Disney Institute: Day I, Creativity

All this week I have the awesome honor of being able to participate in the Disney Institute for Business Success. Someone provided a scholarship for me to attend this in hopes I'd be able to learn how to use the same principals to further His Kingdom (not Mickey's, God's). So many people have already asked that I share some of the main points or thoughts. So God willing I'll be blogging every night what I learned that day. Today's topic was on "Creativity". Tuesday is "Leadership Excellence". Wednesday is "People Management". Thursday is "Quality Service". Friday is "Brand Loyalty". Hopefully I'll explain my thoughts clearly but if you have questions on anything just let me know. Now there is no way I'd be able to share everything I learn so what I'll do each day is share what I thought was particularly useful.

1. Collaborative Culture: Disney is know for its consistency throughout all aspects of their entertainment. They explained that if they come out with a theme like "Pirates" then every department would come together and learn from one another on how to implement that theme throughout each department. So the "food and beverage" department has freedom and is expected to share thoughts to the "merchandise" department and this happens throughout each department including the "janitorial" department. My first thought was what if each ministry in churches collaborative together to openly support each other. Then I expanded that thought with the Kingdom in mind and thought, "what if churches collaborative together for His glory and didn't worry about their turf/crowds/etc." So the question was how can we help our organizations have a better "collaborative culture". My thought was you have to have at least one department set the trend. One department has to look after and serve another to bring everyone's insecurities down. For example last week Chad Harper our Student Pastor and Jack Thomas are Creative Arts guy both took most of their week and helped me transform one of my environments. It had nothing to do with their "department/ministry" yet they served me with their ideas, hands, and time. Them leading like that totally makes me want do the same back to them or other ministries. Also Disney nominates one person on staff to give a couple hours a week to head up this idea to bring "accountability" to ensure collaborating gets done.

2. Brainstorming Exercise: They did one exercise I thought was great. They had a problem; lets say it's "How can we make people feel welcomed at church". They then took a sheet a paper and posted 9 sticky notes on it. At the top they wrote the problem, "How can we make people feel welcomed at church." The directions were to get in a circle around a table. Pass the paper around and write one way to solve that problem per sticky note. Don't think about the details just dream about potential solutions. Try not to read the others, just post your thought and pass it on. Imagine 10 people in a group with 4 problems being tossed around in a circle. In a matter of minutes we had 50 plus potential solutions and were able to hear from 10 people; very effective.

3. Brainstorming, "Yes if or Yes and": Disney made it clear one of the main ways they come up with their "magic" was by a very strategic way of brainstorming. Some rules to their brainstorming are: 1) Bring diverse people to the table. Bring different departments, ages, etc. 2) When brainstorming do not analyze ideas yet. Accept all ideas at the beginning, analyze later. Disney's rule is "Yes if... or yes and..." Meaning if someone throws out an idea you can not say you like it or don't like it you must say "yes we can do that if..." or "yes we can do that and..." For example lets say to solve our previous welcoming problem example we wanted to hire Miley Cyrus to sing in the lobby every week to welcome people, someone would then say, "yes we can do that if we kidnapped Miley or had a billion dollars to pay her."

Hope this helps and again God willing I'll be sharing some thoughts every evening.