The Ride Of A LIFETIME by Rober Iger(Chairman of walt Disney)

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company:

About the Author:

Robert Allen Ager is an American business executive who is Executive chairman of The Walt Disney company. He was CEO from 2005 to 2020. He was named President and COO of Disney in 2000, and later succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO in 2005, after a successful effort by Roy E. Disney to shake up the management of the company. As part of his yearly compensation, Iger earned $44.9 million in 2015.

Summary Of The Book:

Bob Iger is the CEO of Disney and the kind of person who shows up on lists like Time's Most Influential and Forbes's Most Powerful People (at #49). He's been at the company for 45 years, CEO since 2005, postponed retirement a couple times, and now commands a $65.7 million salary (he's #9 on that particular list). This is his first, much anticipated book, authored as the more formal "Robert Iger". He's perceived as a fair and wise decision maker, has made a string of successful large-scale acquisitions, and his thoughts on leadership are naturally relevant. We have seen him speak at studio events, but wanted additional insight into what makes Bob Iger tick. At the same time, I expected a buttoned up, public-image-friendly narrative that wouldn't reveal much, make headlines or worry shareholders. Any hesitation was curtailed when my friend’s boss's boss kindly bought me a copy (her boss's boss's boss being Bob), and he started reading right away. While The Ride of a Lifetime is guarded in many respects, I was pleasantly surprised at how engaging and personal the storytelling was. It was legitimately hard to put down (unusual for any management book), and I finished it within a week: coincidentally on the launch date of Disney+, Disney's latest venture into direct-to-consumer delivery and a big player in the narrative.

 It starts off with a story of things going terribly wrong. The Pulse Nightclub shooting (which had a surprising Disney connection) and the death of a child in an alligator attack both happened in Florida as Iger was in China preparing to inaugurate Shanghai Disneyland. This was a project he'd worked on for 18 years, and he shares his conflicted reactions, the organizational structure he'd set up, and how he tried to maintain a sense of humanity and connection from afar. He then unpacks the pillars of his leadership philosophy: optimism, courage, focus, decisiveness, curiosity, fairness, thoughtfulness, authenticity, the relentless pursuit of perfection, and integrity. None of these sound revolutionary or controversial, but are illustrated as Bob leads you, like the Ghost of Christmas Past, chronologically through his career.

 Almost the entirety of Bob Iger's work life has been with Disney (or companies eventually acquired by Disney). He has a brief stint as an Ithaca weatherman, but in 1974 starts as a factotum at ABC television. He tells memorable stories of working under intense sports TV producers, getting a lighter from Frank Sinatra, covering the winter olympics, seeing a workplace jerk expose himself... stuff like that. He eventually rises into the ranks of management, and when ABC is acquired by Capital Cities, he wins the favor of the new owners. Put in charge at ABC Television, he is responsible for hits like Twin Peaks, Roseanne and Doogie Howser, but also for flops like the musical series Cop Rock (I'd never even heard of this). As he shares these stories, he talks about the lessons that have stuck with him, such as the value of taking big risks, accepting blame, rewarding well-intentioned failure, not letting good-enough ever be good enough, and letting acquired companies maintain their culture. Bob is quickly catapulted (a little too quickly, even by his lofty expectations) to EVP of the combined companies shortly before they are in turn acquired by Disney under the leadership of Michael Eisner. This sets off a rocky decade as Bob tries to find his place. He advocates for his newly-subsumed division of the juggernaut, and tries to maneuver himself into the number two position under Eisner, who alternately trusts and pushes Iger away, only letting him see certain parts of the whole picture. Eventually Eisner's leadership begins to falter, the company suffers, and an intense board battle with Roy E. Disney (Walt's nephew) rocks the company. At this point, the stories gain added interest for me as they overlap with my own outside recollections. I was an animation student in Burbank at the time, and remember meeting Roy and reading his Save Disney website and its bitter missives about the misguided leadership of animation, the parks, merchandising, and the shattered relationship with Pixar.

