Six Days, Six Best Practices: What I Learned from Walt Disney on My Summer Vacation
Best Practices

Six Days, Six Best Practices: What I Learned from Walt Disney on My Summer Vacation

Marsh Sutherland on Jun 1, 2010
7
Marsh here. I am certainly not the first father to have taken my family on vacation to Walt Disney World this summer. That said, while my kids want to sleep in their mouse ears, as the President of start-up SocialGrow, I came home with an entirely different souvenir of my family's trip. Here are the six best practices the Disney magic taught me on my vacation:

 1. Find that one thing that you do well, and OWN it!
 Disney's thing, like Zappos', is delivering happiness. Disney's theme parks around the world (currently Anaheim, Florida, Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong, with Shanghai coming soon) are branded the "Happiest Places on Earth", and they excel at creating happy family memories.

 2. Create a company culture that inspires ALL of your employees.
 Without exception, each and every Disney cast member I met was happy, upbeat, and genuinely interested in what they could do personally to make my family and me happy, regardless of their actual job description. Disney may excel at hiring and training, but I believe it's the company culture that Walt Disney created that continues to inspire employees to today.

 3. Be ubiquitous in your customers' lives.
 I realize being a two-toddler household places me in the center of Disney's marketing crosshairs, but take a look around you at how many instances of Disneyana you encounter in an average day. When I go to the Post Office, I'm greeted by Toy Story's Buzz and Woody. Sorry Martha, but the term omnimedia applies to no one better than the world's largest media and entertainment conglomerate with: animation and live-action film production, television, travel, theatre, radio, publishing, and online media. Every Disney hit, of which there are many, is aggressively licensed, bringing in not only substantial additional revenue, but helping to market the source material.

 4. Empower your employees to satisfy customers, and give them the tools they need to do so.
 Over the course of the week, I was never once told "let me speak with my manager". No matter how small or large, the help I received was always immediate, facilitated by support systems which never appeared to be offline.

 5. Engage your customers to continually improve your products.
 I had been to Disney before, but was surprised by the large number of "new" attractions. Yes, the characters from my own childhood were still there, but they all of the latest characters were also front and center.

 6. Give back to the communities in which you operate.
 The city of Orlando is as much the house that Walt built as the Walt Disney World theme park itself. Arguably, Disney put Orlando on the map, creating an "anchor store" which supports thousands of other businesses. Disney is also an active supporter of Orlando-area charities, and gives free passes to children whose families cannot afford the admission fees.

 To me, Disney is the most successful company on earth. Not in terms of the highest revenues or earnings, but in their ability to make the world a better place through their mission of delivering happiness on a daily basis to such large numbers of people around the world.

 What's next for Disney? I have no doubt Disney's Imagineers are already testing ways to leverage social networking and geolocation to further engage their customers. I can see both kids and adults earning Foursquare badges for every ride and attraction ("Mayor (or should that be 'Captain') of the Pirates of the Caribbean!"), and knowing real-time where their friends are in the parks. On the last day of our trip, we ended up sitting next to my daughter's dentist on the train. Had all of us been using Foursquare, we would have known the day we arrived that both families were visiting Disney at the same time.

 As we continue to build SocialGrow, I will keep in mind what I learned from Walt, and an iconic little mouse.

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  • Lisa on Jun 1, 2010

    Having visited Disney many times while I lived in Florida, it is amazing how consistent they are. Flawless execution, by employees at every level. It really shows you just how far a company culture can carry you, and really transform a customer’s experience. Another company that I think does an amazing job in this regard is Cintas- they sell very basic services (floor mats etc), but they do it so well that their employees are very proud to represent the “best” in the industry.

  • How to become a pharmacy technician on Jun 1, 2010

    Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!

  • Marsh Sutherland on Jun 2, 2010

    Thanks Lisa. I’ve seen Cintas trucks everywhere I go and the deliverers / installers seem very happy. Kind of like UPS truck drivers as well.

  • Ryan McDermott on Jun 23, 2010

    Great post and insights. I actually just finished reading a Walt Disney biography. I originally wanted to read it simply because I’m a big fan of Disney but got an unexpected entrepreneurial charge from reading about his struggles in the early days.

    It’s hard to picture Disney as a technology start up but this book pointed out that they very much were and had to deal with all the same things that a start up deals with today – raising money, keeping up with cutting edge technology to ensure relevance, recruiting and retaining key talent, negotiating distributuion contracts, etc.

  • Marsh Sutherland on Jun 23, 2010

    Hey Ryan,

    Thanks for the comment!

    I watched a video about Walt Disney at Disney Hollywood I think and was really blown away by what a truly lean operation he ran and how entrepreneurial he was. He was one of the first animators to make cartoons in Hollywood and did most of the voices himself. And even after winning the Oscar for Snow White he still struggled financially with launching his next project. Pretty amazing story!

    -Marsh

  • Renee Harris on Jun 29, 2010

    When I went to school in Southern CA, various friends worked at Disneyland and I was always amazed at how well Disney took care of its employees. They definitely emphasized the “fun” and some little facts would never been known by the average park visitor but behind the scenes, I was told that only certain employees would know the actual name of the person playing certain key characters, like Mickey Mouse, etc. How fun :) Thanks for the inspiration to keep business a fun place to be.

  • Marsh Sutherland on Jun 30, 2010

    Renee, in a service business, keeping your employees happy and making them rabid evangelists is the best foundation upon which to deliver great service. It’s actually cyclical as many of the employees I met there grew up being annual visitors to Disney World. So happiness begets happiness!

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Latest comment by Marsh Sutherland

Renee, in a service business, keeping your employees happy and making them rabid evangelists is the best foundation upon which to deliver great service. It's actually cyclical as many of the employees I met there grew up being annual visitors to Disney World. So happiness begets happiness!

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