EVERYBODY KNEW WALT!

There was a time early in our industry when, if you met someone who had worked at Disney, you could almost be assured of one thing.

They knew Walt!

Or at least they talked as though they did.

It didn't matter whether they had been with the company for 25 years, five years, or five weeks. Somewhere in the conversation, the name "Walt" would surface.

"Walt always believed..." "Walt wanted it done this way...""That's not how Walt would have handled it..."

Now, Walt Disney passed away in 1966. Yet, for decades afterward, I encountered Disney employees, from frontline personnel to newly appointed executives, who referred to him with the familiarity of someone they had just shared breakfast with that morning!

I used to smile about it.

Of course, there was a reason for this. Disney had developed an extraordinary corporate culture. Walt's philosophy, standards, and expectations had been institutionalized throughout the organization. People such as Dick Nunis and other early Disney leaders helped preserve and perpetuate that culture long after Walt's passing.

Dick Nunis - Source:  Disney

And let's give credit where credit is due. Because it certainly has worked!

Disney built one of the most recognized, admired, and operationally disciplined organizations in the world. The company understood something many others were still learning and still are. A strong corporate culture can outlive the individual who created it.

But there was another side to Disney's early management philosophy that I always found interesting, particularly when comparing it with the organizations in which I grew up.

Source: Designing Disney

Let me tell you about the Disney hot dog!

Years ago, someone familiar with Disney's management structure described to me how specialized certain responsibilities had become within the organization.

The example involved a simple hot dog.

For purposes of the story, let's say that hot dog had three basic components: the bun, the dog itself, and the mustard.

According to the account I was given, there could be separate management personnel responsible for each component. One concentrated on purchasing and managing the buns. Another handled the hot dogs. Still another dealt with only the mustard.

And supposedly, these individuals seldom, if ever, interacted with one another!

Now, I cannot personally verify how literally that particular example reflected Disney's purchasing structure. It was a story told to me years ago, but it illustrated something that was very real about large organizations.

Specialization!

A manager could become extraordinarily proficient in one narrow area of responsibility without necessarily understanding the broader operation.

And Disney, with its enormous scale, could afford that kind of specialization. We couldn't at Taft!

During those formative years of the modern theme park industry, the management teams at Six Flags, Worlds of Fun, the Taft parks, and other smaller regional operations were developing under an entirely different set of circumstances.

We didn't have the luxury of having someone responsible for just the mustard! Heck, we were fortunate if we had someone who knew where the mustard was stored!

Our management teams were made up of people who had to know a little bit about everything and, in many cases, a great deal about several things. Marketing. Operations. Food service. Merchandise. Maintenance. Finance. Personnel. Safety. Guest relations.

And when something went wrong, you didn't look for the vice president of mustard.

You fixed the problem!

I look back on some of the operating executives who helped build this industry: Gary Wachs, Errol McKoy, Larry Cochran, Lee Derrough, Jim Bouy, Julio Pieripoli, Ed McHale, Mike Bartlett, Dan Howells, Bill Crandall, and many others.

These were individuals who understood the entire battlefield. They could discuss attendance projections in the morning, inspect a ride operation before lunch, address a food service problem in the afternoon, and deal with a serious personnel issue before the park closed.

And if a thunderstorm rolled in, a major ride went down, or attendance suddenly exceeded projections, they didn't need a committee meeting to determine who was responsible. They took charge!

I have often thought of those early operating teams as the Navy SEALs of the theme park industry. They were trained in the field, frequently under difficult circumstances, with limited resources and enormous responsibility, and all at very young ages, typically our twenties!

True entrepreneurs. We learned by doing. And I might add, sometimes by making mistakes!

But those mistakes provided an education you couldn't obtain sitting behind a desk studying one small component of an enormous organization.

There is a reason we were called GENERAL MANAGERS. We were truly generalists! We had to understand the entire business, not simply one department within it.

