I just gave you of *** Cook, the chairman
of Disney Studios, coming in and leading
a 30-minute discussion about creativity,
or the chairman of Disney Imagineering,
a guy named Marty Sklar, who would also work with executives
and front-line employees to develop
creative approaches to solving problems.
He had something that he called "the white sheet
of paper approach."
He writes about it in one of his books.
And my wife and I were recently with them,
spending a whole weekend with him going over some things,
and we're going to see him tomorrow night.
He said, my staff of Imagineers, of animators, of creative types
had massive stress.
There's 11 Disney theme parks around the world--
soon to be 12, with Shanghai opening next year.
And he said, the pressure to outdo
what you just did last year in that theme park,
or on that ride, or in that movie is massive.
And so the metaphor that he used was this piece of paper.
He said, it's like staring at a blank piece of paper--
even if it's a computer screen, it doesn't matter--
but that blank piece of paper scared the heck out
of a lot of my Imagineers.
And so I said-- this is Marty now-- and so I said to them,
you can look at that blank sheet of paper in one of two ways.
You can look at it and say, oh my gosh, I'm so intimidated,
because I have to put the first words on that paper.
Or you can look at it and say, oh my gosh,
isn't this exciting?
I'm the one who gets to be the one who
writes the first words on this paper.
So that's innovation.
That's support from a guy named Marty Sklar,
who himself was a writer, who himself pitched directly
to Walt Disney the idea for the $0.10 Disneyland newspaper that
was sold for years on Main Street of Disneyland.
And he pitched that idea to Walt Disney
when he was a junior at UCLA.
So it can happen at any level.
Thankfully your corporation encourages innovation,
and you have tremendous support.
It's about education and the value of education.
Another, I think, eerily similar value,
and something that's happening right here in this room today,
is something that happened at the Disney Studios.
In the mid-1930s, Walt Disney wanted
to send his animators to art school
to help them be more creative, and he
found that the art schools of the day
were very limited in their scope of creativity, actually.
They actually forced people into certain boxes and drawing
styles that Walt didn't support, but again,
in his inimitable style of "no, because as opposed to yes,
if"-- let's forget about sending our people to art school.
Let's invite thought leaders into Disney Studios.
And this is in the 1930s.
He actually invited Frank Lloyd Wright
to come in and talk to the animators
about how to draw a better Bambi.
What is the connection there?
What they wound up doing, was they brought a live deer
into the sound stage, and they put it
on a pile of alfalfa hay.
Now the deer is munching on alfalfa hay.
And then around the deer sit a bunch of animators,
ostensibly viewing a deer in its natural resource,
moving and eating.
In the day that was mind-alteringly creative,
because up until that point animators had
to look at real fuzzy black and white films,
or they had to look at photographs.
They didn't actually get to see the muscle
twitch of the animal, or how the jaw moved
when it ate the alfalfa.
And after listening to Frank Lloyd Wright come in and give
them ideas about what he went through
to create a new building, they did that.
Education and constantly learning--
what you're doing with the author series
is exactly that-- constantly looking at new ideas,
and if you can just pick up one or two snippets of information,
you're farther ahead than anybody else.
And then finally, it's about entertain--
having some fun-- having some fun.
One of my most favorite Walt Disney quotes,
and it's-- again, for those of you lucky few who picked up
this book.
It's actually put it on the inside jacket,
because I love it so much, and this
is the quote-- "when the subject permits,
we let fly with all the satire and gags at our command."
And here's the key-- "laughter is no enemy to learning."
"Laughter is no enemy to learning."
It doesn't mean that you belittle
learning opportunities.
It means that you make them enjoyable.
It means that you make them memorable.
And so that's part of the answer, gentleman
in the back-- that guy in blue shirt that asked me--
oh, wake up, yep, yep, yep, you're back on stage, OK--
that's how you take it from the cognitive realm
and move into the heart, is you make it memorable,
and you make it sink in.
Yes, it's important.
But let's not make it mind-numbingly boring.
The other reason you are so blessed,
is you live within-- depending on the time of day-- right
now would be at least an eight-hour commute
to downtown San Francisco.
