“Disney U” features many informative & hilarious stories about how things really work behind-the-scenes at the Mouse House

Jim Hill

12 years ago

Did you need a distraction from all of the sad news coming
out of Boston tonight? I know that
I do. Which is why — rather than watch that footage of the explosion at the
marathon's line yet again — I picked up a copy of Doug Lipp's terrific tome, "Disney U: How
Disney University develops the World's most engaged, loyal, and customer-centric
employees" (McGraw-Hill, March 2013).

Given that Lipp helped create the first international
version of Disney University
(which was then used to train Cast Members for the April 1983 opening of Tokyo
Disneyland), Doug's the perfect guy to take you behind-the-scenes at this
somewhat mysterious educational arm of The Walt Disney Company. Which teaches
the Mouse House's 166,000 employees that they should always be on the lookout
for ways that they can improve the Guest's / customer's experience.

And this always-be-looking-for-ways-to-improve-things
attitude can be traced right back to the Old Mousetro himself. Who — in a neat
little story that Lipp shares in this 222-page hardcover — surprised an hourly
Cast Member one day during the early 1960s as Walt was looking for ways to
improve one of the Happiest Place on Earth's then- newer attractions:

The Fantasyland ride operator is busily moving the Skyway
gondolas through the loading area. It is midwinter, and there aren't many
guests at Disneyland, nor on his attraction. He turns
briefly and is startled to see Walt Disney sitting on a bench watching him.

Walt calls out, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Yes sir," says the cast member, as he nervously makes his way to the
bench to sit next to Walt. While he has heard about these moments when Walt
would unexpectedly emerge, this is a first for him.

"We're thinking of updating the Skyway," Walt
informs him. "You work on this attraction every day, so I can't think of
anyone more qualified to give me ideas for the new design."

A bit surprised, the cast member considers Walt's comment, and then offers his
suggestion. "Actually, the gondola roofs are too low and Guests often bump
their heads when I load and unload them."

When they finished this brief exchange of ideas, Walt thanked him. Intending to
get a closer look at the attraction, Walt proceeded to board one of the
gondolas … and he bumped his head!

That's the real fun of "Disney
U." Doug understands that the
easiest way to get people to remember one of the 13 lessons in leadership &
company values that he's crammed into this McGraw-Hill Educational book is by
entertaining them. So Lipp sprinkles in laughs wherever he can. Take — for
example — this tale of what actually happened at Tokyo Disneyland's version of
The Haunted Mansion just prior to the opening of Walt Disney Productions' first
international theme park. In the years leading up to the opening of TDL …

… a core group of Japanese managers and supervisors have received months of
training from an elite group of Disneyland operations
professionals. Many Japanese managers were transferred to the United
States, spending months learning the details
of running a theme park, Disney style; some even participated in the grand
openings of attractions and theme parks in California
and Florida. But as with any
grand opening, there are endless details and many fingers in the pie, and some
things simply fall through the cracks.

In preparation for the press event (which would be held to
commemorate the grand opening of Walt Disney Productions' first international
theme park), the custodial and grounds-keeping crews have been hard at work
cleaning, polishing, and scrubbing every attraction, every restaurant, and
every store. Flower beds are repeatedly checked for wilted or dying plants.
Tokyo Disneyland is spotless and ready for the big day.

And this created a huge problem.

Enthusiastically embracing the mission to "make the
park shine," the custodial crew cleaned the Haunted
Mansion. It's just prepped and
readied for the big day; it is spotless! All the dust is gone. The spooky
cobwebs have been removed. The Haunted
Mansion is immaculate — it no
longer looks HAUNTED.

Ron Pogue, vice president of Disneyland International and Walt Disney
Attractions, Japan,
recalls, "The Japanese custodial crew wanted everything to look perfect
for the press event. So they tidied up the old mansion." Unfortunately, in
their enthusiasm, the custodians managed to eliminate meticulously created and
specifically placed artwork. They removed all the rubber cement cobwebs,
wallpaper stains, and dust on the velvet curtains that had been purposely and
carefully applied by a team of artists to make the place look haunted. The art
of aging and graining, a process commonly used in the worlds of theater and
film, involves the precise application of paint and other materials to on-stage
props and buildings, creating a sense of realism. In the Haunted
Mansion, artists spent week
transforming the newly built mansion into an old, decrepit haunted mansion. In
one night, the graveyard custodial crew transformed the aged and grained Haunted
Mansion into a building so clean,
shiny, and spotless, it could have the white-gloved inspection of the strictest
inspectors.

