The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger
By: Shipra Chaturvedi
Tags: Business Strategy, Leadership Skills, Disney, Leadership, Business

The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger

I was inspired to read this book by my professor Pavan Soni. When I bought this book and saw its cover, my initial thought was that it would be a success story of Robert Iger (CEO of The Walt Disney company). When I started reading, I covered few initial chapters in an hour with a hot cup of steaming coffee in my other hand. Not sure, if it was the magic of coffee that made me so much engrossed or just the content of book.

On further reading, I realized it’s not a usual career progression story of a person. Robert has given a detailed description about moving from one stage of his career to another, from the lowest ranks to the leadership roles and the CEO. There is so much to learn from it not only about business but also in terms of attitude towards life and work.

Part A: A Common Man Life

The first part illustrates the origins of his career, from part-time jobs to his real beginning at ABC, where he started moving towards the management ladder. He has also given certain insights about his personal life as a student, which makes us believe even more that we can Make it Big in life, no matter what. He also highlights how the habits we develop are important for right usage of time and lateral thinking, like an entry in the 5 AM club.

As he says “It’s vital to create space in each day to let your thoughts wander beyond your immediate job responsibilities. I am certain I’d be less productive and less creative in my work if I didn’t also spend those first hours away from the emails and text messages and phone calls that require so much attention as the day goes on.”

The journey of Robert from an ordinary boy to the CEO and Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company just tells each of us that we do not need to have a pre-developed skillset for being a leader. Leadership is an individual’s journey made of humility, listening and practicing.

As he says “True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.”

Part B: Leadership at its core

As a person who led Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, Lucasfilm (all Star Wars work), Marvel and most of 21st Century Fox, Robert gives you working of a massive media company and shows how he thought upon by building on its strengths and shoring up its weaknesses.

Robert Iger became the CEO of The Walt Disney company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense then ever and technology was changing faster than any time in history. He realized at the start only that the decisions you make need not be safe always but should feel right to you for the people and self.

As he says “Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale.”

Robert not only focused on developing the existing strengths of company, but also reshaped the overall strategy into 3 points as a vision for the organization:

Recommit to concept that Quality matters.

2. Embrace technology instead of fighting it.

3. Think bigger, think Global and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

As he says: “Don’t start negatively, and don’t start small. People will often focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.”

His first big step towards the vision of organization was to buy the most successful animation company out there in market: Pixar, whose CEO and majority owner was Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

In 2006, finally, when the day of merger had come and half an hour before press release Steve informs Robert about his illness and says: “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.”

Robert decides to go through it, as his key focus was to accomplish the goal of reaffirming the centrality of Disney with animation. This shows how much CEO’s decisions are down to very human relationships.

As he says“If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.”

2 -3 years down the line, Disney re-established at the cutting edge of animation with the successes of movies like Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and Toy Story 3!

Robert did not relax and settle down there.

In 2009, Disney made the purchase of Marvel final for a little over $4 billion. Others critiqued this decision as the deal couldn’t include many important characters. Spider-Man, for example, was owned by Columbia Pictures. And Fox owned X-Men and The Incredible Hulk.

Robert was smart and knew that the untold stories of characters in the Marvel Universe would be a hit. And he was right. In 2019, as the 20th movie in the franchise, Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing film of all time, making $2 billion.

As he says “Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities of greatness”

Robert had to make another tough decision in summer 2016 when Disney almost acquired Twitter. He had seen it as a distribution platform for content. He had also won the OK from the board, but then realized the significant issues in managing hate speech, fake profiles and in general a “freedom of expression” Twitter had that was not in tune with Disney’s culture, so he walked back from the deal.

As he says “If something doesn’t feel right to you, then it’s probably not right for you”

All this while Robert always took care of the reward system being in place for the employees as it is ultimately the people who make the business grow. This is an essential aspect to be taken care by executive leaders to keep the people motivated.

As he says “If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted.”

After having focused on securing content with the acquisitions, Robert explains how he wanted to dramatically shift Disney to a new future based on technological innovation. He made a big bet with investing in BAMTech, using the company platform to launch a new subscription service, today called Diseny+.

As he says “The decision to disrupt businesses that are fundamentally working but whose future is in question — intentionally taking on short-term losses in the hope of generating long-term growth — requires no small amount of courage.”

What would this move mean for the current standard TV programs? Would it be their end? Robert sees it very pragmatically: investment would continue until profit would still exist, but future growth would come from somewhere else. Robert lives by the fact he learnt from his initial mentors here.

As he says “Innovate or die, and there’s no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested.”

To conclude , a couple of examples that resonated with me include owning up to your mistakes — you can learn from them, and it can make others respect you more.

As he says “Take responsibility of your own mistakes”

My favorite — choosing Decency over Dollars something that was key to Robert’s success in achieving his personal and business goals.

As he says “Integrity is everything”

I highly recommend this book. It has a good balance of both personal and professional insights and experiences. A global corporate leader is a human being at the end of the day. Robert describes his grief when a little boy died tragically at one of Disney’s Orlando resorts, and his sadness when Steve Jobs shared with him that he was sick with cancer. It is an inspiring and valuable read for everyone who wants to advance in their career. If you want to learn what it takes to steer and change a traditional organization with an enormous cultural heritage, then this book is a must read for you.