4 lessons Bob Iger (CEO of Disney) learned from his boss

 

Who is Bob Iger???

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="705"] Bob Iger, an American businessman[/caption]

Disney Chairman Bob Iger is considered one of the most respected figures in American business today.

He served as Disney's CEO for 15 years, from 2005 to February 2020, and is acclaimed for his drastic mergers and acquisitions and aggressive investments that made Disney look different.

 

In 2006, the year after his inauguration, he acquired Pixar, an animation company for $7.4 billion, followed by Marvel ($4 billion) in 2009, Lucas Film (Star Wars production company, $4 billion) in 2012, and 21st Century Fox (713) in 2019. billion) was acquired.

With acquisitions like this, Disney is brimming with powerful and engaging content. We were able to grow one step further as a content empire.

It didn't just increase the number of heroes who will appear in movies and animations.

Realizing that the center of content consumption is rapidly shifting from the existing movie theater screenings and TV broadcasts to the online streaming method represented by Netflix, he came up with a strategy to launch Disney's own streaming service in August 2017.

Release of Disney+

Disney+ was released in November 2019.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="2500"] Disney +[/caption]

This service is chasing Netflix with 54.5 million paid subscribers within half a year since its launch.

Bob Iger has known for his humble and warm personality as well as his outstanding management skills. Bob Iger was able to convince the most demanding and prouder people to sell their company, such as Steve Jobs (Pixar), Rupert Murdoch (21st Century Fox), George Lucas (Lucasfilm), and Ike Perlmutter (Marvel). It is almost an evaluation that charm and character had a great influence.

In this article, we will focus on the process of Bob Iger, one of America's leading executives today, before he became the CEO of Disney.

Let me explain what he learned from the bosses he met along the way, as he started his career as a junior staff member of ABC Broadcasting Corporation, progressing his career step by step.

I will also share with you how he applied the lessons he learned from his bosses when he ran the company as Disney CEO.

So was Bob Iger. He even tried to resign when his boss, who had no business knowledge, parachuted into the position he thought he was going to be promoted to.

He even looked for other jobs because of his boss who kept him in check.

If he is an office worker, he will encounter situations at least once.

Let's take a look at how Bob Iger solved these problems.

Bob Iger's experience before becoming Disney's CEO

Based on what Bob Iger described in his book The ride of a lifetime, I'll give you an account of his experience before becoming Disney's CEO.

(1) Beginning of Career before Disney

Early Dawn Servant Bob Iger begins his career on July 1, 1974, like a scumbag for ABC, earning $150 a week.

Before that, he worked for a small cable station in New York as a weathercaster and news reporter for about a year, but joining ABC was the beginning of a full-fledged organizational life.

As Bob Iger says of this period:

"I did all sorts of trivia related to basically all the programs that ABC's Manhattan studios produce, including game shows, daily soap operas, talk shows, news shows, and feature shows."

At 4:30 a.m. he takes care of all sorts of chores, including dialing the phone to call the lighting team into the studio, making sure all production crew is on the scene, ordering food to eat on set, and making sure the air conditioning in the studio is working. I did.

Bob Iger made the habit of waking up at 4:15 a.m. every day since that time.

It is a habit that has not changed since he served as the president of ABC and the CEO of Disney until today.

“To have time to think, read, and exercise before performing the tasks of the day,” he explains.

He explains the effect of the habit of setting aside time to be completely alone for nearly 50 years.

“Having such time on a daily basis allows me to take a break from the pressure of work and develop my thoughts more freely.”

“It allows me to approach problems in a much more creative freeway, and I can turn things around. That’s why time is so precious to me.”

Shortly after joining the company, Bob Iger encounters his first conflict with his boss.

After witnessing the head of a department embezzling company money and collecting rebates from suppliers, he complained about it and got caught by his boss.

There were threats that said, ‘I’ll give you two weeks to change departments or quit the company’.

“It felt like my broadcasting career ended when I was only 23,” says Bob Iger.

Fortunately, Bob Iger was able to spot an announcement on his in-house job posting board that ABC Sports was recruiting a studio operations manager, and he moved the division to ABC Sports.

And it is here that he meets Rune Early, who had the greatest influence on Bob Iger in his twenties.

At the time, Rune was a 43-year-old executive. He had already been leading ABC Sports for over 10 years.

In Bob Iger's eyes, he was seen as the 'king of TV'. "He changed the way we experience sports on TV, more than anyone in the history of broadcasting," says Bob Iger, a tribute to him.

This young boy in his 20s learned from Rune Earlyge the qualities and abilities necessary to lead a media and content company in the future.