I remember when Disney alumni would occasionally become available in the employment marketplace. Naturally, there was always interest. Disney carried enormous prestige, and deservedly so.

But I also learned that a Disney résumé did not automatically translate into broad operating experience back then. Someone might have spent 15 years in a highly specialized Disney position and become exceptionally knowledgeable in that discipline, yet have surprisingly limited exposure to the financial, marketing, maintenance, and operational decisions required to run an entire regional theme park. Not a lot of what I called back then “cross-pollination.”

That wasn't necessarily a shortcoming of the individual. It was a reflection of the organizational structure in which that individual had developed.

There were certainly exceptions. For instance, there was Bill Bieberbach, a Disney alumnus whom we hired for the Taft Amusement Park Group. Bill had worked closely with Dick Nunis and had enjoyed broader exposure to Disney's management and operating philosophy. He understood the larger picture and brought valuable experience to our organization. He was a good import.

Bill Bieberbach (blue sweater) Former Disney executive

Now I want to be very clear about something.

This is not intended to diminish Disney alumni, not at all. Over the years, I have known numerous Disney executives who have made outstanding contributions throughout the worldwide attractions industry. Nor am I suggesting that Disney's approach was wrong. Far from it. Disney has always set various bars applicable to the entire global theme park industry, at basically every level of the industry.

Early on, the organization Disney was building required extraordinary consistency, control, and attention to detail. Specialization was one of the tools that allowed it to achieve those objectives.

Source:  Orange County Archives

But specialization and general management are not the same thing. And working for a great company does not automatically prepare someone to run an entire company. That distinction was important 50 years ago, and I believe it remains just as important today.

As our industry has grown, consolidated, and become increasingly sophisticated, we have developed more layers of management, more specialized positions, more reporting structures, and more executives responsible for narrower areas of the business.

Much of that evolution has been necessary. But I sometimes wonder whether we have lost something along the way.

Are we developing enough people who truly understand the entire operating business? Managers who are true Generalists?

And are we exposing our future leaders to the realities of making decisions across departments, balancing competing priorities, managing a complete profit-and-loss statement, and accepting responsibility when things go wrong? Its what I call “Operating Cross-Pollination”. Or, are we developing exceptionally talented specialists who may never have been required to command the whole operation?

There is nothing wrong with being a specialist. Every successful organization needs them. Just look at the medical community and how it has changed through the years, now with specialists for every area of the human body.

But clearly someone must be capable of putting all the pieces together. And that responsibility cannot always be learned in a conference room. It is learned on the midway, in the maintenance shop, behind the food service counter, at the admissions gate, and in the operating office when the attendance forecast has just gone out the window!

I have tremendous admiration for what Disney created and continues to represent. Its influence on our industry is immeasurable, incalculable.

But I also have enormous respect for the generation of regional theme park executives who built successful operations without Disney's financial resources, enormous management infrastructure, or worldwide brand recognition.

Those early industry individuals learned to survive and succeed because they had to.

So, is bigger better? In many respects, absolutely.

But bigger does not necessarily mean better preparation for every management challenge. Sometimes the smaller organization, where an individual is required to wear five different hats, produces a leader with a broader understanding of the business than someone who has spent years wearing only one.

And if I were going into battle, particularly during those early, unpredictable years of our industry, I know exactly whom I would want beside me.

Give me those field-trained sergeants who knew how to run the whole operation, could make decisions under fire, and understood that when something went wrong, there was nobody else to call. They were the people I wanted in the trenches!

And one final thought.

After more than five decades in this industry, I have met an extraordinary number of people who could tell me precisely what “Walt” would have said, what “Walt” would have thought, and, of course, what “Walt” would have done!

Some of them were remarkably convincing. There was just one little detail that always intrigued me.

Walt Disney died in 1966. And I couldn't help wondering how many of these folks had actually met the man! Apparently, knowing Walt wasn't always a prerequisite for speaking on his behalf! But It certainly seems to have worked!

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