David Lidsky's Blog, page 3069
January 26, 2015
Mapping How America's Population Will Change By 2030
The coming demographic changes are enormous—as the population gets older and more diverse.
The U.S. is expected to become both older and more diverse in the coming decades, with the elderly and Hispanics in particular taking up a greater proportion of the population.
The Perils Of Time Tracking
Parsing how you spend your workday can be an effective practice—sometimes. Don't let it become a second job.
For the productivity obsessed, there's no dearth of tools to track and dissect precisely how the workday is spent. Software like Toggl can parse your tasks down to the second; Excel spreadsheets can transform a scattered log of minutes into a tidy pie chart; and, for Luddites, a pencil and pad of graph paper work just fine.
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There's Nothing Fun About An Egg Freezing Party
Dispatch from a night of fertility talk.
The Hudson Hotel in midtown Manhattan is a swanky spot. The entrance opens up onto to a pair of escalators bathed in chartreuse light. The glowing stairs lead up to the lobby, which looks like Brooklyn barfed on a solarium: Ivy trickles down from the glass ceilings onto brick walls. Sturdy wooden surfaces abound.
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Former Executive Shares The Secrets To How Disney Runs Its Empire
"You don't have to be happy to work at Disney, but you do have to act happy for eight hours. Because we're putting on a show."
During a 16-year run with Disney, Lee Cockerell was an executive vice president who led a team of 40,000 employees and was responsible for operations at 20 resort hotels, four theme parks, and two water parks, among other things.
Disney is an empire built as much on grand expectations—from families who might save up all year to make the trip to Walt Disney World Resort—as it is an empire of scale, one that spans a dizzying area of properties and experiences.
Disney World alone, according to recent figures, sees about 18.6 million visitors a year. In 2014, Disney's parks and resort division contributed about a third of the company's $48.8 billion in revenue for the year, or a little more than $15 billion. For executives on the amusement park and resort side of the company, that necessitates the mastery of formidable organizational complexity to not only accommodate all those visitors, but to present them with a memorable experience that makes the visit worth it.
That's why what goes on behind the scenes at Disney's parks and resorts is a lesson in the leadership of large, sprawling organizations. In fact, when Cockerell retired from the company in 2006 he decided to draw on his time at Disney for insights on leadership, management, and customer service that he could share with other companies and organizations.
While his clients don't have a collection of theme parks and resorts or put on nightly lavish fireworks shows, Cockerell says that plenty of leaders could still learn a thing or two by studying the machinery and motivations behind the entertainment destination that bills itself as "the most magical place on Earth."
"Disney is just like every business, including yours, whatever it may be," Cockerell writes in his book Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney. "It has to make a profit, it has to deal with serious business issues, it faces intense competition, and its strongest competitor is its own reputation."
In an interview with Fast Company, Cockerell explains that one way Disney checks all those boxes is by embedding a fastidious attitude toward the small stuff throughout the company. At Disney, he says, attention to detail is practically a religion.
That's partly because at properties like Disney World, Cockerell says the company regards its interactions with guests as tantamount to staging an epic performance. And one thing out of place, one miscue, one "actor" whose heart isn't in it could end up spoiling the whole thing for a visitor.
At Disney attention to detail is practically a religion.
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January 23, 2015
R.I.P. PDI, The Company That Helped Turn Computer Graphics Into Art
A mini-festival of vintage work by the pioneering studio which DreamWorks Animation is closing.
After a string of box-office disappointments such as Mr. Peabody & Sherman and Penguins of Madagascar, DreamWorks Animation is going through a pretty brutal downsizing. The cartoon studio, which has been releasing three feature films a year, is slashing its production schedule and laying off hundreds of employees. And as part of the process, it's shuttering PDI/DreamWorks, its facility in Redwood City, California.
Expedia Buys Travelocity For $280 Million
The online travel industry just got a bit less crowded.
There's big news in the travel world: Expedia is buying Travelocity for $280 million in cash. The acquisition follows a 2013 deal in which Expedia powered the backend of Travelocity's North American website and provided the travel service access to Expedia's supply and customer service program.
Gap Is Shutting Piperlime Down
Piperlime's shutdown is just one of the big changes Art Peck has made at the San Francisco-based retailer before he even takes over as CEO.
Today Gap Inc. reported it is shutting down its Piperlime business, the retailer's first attempt at launching a native e-commerce brand. "We plan to keep on pushing new ideas and look forward to seeing how we can apply what we've learned to the rest of the company," incoming CEO Art Peck said via a company press release.
Comics Legend Stan Lee Is First Person To Upload Video To LiveJournal
Native video support is here, true believers!
From being a comic book innovator to the only person to appear onscreen in every Marvel Universe movie, Stan Lee has had a lot of firsts in his life. This week he added another to the list—becoming the first person to upload a video to the blogging social network LiveJournal.
Apple's Angela Ahrendts Earned More Than CEO Tim Cook In 2014
Ahrendts can definitely pay her rent.
You know you're doing something right when you join Apple and immediately find yourself out-earning CEO Tim Cook. That's the position former Burberry CEO and Apple's current senior vice president of retail and online stores Angela Ahrendts finds herself in after joining the Cupertino tech company back in May 2014.
Sesame Street Tackles Patriots, Wins #DeflateGate
Tom Brady and the rest of New England's Super Bowl-bound team have met their match in Elmo and the word of the day: inflate.
Sesame Street is the latest to jump on the #DeflateGate NFL "scandal," in which a Patriots ballboy allegedly acted alone in underinflating footballs, according to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's preference. The rumpus comes as New England prepares to play the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX on February 1.
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