I’ve been quite intrigued(and impressed) by what Disney in the last decade or more. From the ambitious projects with the Marvel Cinematic Universe to bringing back Star Wars. I recently watched(and loved) The Mandalorian and couldn’t help but think that Disney must be doing something right. Sure, you might come across opinions equating Marvel Movies to theme parks, but hey, are you not entertained? To then learn that all this was primarily driven by leadership of Robert Iger, I just had to learn more about the guy and read his book.
The book is more of a leadership/business book, but there are few takeaways(not necessarily lessons) I got from it having known little about Disney as a company and having just interacted with their content.
The book recounts some personal experiences between Robert Iger and Steve Jobs and how they became friends. Most notably was when Jobs discloses to Iger about his cancer having returned right before they about to go to the press conference to announce that Jobs will the be biggest shareholder in Disney after the acquisition of Pixar. Steve Jobs tells him, “I am about to become your biggest shareholder and a member of your board. And I think I owe you the right, given this knowledge, to back out of the deal”. Iger decides to go ahead with the acquisition and the rest is history.
The acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm and 21st Century Fox involved deals with single individuals who owned these companies. Iger notes how being decent, honest and respectful could go a long way. In the case of LucasFilm he talks about how hard it was for George Lucas to let go of the Star Wars franchise and how Iger was essentially being entrusted with his legacy.
I also never knew that Disney almost acquired Twitter but Iger backed out of the deal in the last minute.
Iger also talks about the importance of being bold and optimistic as a leader. From the time he was running ABC, he had to accept that creativity was not a science. He became comfortable with failure - not with a lack of effort. A notable mention for me was this quote
Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion.
There is a lot more that goes on in the book but all in all, I think its a good book worth anyone’s time.