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Writer's pictureIndhu Rekha

Ride of a Lifetime

Updated: Jul 19, 2020



This is a story of an ordinary man starting his career at the lowest ranks in Disney, but led an extraordinary journey of 45 years. It's worth noting that Disney a 100 year old company was struggling with staying relevant in the entertainment industry before Robert Iger took over as CEO and turned around the fortunes of the company which is now worth a $130 billion. No doubt his book with his own words is very inspiring but there are a lot of priceless lessons in there. The risks he took as a leader mostly paid off to the brand, management and investors. This is Robert Iger's story starting from the execution of Disney's ambitious project Shanghai Disney land to his own art of making successful business deals.


A leader has two important tasks- set a direction for the organisation and align the right resources behind them. Bob dedicates his success to his leadership style that evolved from his experience, learning from his mentors over those years and to his team that worked for him. The nonchalance he had while dealing with a lot of important matters as CEO is very surprising to me. If you condense the whole book, you would realise his success is due to the laser focus he had on just 3 things.


Strategy:

All of Robert's decisions revolved around three strategies- making high quality content, embracing technology and growing global. Shanghai Disneyland, Pixar acquisitions, Disney plus OTT platform were all birth child of these strategies.


Innovation:

Perhaps this is the most important lesson that you can learn from this executive. He says "Innovate or Die" and he led by it.


Acquisitions:

Mergers and acquisitions are hard. Lot of companies struggle with it, HBR says 70 to 90% of the acquisitions fail. A major achievement in the last fews years in Disney's legacy was an array of it's successful acquisitions starting from Pixar, Marvel, 21st century fox to Lucasfilm.


Definitely a book that's worth your attention and time!

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