Disney Institute: Day 3, People Management

Today was another great day!

Create your Culture: "Don't let your culture just exist, craft it by design to what you want." Four components of a successful culture: 1) By design. 2) Well-defined. 3) Clear to all. 4) Goal-oriented. They walked us through the new hire orientation process which sets the tone in creating and crafting the culture they have. During the orientation they creatively and passionately share their heritage, traditions, standards, and values. This seems to be where they fully ingrain the new staff member into the Disney way. They don't rush this process and understand the value of building a strong foundation for each employee. This reminded me of the impact of a great new hire/volunteer process can have. Something I look forward to working on in the future. One other thought was they listed 5-8 things they specifically and physically do to discourage potential employees. They want to make it difficult to go through their application process. They want you to want to be there. They believe if they make the hiring process easy then they are more likely to hire, train, and empower more of the wrong type of employee's. They only want to spend their time, money, and energy on people who have a real future and potential in the organization.

Great Exercise: Split into two groups and were told to, "as a team name as many Disney animated characters as we could in 60 seconds". We all jumped in and had fun with it. The winning team had 43 characters and our team had 35ish. Then they asked the question how many characters would we have come up with if we did the exercise alone. Clearly everyone knew there was no way we'd name nearly as much. The point: TEAM, Together Everyone Achieves More.

Earn Your Ears: After you are hired they "make you earn your ears" which means they take their time in training the employees until they are for sure ready. The trainee wears a special badge that describes they are in training and to please be patient. Thought this same idea would be beneficial in the church culture.

Cool Thought: Disney celebrates lateral moves just as much as they do promotions. Thought this was a huge conviction for most churches and most communities. Do we celebrate when our volunteers or staff go to different departments in the church? What if they went to a different church? If we are Kingdom minded shouldn't we celebrate that as well?

Pride: One of the exercises they led us in was to come up with the top 5 things we are proud of in our own organizations. Whatever those are we must bring those up in the new hire orientation process. This will give them a sense of pride as well to be part of such a team.

No Excuses: We went backstage to the Epcot's Cast Members (their employees) only area. This place was unreal!!! There goal is to remove all excuses for their employees to be "show ready" when they go on their shift. Check out what they have available at each employee center and there are lots of them. They have shoe shinning, a hair stylist, computer lab, place to cash check, mail things, get a notary, Driver License center, break areas, food venues, and you don't have to do your own laundry. You turn your dirty clothes in and get clean ones. They even have a "no excuses vending machine". Put your money in and you can get such items as deodorant, shaving cream, mints, and panty hose. There is NO reason their employees shouldn't be ready for action. It was pretty cool to see.

Walt Quote of the Day: "You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality." Walt Disney. Walt cared for people more than anything because he knew they were the ones who would make his dreams come true.