Take one of your Google vans, and go ahead
and get past all the people that are complaining about that,
go to the Presidio, and go to the Walt Disney Family Museum.
Has anybody ever been there-- the Walt Disney Family--
isn't that a beautiful property?
It is a great place.
It's only five years old.
It was started by Walt's daughter Diane.
My wife and I have been working with museum
for the last couple of years and looking at opportunities
to turn that museum into a living laboratory, because it's
full of examples of creativity and dealing with adversity,
and there is a great little example of entertain
and educate at the same time.
Of all of the beautiful displays that are in this museum,
the one that caught my eye the most
was a small piece of paper that was framed.
And it had a fanciful picture of a guy.
It was a cartoon that Walt Disney
had drawn as a high school student.
So I can only imagine Walt Disney as a high school
student sitting in some boring lecture, just doodling away.
And the quote at the top of that is what caught my eye.
And it says this-- "develop your sense of humor,
and eventually it will develop you."
"Develop your sense of humor, and eventually
it will develop you."
And that's the essence of what the Disney organization is all
about, is entertain and educate at the same time.
Comments, questions, clarification-- anybody at all?
AUDIENCE: How do you-- and I'm an instructional designer here,
so trainer-- how do you, in that new hire level,
stop some maybe bad cultural traits that
are possible with that kind of mythos that comes up,
such as traits like entitlement, or these types of things that
might happen, or could possibly be
a true aspect of the current culture at said organization?
I know you said you were going to talk about how
your organization perhaps almost failed twice.
And I'm not trying to be rude or anything like that.
I'm really curious about this.
DOUG LIPP: You're way too nice.
AUDIENCE: No, no, no, no I don't want this to been seen--
I promise I'm not trying to be facetious or sarcastic--
I actually really care.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DOUG LIPP: Thank you.
Thank you for asking, and the point that you bring up
is something that every organization sooner or later
faces.
And most organizations do a terrible job
of dealing with it.
In fact, they realize after the fact
that it's happened to them.
So I'm going to answer your question in a little bit
roundabout way.
But keep my feet to the flames.
If I don't zero in on what you're asking, get back to me,
OK?
Specifically, he's saying in the onboarding experience
for the new hire, how do you set that tone?
I think it's that and everything else,
because what oftentimes happens, A,
the onboarding experience is too late, in my opinion.
And I know that Google has a tremendously unique interview
process.
That's where most organizations fall flat.
I call it hire right, train right, treat right.
That's the consultant response-- hire right.
Get the right people on board.
I don't care how well-developed your onboarding process is,
or how well-developed your mid-career training
programs are, if you have the wrong substrate
from the get go, you're done.
So make sure you get the right people on board,
and then you make sure that you onboard them properly,
and properly is a loaded term.
I mean, at Disney it is very methodical.
I understand that at Google-- depending on the position
you're in-- sometimes you're kind of thrown
into the deep end, and you get to figure it out on your own,
but that is something that you buy into when you're
going through the interview process.
That's part of the culture, is you have to go
and figure it out on your own.
If I did that in another company that for decades
has had a methodical onboarding process,
that won't be fair to new hires.
So get the right people on board,
train them properly for their jobs,
but then don't think of that onboarding as the one shot
inoculation.
It has to be an ongoing process of continuous education.
So let me just show some slides to you.
In the evolution of an organization,
you're going to expand, hopefully,
into lots of different markets.
You're going to expand in the kinds and types of people
you hire and serve.
And what I'm showing here, through these circles,
is different cultures.
It could be linguistic differences.
It could be cultural differences.
It could be age differences, regional differences.
And unfortunately, all too often,
as organizations evolve, get bigger, more people,
these turn into silos.
And they don't talk to each other.
It's a day shift.
It's a night shift.
It's the people that come in direct contact with customers,
or people in back rooms that are grinding out code.
Those become islands.
Disneyland is no different than that.
I mean, you think about the setup of Disneyland
alone-- Fantasyland is a culture.
Tomorrowland is a culture unto itself.
Frontierland is the Wild Wild West.
But one of the things that we made clear--
and I'm guessing Google does the same thing--
is you have a massively clear set of values.