 

When the board begins its search for a new CEO, Iger is the only internal candidate. He details the frequent interviews, intense grillings, public scrutiny and press coverage. Bob works hard to focus on his vision for the future without throwing Eisner under the bus or defending his role in the past decade of bad decisions. Eventually he is chosen as CEO (spoiler alert), and sets about acting on his three-part vision for the company: high-quality branded content, embracing technology, and becoming truly global. From this point forward, the book is largely structured by major acquisitions that Iger negotiates and executes. It's fascinating to contemplate just how much our global business landscape is driven by the personalities and gut feelings of the people at the top. Apart from board/shareholder approvals and regulatory checkboxes (thank goodness for those), it's all about who's ready to retire, is worried about a legacy, or is feeling slighted or underappreciated. I'm intentionally avoiding the masculine pronoun, but virtually all the players in this story are men.

Bob is able to form a friendship with Steve Jobs, and their initial deal to put ABC shows on the video iPod blossoms into the 2006 purchase of Pixar, with Pixar's John Lasseter and Ed Catmull put in charge at Walt Disney Animation Studios instead of shuttering Disney's Animation division (as Jobs wanted to do). Iger rightly recognizes Animation as the heart of the company, from which all other divisions flow: "As Disney Animation goes, so goes the company." This is where the story gets even more personal for me, as I started at the studio in 2008, dying to work on a project that never would have happened without that deal in place. Steve Jobs ends up on the board, and we learn a lot about their friendship. Next comes the Marvel acquisition (Steve didn't like the idea, but acquiesced to Iger's passion). Then Lucasfilm. Then Twentieth Century Fox. For each massive, multi-billion-dollar deal, we learn how the conversation was initiated, how Bob convinced the board, and how he guided the pieces to make something seemingly impossible move inexorably toward reality. Each could have gone horribly wrong, but ends up as a massive success (the Fox acquisition is too fresh to judge, but signs look good). We are treated to a single counter-example, when Iger gets cold feet about acquiring Twitter. The pieces and approvals are all in place, but his gut tells him Disney isn't in the business of monitoring online communication. Probably another good call.

Finally, Bob talks about seeing the writing on the wall with traditional content delivery (cable, broadcast and theatrical) being subsumed by direct-to-customer streaming. Enter Disney+. It's a move that will involve cannibalizing some of Disney's own hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars revenue streams, but with a path toward future profitability. This portion of the book is a peek into the future, and a pitch for the new platform (I'd already pre-bought 3 years' access, so mission accomplished). Iger concludes with a helpful chapter of bullet points in which he extracts the various leadership lessons from the book. To pick a quick example that could double as a Yoda quote: "Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion." I'll give you a couple other short ones. "It should be about the future, not the past." "If something doesn't feel right to you, it won't be right for you." "If you're in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great."

The Ride of a Lifetime sparked a lot of contemplation about art, creativity, commerce, global impact, and a host of other factors. It's amazing that people like Bob Iger exist, stepping confidently into roles in which their decisions will influence the careers of thousands and whose taste-making affects the lives of millions. It's a strangely parallel world to politics, and it's not surprising that Iger admits his own political aspirations, having contemplated a direct run for the presidency. He just happens to have the right combination of intelligence, good looks, self-assurance, and drive to make these kinds of massive deals happen. I'm still not entirely sure where Iger's compass comes from, but I'm glad he has it. There's not a lot about Walt Disney here beyond a stated sense of admiration, but the drive to expand while showcasing the best in art and technology is clearly alive. Disney as a company has always balanced on the tightrope between creating art and selling product, and has endeavored a proof-of-concept that good money can be made while leaving the world a better, happier place. It's easy to point to instances where the company has fallen short of that goal, but there's a lot it gets right. Iger's legacy furthers that funambulism, measuring success in stock price and shareholder approval while insisting upon quality and integrity.

There are certain habits that will be always been, which will be always be done, that is because is the result of nature and nurture (Iger always work up early and this habits was built by his father in childhood which is with him after so many years). There are other qualities and habits that are result of purposeful decisions made along the path. These decisions are mainly made in response to his parents, mainly his father who have shaped his life. As depicted by Iger his had a den lined with shelves of books, and his dad had read every one of them. Iger immediately understood that his father didn’t bother about what he did with his time providing he was using it “productively” and spent it to improve himself. After few years he took his parents for lunch and told his Father and Mother how thankful was for everything they have done for him.

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