Fear is a Liar

Disney's Boardwalk Resort back courtyard
Disney’s Boardwalk Resort back courtyard.

Fear is a Liar

We admire legendary corporate cultures. Companies like Apple, Harley-Davidson, Southwest Airlines, and of course, Disney, come to mind immediately.

If we are honest with ourselves, would we say, deep down, we’ll never be as good.

i mean, seriously, how could we possibly create an employee culture that actually manifests itself as organizational vibrancy?

We can’t.

And we believe the script we tell ourselves.

What if i challenged you to .think .differently?

To imagine being able to draw up cultural blueprints; to architect a foundation that you can’t wait to show and tell others about.

This book illustrates the four foundational employee engagement building blocks for world-class corporate culture.

It’s just a dream and a drawing, but guess what?

Now you have a drawing.

You never had a blueprint before.

You’re welcome.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

The Law of The Happy Employee

Japanese drummers at Epcot
We ate lunch at Japan.

The Law of The Happy Employee

As a generally true statement, a happy employee stays with an organization.

Why would you leave if you’re happy?

An employee who stays with a Company gets good at what they do.

Would you pick the surgeon who’s done the procedure 50 times or 500 times?

Happy employees who are good at what they do project a good external service quality perception to your customers.

So far so good?

Okay.

The million dollar question many never ask let alone answer is, “What drives good internal service quality, which drives employee happiness?”

Was your answer instantaneous?

Are you still thinking?

Of course the answer is obvious.

The answer is leadership.

Ask yourself, “I know this to be irrefutable, but is it a conviction that is backed up by my daily actions?”

To know is to do. To know and not do, is to not yet know.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

Employee Engagement Category

Walt Disney World Steam Train
Walt Disney World Steam Train.
Walt Disney World Guest Buttons display
Guest buttons designed to increase Cast to Guest interaction. Why? Because it exploits our ability to deliver on the Guest’s four key drivers.

Become the Employee Engagement Category

Lead the category or be the category?

Striving to lead your industry isn’t entirely bad if you’re okay with waiting for someone else to beat you to the next breakthrough.

Why does that sound ridiculous?

Why is it important?

Because some ridiculously important (some would say game-changing) events have happened, are happening now, and will continue to happen.

It’s called disruption for a reason.

Waiting for a disruption can destroy an organization (and sometimes an industry).

Instigating a massive change has the potential to create a hybrid, competitive immunity and have your competition scrambling to recover.

Remember how the music industry let Napster reinvent music file sharing?

Music executives got blind-sided.

As if that wasn’t enough, the music industry never saw a computer company coming either.

Apple, iPod, iTunes, and now, Apple Music.

Apple is a category of one.

The music industry had their chance to become the category.

Kodak had their chance too, but they held so tightly to film, they suffocated themselves.

How does this train of thought affect Disney?

Since 1923, we (Disney) have honed our culture; the Disney Employee Culture that has grown increasingly admirable in the world’s eyes.

A culture by design, not a culture by default.

A culture that works for you rather than against you.

A culture that has been carefully architected over the decades.

A culture worth defending.

By everyone in the organization.

This book shares two sets of four tactics each for how to create an organizationally vibrant culture.

The reason for vibrant cultural health is analogous to the benefits of vibrant personal health.

No brainer.

Hard work.

Totally worth the effort.

Now enter seismic economic, world, and technology events that test our core cultural foundation. If ever there was a compelling reason for a strong, vibrant culture, it’s for when an unpredictable crisis hits.

In 1992 we began experiencing a massive disruption in the way we led our world-famous culture.

No one else felt it though.

We were alone.

Why?

It was self-imposed.

Let that sink in.

It was self-imposed.

Performance Excellence, as we called it, would take our great culture and offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something unheard of in a company our size – take our tried and true leadership paradigm and turn everything upside down.

Literally turn it upside down.

i’m convinced the only reason it worked was the fact we had time-tested cultural structure and processes, by design, in place that allowed for what seemed impossible to be highly probable.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

jeff noel Deconstructed Disney to reconstruct Employee Engagement, for your future enjoyment

Hurricane Matthew, 2016, radar
Hurricane Matthew, 2016.

jeff noel Deconstructed Disney to reconstruct Employee Engagement, for your future enjoyment

If you’ve visited a Disney Theme Park, the odds are high you’ve seen at least one sign like this:

Please pardon our appearance while we refurbish this attraction for your future enjoyment.

Walt Disney Company

Why are the odds high?

The odds are great because Disney is always working to improve the Guest Experience.

Consider the effort, though. Every Attraction is unique, and each one comes with a different set of issues, opportunities, and strengths.

Closer inspection then will yield you a quick, and much deeper, appreciation.

Now imagine the difference between one closer inspection versus a lifetime of seeing it under a microscope.

When you see the actual DNA, the smallest pieces that hold the Disney Culture together, everything you believe in, and why, changes.

When i saw the Disney Institute participants struggle with our Employee Engagement content, which focused on what we do and how we do it, i set out to find a breakthrough for those struggling business professionals.

i was on a mission to crystallize why, and how, we do what we do.

The why took me to the microscope, which led to brilliantly simplistic discoveries.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

The Employee Engagement Gospel According To Walt Disney

Reedy Creek Fire Department
Reedy Creek Fire Department on East Buena Vista Drive, at Disney Springs.

The Employee Engagement Gospel According To Walt Disney

Gospel: gos·pel, noun: Something regarded as true and implicitly believed: to take his report for gospel. A doctrine regarded as of prime importance: political gospel.

The good news, Disney’s Approach to Employee Engagement is simple and serves as the world’s business gospel.

The bad news is it’s not easy.

When i first discovered i had high cholesterol, the doctor recommended two simple steps to lower the risk of heart disease.

Diet and exercise.

Simple.

Not easy.

Disney’s Approach to Employee Engagement, you’ll see in a moment, is ridiculously simple.

And yet finding an organizational culture of overwhelming leadership excellence is roughly as statistically similar as finding a large number of vibrantly healthy American adults.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.