Despite those values, you still have
to let individuals do things their way.
And as our globe shrinks, and we have more multicultural, more
multilingual teammates, associates, clients,
we have to be able to say, what's
going to be appropriate for this group
right now, and appropriate for that group right now?
What I'm showing right now is an example of this.
I got to work on "Pirates of the Caribbean,"
which is decidedly the coolest culture in all of Disney,
because you can actually be rather rude to guests,
and you can get away with it.
(SHOUTING) Get in the boat now!
(LITTLE BOY VOICE) Oh, Daddy, isn't he a swell pirate?
But three hours later, you might be
over on the attraction (SINGING) it's a small world after all,
and you've got to be so nice and saccharin-- that's
a different culture.
But the culture of Disney-- to create the happiest place
on earth, which I find-- correct me if I'm wrong,
but in some of my research of Google--
"the happiest place on Earth" is how
everybody relates at Disney.
Yours is "don't be evil."
My god, go to the negative, why don't you?
Jeez, that's really scary-- anyway, our "don't be evil"
is "create the happiest place on Earth,"
but so that we connect with all these different cast members,
we let pirates create the happiest place on earth
the way pirates would, and the people on Small World,
the way Small World would.
So we allow a modicum of flexibility
within the confines of the overall culture.
But that's the key, is that the overall culture
is brutally, massively clear.
It's not a moving target.
And I see that as a challenge for every manager
in every company, especially newly
promoted managers and supervisors who, unfortunately,
are oftentimes promoted because they
are an expert on their topic, but they
don't know a darn thing about managing people.
So I would encourage, if you're a designer for new hire
orientation, think about how do you keep those newly promoted
people up to speed as well.
Questions, comments, anybody?
You see how it leads to different discussions
when wacky questions come up like this?
Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: You've addressed quite well
how to find the right people and build them
up as they come on board.
But sometimes in an organization of our age,
we have people who are already entrenched--
DOUG LIPP: Who are what?
AUDIENCE: Entrenched-- they've been there for a while.
Maybe they're really good for their jobs,
but they're not that great for the culture.
How can you, as a team, when you're
trying to build this awesome culture,
work around those people, or bring them around,
our maybe both, or either one?
What do you do with those people?
DOUG LIPP: Wow, you know, we've rehearsed this for hours,
and the timing is perfect.
How do you get people to move beyond being entrenched?
Excellent point.
You all have pieces of paper in front of you.
In fact, this piece of paper, this beautiful color copy
has six key lessons.
These are all just part of what I talk about in "Disney U."
I'm addressing just a couple of these today.
What I want to do is not look at that, but flip it over.
How's that?
Go to the backside, where it's just a blank piece of paper.
And I know that a couple of you came in with pens or pencils,
if you have an extra pen loan it to the person next you who
doesn't have a pen.
If you don't have a pen, you're just
going to do it with your finger.
But we're going to do a writing exercise for moment,
and this addresses creativity.
This addresses leadership.
This addresses getting out of a rut.
Everybody have a pen in your hand?
Hold it up in the air.
Hold it up in the air.
All right, loosen up that wrist a little bit.
I don't want anybody to get carpal tunnel syndrome
or repetitive motion injury.
All right, that's good.
What I'm going to have you do-- I'll
give you a five-second countdown.
And I'm going to have you sign your name as many times
as you can.
For a warm up, sign your name one time right now
on that piece of paper-- just one.
Sign it.
You got it?
You're looking at it.
You're smiling.
Everybody does that.
They look at their name, and they
smile, because we've all practiced that signature
since we were in fourth grade.
And we love our signature.
Now, five seconds, and after that five seconds what you're
going to do, is you're going to continue
to sign your name as many times as you
can nonstop for 30 seconds.
I will keep track of the time-- five,
four, three, two, one, begin.
30 seconds nonstop-- sign your name as many times as you can.
You've gone 15 seconds.
You're probably cramping up already.
That's OK.
Push through the pain.
10 seconds, keep going.
All right, shake out that hand.
Get rid of the cramps.
Now analyze your handwriting two ways.
One, do a productivity assessment-- how many times
did you actually sign your name?