What Bob Iger learned from Rune Earlage can be summarized into three main categories.

(2) Relentless perfectionism

First, I was able to learn 'relentless perfectionism that tries everything to make it a little better.

The first time Bob Iger met Rune Early was when he was in his original department, before moving to ABC Sports.

In the fall of 1974, Bob Iger was put on the scene of the ‘Main Event’ concert held at Madison Square Garden in New York.

It was a live broadcast of the concert of Frank Sinatra, the greatest star of the time. The director of the event was, of course, Rune Earle.

Here he left a very strong impression on Bob Iger.

After rehearsing the day before the concert, Rune Earlridge instructed his men to drop everything and rebuild from scratch.

The instructions were to re-create the stage set, re-install the lights, and re-arrange the order of performances and introductory speeches.

This is because the level of the rehearsal performance did not meet the standards of Rune Early.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="724"] Rune and Bob Iger[/caption]

Speaking of this experience, Bob Iger says, "I've come to realize that the typical rune style is not to germinate anything that's good enough, and to push boldly in front of deadlines that can't be squeezed out to make one's job great.".

It was an experience that taught me the uncompromising attitude and relentless perfectionism in order to provide the best broadcast to the viewers.

(3) The importance of storytelling

The second lesson he learned from Rune Early was the principle that sports programs tell a story, not just broadcast the game.

Bob Iger, who built his career at ABC Sports, will be in charge of the production and coverage of a broadcast called ‘The Broad World of Sports’ a few years later.

This program was a show that featured exotic sporting events from all over the world.

It was a sport that felt foreign to American viewers at the time, such as a figure skating competition in Prague, a weightlifting competition in Budapest, cliff diving in Acapulco, downhill skiing in Kitzbuhel, and gymnastics competitions in communist countries such as China and the Soviet Union. The 1979 World Table Tennis Championships held in Pyongyang, North Korea were also covered by Bob Iger.

This made him the first American broadcaster to set foot on North Korean soil in decades.

“I regularly visited developing countries and covered events in communist countries.”

“This would require negotiating with an uncooperative regime, and sometimes breaking through a corrupt system entangled with machinations.”

It can be seen that Bob Iger's experience of pushing and pulling negotiations with governments and organizations in various countries to obtain approval for coverage was very helpful to Bob Iger, who later displayed excellent negotiating skills as the president of ABC and the CEO of Disney. there is

Rune Early kept reminding me that the 'broad world of sports is not just a show that provides viewers with a strange and eye-catching show.

ABC Broadcaster spends a lot of money to send its crew all over the world to tell the story of the people who live there. The real purpose of the program is to communicate who the players are in this match, what desperate efforts they have made to participate, and what it means to them.

It taught Bob Iger that a solid narrative structure and storytelling were more important than spectacular spectacle.

(4) Don't be afraid to innovate

Finally, Rune Earlridge taught Bob Iger that:

"If you don't embrace technological advances, you can never create compelling content."

It is only by rapidly adopting cutting-edge technology that it is possible to consistently create content that draws viewers in.

 

That was telling the truth. Rune Early was one of the earliest adopters of the latest technologies and techniques in American broadcasting at the time.

Reverse angle cameras, slow-motion playback, and satellite live broadcasting were some of the advanced technologies he embraced.

Bob Iger said, “Innovation or death.

He said that he learned the lesson, “There is no innovation if you are afraid of the new or the untested,” which he has made as a basic principle in all the work he has been assigned to since then.

After Bob Iger took over as Disney's CEO, he was the first to acquire Pixar, which has advanced animation production technology. This can be attributed to the lessons learned from Earle.

(5) Attitude to admit shortcomings

Growing up rapidly under the harsh training of Rune Early, Bob Iger was promoted to Vice President of ABC Sports in 1985 at the age of 34.

After 11 years of joining his company, he was given the title of Vice President, so he was on his way to promotion at a staggering pace.

But around this time, a crisis arrives that makes Bob Iger contemplate leaving the company.

That's because ABC was sold to a local cable network called Capital Cities Communications (abbreviated as Cap Cities) for $3.5 billion.

The company was founded by co-founders Tom Murphy and Dan Burke.

What started as a small TV station in Albany, New York has grown into a media group with local TV and radio stations, medium-sized newspapers, and publishers.

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett, a friend of Tom Murphy, contributed $3.5 billion to the acquisition, which allowed Capacities to acquire ABC, which was four times larger than him.

Existing ABC executives, including Bob Iger, initially looked down on Tom Murphy and Dan Burke.

In their eyes, the two looked like 'country nerds' who had neither experience of running a nationwide broadcasting network nor knew anything about the entertainment industry.

