Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney

by Lee Cockerell

I’m often asked what Disney means by exceeding Guest expectations. I say it consists of small, thoughtful, individualized acts of magic, performed by employees for customers.

If you make sure people know how to do their jobs well and show that you care about their future, you’ll not only improve their performances but also bolster their self-confidence and inspire in them a profound sense of commitment.

Give people a purpose, not just jobs.

If you want to be surrounded by great employees, being a teacher, coach, and counselor is far more effective than just being a boss.

I’ve found the acronym COACH—care, observe, act, communicate, help—to be a great guide for training and developing employees:

“You should not worry that your children are not listening to you. You should worry that they are always watching you” and “What you teach your children you teach their children.”

seemingly minor details can make or break a company’s—or a person’s—entire reputation, and that was why we needed to pay attention to every little thing.

Why are these individualized interactions called Take 5s? Because they blow the Guests’ minds in less than five minutes. Think of them as real-life versions of those random acts of kindness you read

As a leader you need to make sure your employees know where to be and what to do under all circumstances—when it’s busy and when it’s slow, on an ordinary day and during a crisis.

Communicate constantly. Use every means available to teach new lessons, share promising ideas and effective practices, reinforce important principles, announce research and survey data, and keep

everyone up-to-date on organizational developments.

Feedback is a powerful method for training your employees, and that means first training yourself to always notice employee performance. Then quickly offer your feedback.

One way to prepare your people to deal with uncertainty is to anticipate every possible scenario and rehearse the most effective responses. That’s how soldiers, athletes, and others who perform in unpredictable conditions are trained, and businesses can do the same. So, while training your employees for ordinary tasks, make sure you also prepare them for every unusual situation that might crop up and train them to handle each contingency.

“The only way you achieve excellence is with education, enforcement, and large doses of recognition, appreciation, and encouragement”

Remember, if you don’t train and develop your employees, you’ll lose them to a company that will.

Whether they’re called rules, procedures, policies, or operating guidelines, processes define how employees should interact with other people—coworkers, customers, and external business contacts—as well as with the physical environment and technology in order to accomplish specific tasks in the best and most efficient way. Effective processes make the routine things run smoothly and consistently, freeing employees to do the extra things that can turn a good business into a great business.

As a great leader always should, he looked for ways to improve how things are done because “We’ve always done it that way” could mean that you’ve been doing it wrong all along.

When a mishap arises, instead of immediately looking for someone to blame, first see if a flawed procedure or policy is causing the problem.

Learn firsthand what’s working and what’s not.

At Walt Disney World we used to write letters of apology to Guests who complained. But these apologies seemed to fall on deaf ears. So we started phoning those Guests instead. Sure, phone calls take a lot more time than writing letters and e-mails. But the two-way conversations enabled us to understand fully the nature of every person’s complaint.

As a leader you have to keep your ear to the ground and listen for the sound of complaints from your staff. It helps to have a process in place to root out process problems and then follow up to make sure they’re resolved.

if you don’t follow up, your credibility is zero, and people will clam up. Some concerns might seem insignificant to you, but they can be very important to your employees.

Try an audit exchange plan.

I added a system called an audit exchange, in which managers of different resorts or parks spend a day auditing the operations of their peers. On the premise that it is easier to see with fresh eyes when we’re outside our usual frame of reference, we told the resort and park managers to look for weaknesses in one another’s controls, costs, and procedures. They spent the day visiting different departments, asking questions of the department managers and frontline staff, and observing operations. The results were excellent: Not only did the managers spot flaws in the operations they visited, but they also found good ideas for processes and procedures to implement in their own departments.

Don’t just wait for hassles to appear; find ways to prevent them before they happen. Remember the old navy saying “For every regulation, there’s a dead sailor.” It means that nothing changes unless someone falls overboard.

But good routines actually give you the stability you need in order to adapt when challenges arise. I once heard someone say, “Management is boring. If you want excitement become a race car driver.”

Good processes ensure that you attend to the routine, necessary, and predictable tasks, freeing your mind to respond creatively to unexpected events.