Write that number down.
Don't look at your neighbor.
It doesn't matter if you did more.
You are such a type a competitive group.
Just relax .
Their name might have more letters in it than yours.
So do a productivity assessment--
how many times did you sign your name?
Then I want to do a quality assessment,
using a 1 through 10 scale.
10 is perfect-- oh my gosh, that's mine.
1 is who wrote this chicken scratch?
10 is great.
One is terrible.
Or something in between for a quality
score-- purely subjective.
You all have that?
Look at me.
Give me feedback.
This is yes.
This is no, and this is what is this guy doing?
Now, with pen in dominant hand, hold that in the air,
or if you did air writing, just hold your blank hand
in the air.
Keep that hand in the air.
Raise your non-dominant hand.
Both hands are in the air.
Transfer the pen to the non-dominant hand.
Hands down.
Five, four, three, two, one, proceed-- same exercise,
30 seconds with your off-hand.
No laughing-- this is a very important exercise.
Stop writing.
Do me a favor.
Look at your neighbor's and laugh uncontrollably.
Do a productivity assessment.
How many times did you sign your name
with your non-dominant hand?
Write that number down.
Next is that quality score, and this
is how you're going to get it-- this 1 to 10
scale-- look at your dominant hand
as the benchmark of excellence.
That's the perfect model.
Compare and contrast-- if your non-dominant hand looks exactly
like that, give yourself a 10 for quality.
Otherwise, drop it down the scale accordingly-- five,
three, one, zero, minus 1 million--
whatever you think you deserve.
Take a couple seconds.
Get that down.
Three questions-- please, raise your hands in response.
Everybody, I want you to respond to this.
How many saw a drop-off in your productivity
the second time around?
Raise your hands.
Look around the room-- beautiful-- hands down.
How many saw a drop-off in quality
the second go around-- beautiful, hands down.
Last question, how many felt uncomfortable or downright
foolish the second go around-- beautiful.
That's the answer to your question.
We get stuck in ruts because we don't want to look stupid.
We don't want to fail.
Metaphorically, as a coach of others--
even when working with clientele in sales and services--
I, as a change-agent, need to recognize the pain
I'm putting through that changee.
Even myself-- I am not comfortable looking foolish.
I don't know how to manage people that way.
But I'm not going to let on that I don't know.
We all have egos-- individually, as well as organizationally.
And metaphorically, the challenge
is are you willing and able to move the pen from one hand
to the other?
It doesn't mean that you're giving up that dominant hand
and skill set.
It means that you're adding to it.
And the reason I feel strongly about this--
and I'm going to talk about it as we go along here--
is that we at Disney became so confident and competent
with our dominant hand, that we forgot to change.
You think left and right, dominant hand
or non-dominant hand, now let's change it to people.
Dreamers and doers represent the far ends of that continuum.
Continuum is what we in the OD business call it.
It's just a, line for crying out loud, but it's a line,
and on the far end what we're showing up on
the screen now is Walt was on the dreamer
end of the continuum.
What if?
What are we going to do?
It's Google X, right?
And you have to make things go to market.
You got to make money.
You got to make it happen somehow.
You got to produce this thing.
So you have to have doers.
Walt Disney and his brother Roy were the classic balance
of dreamer, doer.
You don't agree with everything they say.
But at least you have that contrarian thinker.
Teams that have both are amazingly strong.
But unfortunately, only about 7% of companies around the world
have a succession plan.
And we at Disney fell into that trap.
With both dreamers and doers on your team--
regardless of how old they are or how many years
of experience-- you will continue
to dominate your market.
You will continue to have a culture that evolves,
challenges itself.
But with one, you're done.
So I want to share with you a quote, again,
from this gentleman Marty Sklar that
spent 53 years in his career with the Disney organization,
and he talked about the mindset that Walt Disney had.
Walt Disney in, Marty's words, as I'm showing on the screen,
"always had one foot in the past and one foot in the future."
He recognized the importance of the legacy of the company.
And legacy is a relative term-- for some companies
it's 16 years, for some companies it's decades,
for some it's just a couple of years.
In Silicon Valley, a long legacy is a day, and you're done.
