Michael Iger Quotes

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step. One of the things I’ve always instinctively felt—and something that was greatly reinforced working for people like Roone and Michael—is that long shots aren’t usually as long as they seem.

No one could have handled the stress that Michael was under perfectly, but optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion.

No one could have handled the stress that Michael was under perfectly, but optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion. Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. This isn’t about saying things are good when they’re not, and it’s not about conveying some innate faith that “things will work out.” It’s about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don’t break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist. —

Michael’s biggest stroke of genius, though, might have been his recognition that Disney was sitting on tremendously valuable assets that they hadn’t yet leveraged. One was the popularity of the parks. If they raised ticket prices even slightly, they would raise revenue significantly, without any noticeable impact on the number of visitors. Building new hotels at Walt Disney World was another untapped opportunity,

All of this illustrated that Michael was a remarkably creative thinker and businessman,

Every time a question came up about what had gone wrong at Disney over the past years, what mistakes Michael made, and why they should think I’m any different, my response could simply and honestly be: “I can’t do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward. But we don’t get any do-overs. You want to know where I’m going to take this company, not where it’s been. Here’s my plan.

Michael went out of his way during those years to be solicitous with Roy and show him deference and respect. This wasn’t easy to do. Roy could be very difficult at times. He viewed himself as the keeper of the Disney legacy. He lived and breathed and bled Disney, operating as if any break from tradition was a violation of some sacred pact he’d made with Walt himself (who supposedly never showed his nephew much respect). Roy tended to revere the past instead of respecting it, and as a result he had a difficult time tolerating change of any sort. He hated Michael’s acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, because it meant introducing non-Disney brands into the company’s bloodstream. On a lesser but maybe more illustrative note, he got very angry one Christmas season when we decided to sell pure white Mickey Mouse plush dolls in our Disney stores. “Mickey is only these colors, black and white and red and yellow, and that’s it!” Roy raged in emails to Michael and me. He wanted the “albino Mickeys,” as he called them, taken from the shelves, which we didn’t do, but it was a huge distraction.

It’s a hard thing to do, especially in the moment, but those instances in which you find yourself hoping that something will work without being able to convincingly explain to yourself how it will work—that’s when a little bell should go off, and you should walk yourself through some clarifying questions. What’s the problem I need to solve? Does this solution make sense? If I’m feeling some doubt, why? Am I doing this for sound reasons or am I motivated by something personal? CHAPTER 5 SECOND IN LINE FOR THE NEXT three years, Michael ran the company without a number two.

With his ideas going nowhere and Michael Eisner essentially icing him out of any significant role at the company, Ovitz became angry and embarrassed. Even if he’d been given the authority to genuinely function in his role, though, I think he still would have failed at Disney, because he was just not wired for corporate culture. I would give him a stack of materials in advance of a meeting, and the next day he’d come in not having read any of them and say, “Give me the facts,” then render a fast opinion. There was no sense that he was acting fast because he’d processed all the information. The opposite was the case. He was covering up for not being prepared, and in a company like Disney, if you don’t do the work, the people around you detect that right away and their respect for you disappears. You have to be attentive. You often have to sit through meetings that, if given the choice, you might choose not to sit through. You have to learn and absorb. You have to hear out other people’s problems and help find solutions. It’s all part of being a great manager. The problem was, Michael Ovitz wasn’t a manager, he was still an agent. He knew that business better than anyone, but that’s not the business we were in.

You can’t wear your disdain for people on your sleeve, though. You end up either cowing them into submission or frustrating them into complacency. Either way, you sap them of the pride they take in their work. Over time, nearly everyone abdicated responsibility to Peter and Strat Planning, and Michael was comforted by the analytical rigor they represented.

The board had been through a lot in the last decade: the painful decision to bring Michael’s tenure to an end, the ongoing fight with Roy and Stanley, the hostile takeover attempt by Comcast, the shareholder lawsuit over Michael Ovitz’s $100 million–plus severance deal, a legal fight with Jeffrey Katzenberg over the conditions of his exit in 1994. The list went

Michael Eisner used to say, “micromanaging is underrated.” I agree with him—to a point. Sweating the details can show how much you care. “Great” is often a collection of very small things, after all. The downside of micromanagement is that it can be stultifying, and it can reinforce the feeling that you don’t trust the people who work for you.

When I visited Imagineering with Michael, I’d observe him critiquing projects large and small, reviewing everything from storyboards detailing the experience in one of our attractions to the design of a stateroom on a soon-to-be-built cruise ship. He’d hear presentations about upcoming parades, or review the design of the lobby of a new hotel. What struck me, and what was invaluable in my own education, was his ability to see the big picture as well as the granular details at the same time, and consider how one affected the other.

Michael often saw things that other people didn’t see, and then he demanded that they be made better. That was the source of so much of his and the company’s success, and I had immense respect for Michael’s tendency to sweat the details. It showed how much he cared, and it made a difference. He understood that “great” is often a collection of very small things, and he helped me appreciate that even more deeply.