Being poorly organized is one of the biggest problems leaders run into, and they don’t always recognize it. Crises keep erupting around them, and they don’t realize that many could have been averted if they’d been better organized in the first place. And the more fires they have to put out, the more they resist getting organized, because they can’t stop long enough to take stock of their routines.

Take five to thirty minutes each morning to plan your day. Use that time to list all the things you need to get done or get started on that day. In making that list, ask yourself these three questions: ♦ Of all of the responsibilities I have signed up for in my life, which ones should I work on today? ♦ What should I start today that will not pay off for one, five, ten, twenty, or even forty years from now? ♦ What did I do yesterday that I need to go back and do better?

It is your responsibility as a leader to constantly look for and implement new and better processes in your business operations and to work hard to gain support for those initiatives.

So before you implement new procedures, take the time to communicate thoroughly with everyone who will be affected by them. Explain exactly why the change is important to employees, customers, or business results.

I strongly suggest walking through your operation day after day to check on all the processes and systems. Don’t just ask how it’s going; check on it yourself.

As with structural innovations, it’s crucial to avoid falling in love with your brilliant process changes. So make every adjustment with the attitude that it’s reversible, that not only can you change it again, but you eventually will have to.

Also keep in mind that eliminating or altering a process might cause problems...

Always approach a process change as an experiment. Try out new processes for thirty to ninety days; then follow up systematically to see if they’ve been implemented as you envisioned and have genuinely taken hold, or if things have reverted to the way they were before or

otherwise gone awry. When it comes to innovation, it’s important to remember the Chinese injunction to be like bamboo: firm and strong but also flexible enough to bend with the winds of change.

When a problem arises, seek out the process failure; don’t just look for someone to blame.

Great leaders are always in a learning mode. To them, truth is more precious than gold; they know that the more of it they have, the more successful they’ll be. So they constantly explore and probe, listen to everyone, and utilize all reasonable methods for gathering information.

No matter what kind of work you do, if you aspire to truly great leadership, you need to get all the facts pertaining to your business or operation.

I have to emphasize one thing: Get out and about regularly. If your people see you only once a week or a couple of times a month, they may change their behavior just because they know they are being observed. Plus they won’t feel comfortable enough to tell you what you need to know. But when they see you often, they’ll act the same way whether you are there or not. They’ll know you really care and really listen, and will trust you enough to deliver the whole truth and nothing but.

Get a ground-level view. To the degree it’s possible, observe your operations the way customers see them.

Meet regularly with direct reports. Don’t just ask your direct reports if everything is OK and take yes for an answer. Everything is never OK. Hold substantive one-on-one meetings with them on a regular basis. When I met with my direct reports at Disney, I organized the conversations around what I called the Four Ps: people, processes, projects, and profit.

Small gatherings are especially important in times of change, like when you first take over a new position.

Make them feel safe. When people come to you in confidence with a sensitive issue—a medical condition that hampers their performance,

for example, or a complaint about a coworker—it’s vital to make them feel comfortable and safe.

Still, the best way to make people feel safe enough to speak the truth is to establish a trusting, comfortable relationship with each person. Once you do, be sure to preserve that trust by making people feel appreciated for coming forward. Always thank them for speaking their minds, whether or not their information was really useful. The positive reinforcement will encourage them to be honest in the future.

Probe for the whole story. Let’s face it, people won’t always tell you everything you need to know. It’s not so much that they lie as that they leave out significant details, either because they’re afraid to deliver unpleasant news or because the truth might make them look bad. To some extent, it comes with the territory; leaders are kept in the dark, just like parents.

If you want to know the rest of the story, pay close attention to what’s being said and what’s not being said when talking to your employees. Look for subtle clues to what the person is really thinking, like body language, facial expressions, or changes in behavior. Take careful notes, ask detailed clarifying questions, and keep digging deeper—in a nonthreatening manner—until you get to the truth. Once you do, shift the focus to the future. A good question to conclude with is: “What would you like me to do?”

Answer the tough questions. Remember, a leader’s job is not just to ask questions but to answer them as well. If you really want honesty, you’d better demonstrate that you’re willing to answer hard questions.

Constantly evaluate your spending. One final point: Knowing what’s going on in your organization also means keeping track of how your money is being spent. Constantly reviewing your invoices to keep track of your spending is one of your most important jobs as a leader.