It's OK.
But he, meaning Walt, didn't hang out in the past.
He knew that it was important to leverage
that to go to the future and upset the apple
cart, constantly moving the pen, metaphorically,
left to right, right to left.
But when Walt passed away, the tendency
was for the doer mindset to take over--
not upset the apple cart, not make any mistakes,
keep the pen in that dominant hand.
Another way to look at it is something called the "S curve."
Has anybody ever studied the S curve?
You might want to Google it.
Check it out.
But it's also known as the sigmoid curve.
Now if you've had a sigmoidoscopy,
you don't want to think about that.
So we'll just call the S curve.
But it's basically the letter "S" kind of lying on its side.
And it basically represents the beginning, middle, and end.
It's a life cycle of anything-- an idea, a product,
a color scheme, hairstyles, whatever the case might be.
And if you have dreamers and doers on a team,
then you're guaranteed of having multiple S curves going
in the air, and many things being juggled at the same time.
If you only have one or the other,
generally, the marketplace has changed around you,
and you didn't realize it, or you're producing products
that nobody cares about anymore.
And most organizations don't change
until they get to point z, and that's too late.
And this is exactly what happened to us at Disney.
When Walt Disney passed away, and we
lost that creative force, and the person who
was willing and able to upset the apple cart,
and everybody was busy circling wagons to make sure
that nothing changed, we got in trouble.
So I want to think about-- this quote right now,
I think, is particularly poignant for Google.
You're at your 10th anniversary of your IPO.
This quote is from Walt Disney at the 10th anniversary
of Disneyland.
Disneyland opened in '55.
This is from a meeting that he had with his executive team
and operations team in 1965.
And of many things that he said, he said,
we've had 10 years of knock-the-ball-out-of-the-park
success.
And he talked about all the accolades
from around the world of starting this theme park called
Disneyland that no one had ever dreamed of before.
In the past, it was you should go to the state fair.
Or you go to a county fair.
And you know what kind of quality you get there.
And Walt said, but you know what?
I look at these first 10 years as nothing more
than a dress rehearsal-- nothing more than a dress rehearsal.
And if any of you on this team think
you can rest on your laurels, then there's the door.
That's what keeps an organization young and dynamic,
is you've always got that pressure to perform.
And you can look at that as massive stress.
Or you could look at as tremendous opportunity.
And when Walt passed away, some of that went away with him.
Another thing that went away with him--
and this is another part about keeping an organizational
culture alive and well-- is a term that we use a Disney
called "plussing the show"-- improving the show.
I'll give you one specific example
that I write about in "Disney U."
One of the directors of the Disney University
told me a story about when he was an 18-year-old ride
operator at Disneyland.
And Walt Disney came into the park all the time.
Walt was known to walk the park.
He was always in direct contact with guests and cast members.
Walt Disney rode on jungle cruise?
Anybody ever ridden on Jungle Cruise before?
Fantastic ride.
And Walt gone off of the boat-- there are seven boats on jungle
cruise-- he got off of the boat and pulled all the skippers off
to the side on the dock to give them
some fairly critical feedback.
He said, we've got to plus the show.
If we don't plus the show we'll lose guests,
and it will take us years to get them back.
And this is the specific example he gave-- he said,
we've invested millions of dollars
in this attraction-- in the soundtrack,
in the audio animatronic figures.
And he said, and each of you skippers undermine that.
And this guy said, well, what do we do, Walt?
He said, well, you think about it.
In this seven-minute ride, when we
get to about the middle of the ride
where the jungle is encroaching on us,
and the boats are getting into that real, dark scary part
of the jungle, and the river is really dark, dark green,
what happens at that moment, when
everybody's on pins and needles?
And the skippers all said, well, that's when the hippos jump out
of the water-- the hippopotamus.
And Walt said, exactly.
And what do those hippos do?
Well, they roar.
And they scream.
And they spit water.
He said, yes, and they spit water on the guests,
and they make noise.
And what are the guests are doing?
Well, they're screaming with delight and fright.
Exactly, said Walt.
What were each of you skippers doing?
