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

by Robert Iger

Meaning: They didn’t think every key decision should be made by the two of them or by a small group of strategists in corporate headquarters. They hired people who were smart and decent and hardworking, they put those people in positions of big responsibility, and they gave them the support and autonomy needed to do the job. They were also tremendously generous with their time and always accessible. Because of this, executives working for them always had a clear sense of what their priorities were, and their focus enabled us all to be focused, too.

But it was such a stressful way to kick things off, and a reminder of how one person’s unwillingness to give a timely response can cause so much unnecessary strain and inefficiency.

It was a perfect example of the need for optimism. Things were dire, for sure, but I needed to look at the situation not as a catastrophe but as a puzzle we needed to solve, and to communicate to our team that we were talented and nimble enough to solve these problems and make something wonderful on the fly.

And it was satisfying to face the challenge of each day knowing that the only way through was to stay laser-focused and to exude as much calmness as possible to the people around me.

True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

I’ve found that often people will focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty. And if the big picture is a mess, then the small things don’t matter anyway, and you shouldn’t spend time focusing on them.

Empathy is a prerequisite to the sound management of creativity, and respect is critical.

“I’d much rather take big risks and sometimes fail than not take risks at all.”

Not with lack of effort but with the unavoidable truth that if you want innovation—and you should, always—you need to give permission to fail.

The way they conveyed their faith in me at every step made all the difference in my success.