Steve Lewelling, the director of operations at Tokyo
Disneyland, has a lasting memory of the incident. Living in Japan
as part of the start-up team, Steve got a wake-up call — literally. "The
call came at 2 a.m. My manager of custodial,
another American expatriate, called me at home, woke me up, and said, 'Steve,
they've cleaned the Haunted Mansion!'
I couldn't believe this guy was calling me in the middle of the night simply to
tell me the Japanese custodians had done their job." As the details
started to emerge, Steve realized the gravity of the situation. What had taken
the artists three weeks to create had gone down the drain. "We had just
put the artists on a plane and sent them back to California,"
recalls Steve. "I was on the telephone scrambling to get them back, and
their plane hadn't even landed in Los Angeles!"

And it's not just Walt Disney Parks & Resorts that Doug
Lipp takes you behind-the-scenes at. He also has lots of great stories that
deal with the Studio side of the operation. Take — for example — how Disney
lost out on a boatload of dough back in late 1989 / early 1990 because various
arms of the Company weren't communicating all that effectively back then:

As part of (their) strategy to reinvigorate the Disney
Studio — and the whole company — Michael (Eisner) and Frank (Wells) were
determined to foster a culture of creativity, innovation, and accountability.
Several years after they joined the company, the new entrepreneurial culture
they created was already reaping great rewards; the 1989 smash hit The Little
Mermaid
was a direct result. But there was also an unintended negative
consequence.

(As Carol Davis-Fernald — who started out as a trainer in
the Disney University
and eventually rose to a position of vice president of human resources and
employee initiatives at the Company — recalled:) "The Little Mermaid was
a blockbuster hit in the theaters, but we didn't fully leverage that success in
consumer products; retail sales of The Little Mermaid-themed merchandise such
as dolls and games didn't fare as well as they could have."

The problem was product volume and variety. In light of the
unparalleled success of the movie, there was a lack of mermaid-themed
merchandise in stores. The consumer products team hadn't been involved in
developing merchandise until late in the game, and since the product
development cycle — from initial ideas to products on store shelves — is
long, there hadn't been time to catch up. The lack of timely communication and
collaboration between business had become a major problem.

(In the wake of these lost merchandising opportunities from
The Little Mermaid), Retailing specialists from consumer products were brought
in to share research data (with Mouse House upper management).

"Every executive in the room reacted in the same way: Look
at the opportunity we missed," says Carol. The importance of involving a
more diverse team, even from the earliest levels of script development, became
one of the many learning points garnered by those attending (this after-actions
meeting).

The tremendous increase in the volume of merchandise sales
for subsequent films as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King
provides
testimony to the power of improved communication and the synergy that (this
in-house meeting in 1990) helped foster.

And Doug doesn't just take "Disney U" readers to behind-the-scenes
places at the Company's corporate headquarters. Lipp also journeys to the top
of WDW's Cinderella Castle.
To a room that …

… had no windows, nor was it painted. In fact, it was just
an empty space left over from construction, no more glamorous than an
unfinished attic.

Dick Nunis picked up the telephone and personally called the
vice presidents of every division, (inviting them to join him) high above the Magic
Kingdom, (in a room that could only
be reached) via a small construction elevator or a steep, narrow staircase.

So why did the then-executive vice president of Disneyland
and Walt Disney World invite all of these VPs to join at the top of Cinderella
Castle? Lipp shines a spotlight on
a little known moment in WDW history. A time in early 1973 when …

… the barometer of employee morale, the turnover rate, was hovering near 83
percent; employees were leaving the company in such high numbers that the
recruiting and training teams could barely fill the gaps. They had long since
passed the service industry average of 55 percent.

By 1973, the original team of 5,500 Cast Members had ballooned to almost
10,000. Employees and managers (were
experiencing) burnout.

So what did Dick and his cadre of WDW vice presidents do to turn around the
Resort's employee retention levels? You're going to have to pick up a copy of
"Disney U," Doug Lipp's extremely entertaining & educational book
in order to find out.

Your thoughts?