And then Walt demonstrated to them--
this is driving a boat-- [YAWNS] another day, another hippo.
You killed the show.
You've got a week to practice looking surprised.
And this guy that I interviewed, he said,
and you can only imagine how many hours
we spent the next week practicing looking surprised,
knowing full well that Walt was going to be back.
And he said, but what was interesting about this process,
was that at first it was just pretending to look surprised.
But then, as we did it more and more,
we realized this is a brand new boatload of guests,
and for then this is a brand new experience.
And we started to feel their excitement.
So here is Walt Disney, again.
This brilliant man who said, millions of dollars
invested in the hardware, but you're the software.
How much does a smile cost?
That keeps an organization fresh,
and it's an example of plussing the show.
It means that we all make mistakes.
This artwork is from another book that I wrote years ago.
It's from a proverb that I learned in Japan.
And the proverb is this-- even monkeys fall from trees.
No matter how good you are, no matter your name recognition--
domestically or internationally--
you will screw up.
And all too often, organizations and individual managers
blame that metaphorical gust of wind, or the broken branch,
for the reason they're flat on their backside,
as opposed to looking in the mirror and assessing
how they could improve.
So here is something I'd like to share with you,
and then I'm going to start to bring this to a close.
This is a picture of that wonderful, beautiful man,
Van France.
This is the guy that created the Disney University.
How many of you been to the Disney Institute
with the B.A. Program?
Some of you?
I heard that quite a few, actually, at Google do.
The Disney Institute is the for-public version
of the university, which Van started.
So this set of words is part of a memo than Van France sent
to Walt Disney and something called the Park Operating
Committee to challenge them on being more creative
in being better leaders, creating better training,
keeping the product fresh.
Look at the word choice in here.
Has anybody ever used the word "arthritis
of the imagination," or "cirrhosis of the enthusiasm"?
And this is the brilliance of Van France--
just like Walt Disney-- really, really honest, brutally honest,
and a great salesperson.
He knew that if he didn't package a memo
in a creative enough way, that Walt and the team of executives
wouldn't pay any attention to it.
So my question to you is this, who
is the Van France on your team, within sales and services?
Who is the person who's not afraid to say
what he or she sees?
Now, I understand in any organization there's always
going to be politics involved, but people like Van France
always find ways to get the truth to the right people.
So I'm going to finish up with another little exercise,
just to have you get a little bit of energy
before you got to go back out into the Bay area traffic
and drive home.
I want you think about creativity.
Something as simple as "how clean is clean?"
Before we opened Tokyo Disneyland,
the team of custodians that I hired and trained
made a huge mistake.
The night before our first mini-grand opening,
we had executives from the United States
tell them, hey, go out tonight, and clean the park,
because Disney is known for cleanliness.
And we had spent months training them on cleaning the park.
And it was all interpreted perfectly well.
And so they said, yes, we understand.
We're going to clean the park.
This is the graveyard crew-- midnight, 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock,
everything goes fine.
4 o'clock in morning, I get a phone call
from a very upset American executive.
What is wrong with those custodians you hired
and you trained?
And I said, nothing-- we hired the best custodians
from around the country.
He said, well, then answer me this,
why did they clean The Haunted Mansion?
I said, what's the problem?
It's supposed to be clean.
He says, no, no, you don't get it.
They fixed all the broken windows.
They vacuumed up all the dust.
All the spider webs are gone.
Literally in about four hours, they
had cleaned away a quarter million dollars of artwork.
It no longer looked spooky and scary.
It looked like an operating room.
And the trouble was this-- and we did a root cause analysis--
it's because we trained them in backstage areas that weren't
aged and grained-- kitchens, restrooms, break areas that
had a lot of stainless steel and white tile.
And when they would scrub it until it shined,
we would say, bravo, good job!
And they took that same approach into The Haunted Mansion.
So again, communication is not easy.
And as our teams get more diverse,
based on age, ethnicity, culture,
it gets even more complicated.
So I'm going to finish this with that story.
It's written about in "Disney U."
I want to thank you all so much for your time.
I know but you've got very, very busy schedules.
Keep up the good work and keep your culture
alive and well and ever-evolving.
Thank you so much.