Disney Greatest Business Hits
What happens to you when there’s no organizational vibrancy urgency?
Recall what you accomplished when you had something super urgent?
Write it down now: What was it, why was it urgent, what was the outcome and why?
The sustainable business excellence we could enjoy will always be trapped by what we are unwilling to give up.
The trap revolves around the effort we will need to summon. This universally feels like too much energy, time, money, and discomfort.
So we don’t do anything.
Even when we choose not to decide, we still have made a choice.
What kind of successful business enterprise do you long to become?
What’s missing from making that happening?
What are you willing to change?
When we focus on the surface, we risk missing everything else.
Imagine that for a moment.
You may marvel at Disney’s world-famous grooming guidelines and completely miss the fact that grooming guidelines aren’t the insight.
The insight is Disney’s uncompromising focus on delivering what the Guest wants.
The Guest wants something Magical, something no one else in the world provides.
And prior to Disneyland, the American standard for a Family outing was an Amusement Park, a Circus, a State Fair, a Carnival.
The American Carnival was a traveling show. Descending on a town, the Carnival would quickly set up in a vacant field or empty parking lot.
The mechanical rides never won awards for passenger safety.
The Carnival workers, known as “Carnies”, had a reputation for being unkempt.
Walt Disney ruptured the negative stereotypes and reinvented the industry, including the workers, becoming a category of one.
Why?
Because the Public would pay for quality, return often, and tell their friends.
Is there a business owner you know who wouldn’t want organizational vibrancy?
Make an organizational vibrancy book that flies in the face of what normal books look like?
Are you crazy?
You can feel the logic in those questions because they’re no-brainer questions, questions every smart leader would ask.
But what about these.
Of course, there’s no guarantee either way.
This is why most people, and most organizations, stay on the tried and true path of good and very good.
The commitment to make excellence the only goal is scary for most.
Why?
Because it requires risk.
Risk scares people and organizations.
This is fundamental, elementary even.
And true.
But what if instead of being scary, risk was embraced as essential to your health and the health of your organization?
Not until leaders, and organizations, desire to make business excellence risk-taking mandatory will cultural transformation start spreading its wings.
Strike while the iron is hot. Iron is easily malleable when hot, and impossible to shape when not.
Now (yes, right now) is the time to write down some important, top-of-mind business excellence thoughts.
Make a few lists and don’t fuss over minute details – this is high-level, very rough-draft thinking. Have fun, and don’t over-analyze. This should be quick:
Who (whom should you involve):
What (what needs to be done):
Where (where will the work occur):
When (when will the work happen):
How (how will the work be accomplished):
Why (why is this important; what’s to be gained by doing it, what’s to be lost by doing nothing):
How’d that feel?
Have you perceived what’s happened in the past few minutes?
You’ve just started planting, on paper, the seeds of intentional business excellence behavior that will facilitate the slow and steady path forward to business excellence transformation.
From the business excellence activity you just completed, you should be somewhere on the spectrum between overjoyed with future possibility or overwhelmed with hopelessness.
The next best step for your current state is action.
Action will harness your joy for possibility and it will also mitigate your feelings of hopelessness by giving you the initial small steps required to gain a feeling of progress and hope.
Who better than you to have this remarkable business excellence opportunity?
Pause for a moment before reading the next sentence and contemplate and answer the question above: “Who better than you?”
How did your answer resonate?
Okay, let’s continue with another question.
How did it feel to write and/or draw your business excellence thoughts on paper?
Was it easy?
Why?
Was it hard?
Why?
Do you feel more optimistic or less optimistic from the exercise?
Regardless of your answer, what are your next business excellence culture steps?
We are going to pause for a few minutes and give you an opportunity to reflect on what you’ve read from “It’s A Trap” (page __) to here.
In the space below, write (or draw) words, phrases, questions, answers. Remember, the reason you’re doing this is to capture your key thoughts as we build your organizational vibrancy assessment of your current state, visualize a bright future for yourself and your organization, and start outlining your business excellence next steps agenda.
Have fun, dream big, burn your ships…
Wouldn’t it be great if positive business excellence change just fell from Heaven?
But it doesn’t.
So ask yourself why you go to work each day. What’s the purpose? What do you contribute?
Is not your purpose to drive change, to make things better?
To make today a little, even if it’s imperceptible to most, better than yesterday.
To make this year better than last year?
To make your second decade better than your first?
Business excellence transformation won’t just come to you. It won’t happen on your week-long vacation to the beach.
It won’t happen when you wake up in the morning.
No.
So why do you show up for work?
How do you find joy (and motivation) when you and your organization are stuck?
This is going to sound crazy but business excellence transformation happens when you need it to happen; the caveat is you’ve got to be willing to pay for it.
When you’ve run out of options you are close to a breakthrough. You are literally at the proverbial fork in the road.
Many fail to turn the corner because they couldn’t convincingly answer the previous questions about their purpose for showing up every day.
One direction leads to misery and frustration, the other to your first of many lucky organizational vibrancy breaks.
Looking back, you’ll wonder why you didn’t commit sooner.
Remember, business excellence growth is a long-term, never-ending process. Be thankful for all the years you and your organization struggled. Your struggle deserves the credit for bringing you to where you are now.
Dreams are great.
But organizational vibrancy dreams without a plan and action are worthless.
Hope is a great strategy, but it’s a poor tactic.
Action is the antidote for being dissatisfied.
But there’s never enough time is there?
This is a great time to have a mantra along the lines of, burn the ships.
It’s also foolish to metaphorically put your life on the line.
Or is it?
Let’s agree that risk implies an uncertain outcome – an uncertain future.
Easy, right?
The good news about organizational vibrancy risk when the future isn’t certain is that you know you are on to something special.
Listen to the sound of that again – you’re on the path to something special.
Of course, the other option is to stay on the beaten path, the tried and true.
You know what you’ll get.
Safety.
Mediocrity.
Plain vanilla.
Stagnation.
Competition.
Average.
Now back to the uncertain path, the future, and the reality that your risk might not work.
This is the opposite of the tried and true formula which requires us to do today what we did yesterday and the day before that. And to repeat that tomorrow and the day after that.
Every day you embrace an uncertain future is a day of adventure.
Will you have the stamina, the courage, the creativity, the tenacity, and the desire to keep moving forward when the logical thing to do is to turn around and retreat?
Imagine answering, “Yes.”
Burn the ships, no?