In particular, Cap Cities was famous for its very thorough cost-saving management.

To ABC executives, who were accustomed to traveling on business in the first class of a Concorde, a supersonic aircraft, this appearance only seemed like a challenge to the media industry by staunch accountants who knew nothing but numbers.

"I realized we were all snobbish cynicism," said Bob Iger, confiding in himself that he had completely misjudged Tom Murphy and Dan Burke in the first place.

“They were business people who didn't care about glamor and focused on their work, and didn't go crazy,” was Bob Iger's decision after some time had passed since he got to know them.

However, at the beginning of the acquisition, Bob Iger had no choice but to watch with an uneasy look at how strangers would run the company in the future.

And this anxiety and nervousness spread to great disappointment and anger when an unexpected boss parachuted down to the position of ABC Sports Director, whom he had expected to be appointed.

After the acquisition, Rune Early, as mentioned earlier, resigned as the head of the sports division to focus only on the news division.

Until then, Rune Early held both divisions, but the new executives wanted him to focus on just one.

And Bob Iger expects an internal promotion to fill the vacancy in the sports division vacated by Rune Earlyge's evasion, giving him a chance.

But those expectations are shattered when a stranger named Dennis Swanson is appointed.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="552"] Dennis Swanson[/caption]

Bob Iger was particularly disappointed with this decision, as Dennis Swanson had never worked for a second on a national broadcast network or sports broadcast before that.

He was just a man in charge of 7 or 8 local TV stations under ABC.

In Bob Iger's eyes, all he could see was a stone studded with a rolled stone.

In fact, with Dennis Swanson's appointment, several of ABC's senior executives, including Bob Iger's former boss, left the company.

Bob Iger gets an offer to join a company founded by one of them.

It was an attractive proposal to Bob Iger, who thought that ABC was no longer a big deal.

And Bob Iger, who has hardened his heart, goes to Dennis Swanson and tells him that he is leaving the company.

But when he comes to tell him he's leaving the company, Dennis Swanson tells him he's going to promote him to the senior vice president of programming at ABC Sports and asks him to draw a blueprint for the ABC Sports program.

He had already decided to leave the company and went to the 'Rolling Stone', where he was offered a promotion and more privileges.

Thanks to this, Bob Iger changes his mind and chooses to stay with ABC. This is where Bob Iger and Dennis Swanson's chemistry begins.

Bob Iger said he didn't know that the qualities a manager must have that he learned from Dennis Swanson are his unwillingness to rely on authority to cover his inexperience.

He was frankly admitting.

As mentioned earlier, Dennis Swanson had no experience or knowledge of national broadcasting networks and sports broadcasting.

Usually, when a boss lacks work experience and knowledge compared to his subordinates, the boss is overwhelmed with a sense of competence that ‘subordinates are ignoring me’ and tries to cover up his shortcomings with the authority of the position.

But Dennis didn't like Swanson.

Instead of pretending he didn't know something during a meeting, he frankly admitted that he didn't know much about the matter and sought advice from his subordinates.

When he thought it was better for Bob Iger to lead the meeting than he did, he handed over the conversation to him, and he gave Tom Murphy and Dan Burke compliments on Bob Iger.

It also gave Bob Iger the opportunity to present his plans for the big event, the 1988 Winter Olympics, in front of the top management.

This opportunity was the decisive moment for Bob Iger to strongly impress his abilities on Tom Murphy and Dan Burt.

Everyone knows that we can develop only when we honestly admit that we don't know what we don't know.

However, it is also true that as a boss, admitting his shortcomings in front of his subordinates is not an easy task.

It is for this reason that Bob Iger praised his boss at Jassen, saying, “I decided to continue working with Dennis at his suggestion, after all, as the best decision I have ever made in my career.”

ABC was acquired by Capacities and sold back to Disney in 1995, a few years later.

Bob Iger had twice the experience of being an executive of an acquired company.

As Disney's CEO, he was able to successfully converge between Disney and the acquired companies: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox, thanks to his better understanding of what it's like to be an employee of the acquired company. crazy

He was also able to learn from Dennis Swanson that when he didn't know something about the business area of ​​the acquired company, he should admit that he didn't know and ask for help without hesitation.

In this article, I looked at four management principles that Bob Iger could learn from his bosses in his youth before leading the company for 15 years as Disney's CEO.

One last thing to wrap up before I end this article.

First, try everything you can to make it a little better.

Second, excellent content comes from solid storytelling, not flashy spectacles.

Third, there is no innovation if you fear the new or the untested.

Fourth, do not try to cover up your shortcomings with the authority attached to the position. If you don't know, say you don't know.

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