Copyright 1998 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 21, Number 1, 1998, pp. 45-47. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Jim Roche at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

A Visit From Saint Mickolas: Earning Your Mouster's Degree In Leadership

by Howard Strauss

Once upon a time (actually it was December of 1997) in a tiny corner of Disney's Magic Kingdom (the Dolphin Hotel) during CAUSE97, Dennis Snow (that's who Disney said it was) appeared and enchanted us with tales of Disney's success in delivering off-the-chart service to its customers (whom it refers to as its guests). But I was not fooled by this obvious ruse. I knew in a moment that Dennis was really Saint Mick.

Once again I found myself at a Disney resort where the staff seemed to anticipate my every need, where disarray had been outlawed, and where smiling people vied with each other to provide me with unsurpassable magical moments. How does Disney do it? Do they only hire people with ESP? Of course the Disney magic goes far beyond running enchanted resorts.

St. Mick showed us two clips of identical scenes from Snow White. The first was okay, but flat, jerky, and definitely aimed only at third graders. The next version was a delight. It was enthralling, uplifting, and I actually heard adult computer professionals sobbing when Snow White "died." It seemed impossible that the two clips told the same story.

Sure, you think, the second clip, the one by Disney, was better because it used all the modern computer animation stuff that only Disney can afford. Who couldn't do a better job with terabytes of data and gigahertz of processor power? But the Disney clip predated the dreadful one by over fifty years. In fact, it predated the ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer.

Disney's secret isn't technology. It isn't superhuman staff, zillions of dollars, or the latest project management silliness. Disney has a simple philosophy of exceeding people's expectations at every encounter. The secret to making that happen is leadership. All the software in Redmond, Washington, and all the gold in Fort Knox, without the proper leadership, will not be enough to turn a resort, a story, or a university from something mundane into something memorable.

Disney's secret isn't management. Excellent management will get the most widgets turned out for the least cost in the least time. That's a hard thing to do, and it might even be a worthwhile endeavor, but it will lead only to an efficient or well-run university, not a great one.

Disney knows that having hordes of happy guests results in lots of repeat business. Happy guests also influence the decisions of those who have yet to try Disney's services. Disney's formula for keeping its guests happy (and making lots of money, because Disney does it so well) is simple. Excellent employees (whom Disney calls its cast members) create happy guests, who generate lots of money. To attract and stimulate excellent employees takes strong leadership.

A leader is the source and owner of a vision. To make a vision a reality, a leader must convey the vision to the people who will help make it happen. Thus the vision becomes the leader's story, and the leader is the keeper, disseminator, and enforcer of the story. A leader's vision determines where an organization is going and how it will get there. A leader with a compelling story and a passion for making the story a reality can readily get others to buy in to the vision. This is not a new idea. Moses knew all this some years before Disney figured it out.

Lots of people have visions, but visions that work best stem from unfulfilled needs. Walt Disney once took his family to an amusement park. The place was sleazy and tacky. While his children rode mindlessly on merry-go-round palominos with peeling paint, Walt waited nearby, nearly bored to death. There had to be a place, he thought, that provided fine entertainment for people of all ages. That vision of Walt's caused him to build Disneyland. When Walt saw that sleazy motels moved in right next to Disneyland he had a vision of a place where tackiness could not get near his magical kingdom and where his most expansive dreams could be realized. And so he built Disney World on zillions of acres in Florida. Walt's vision of an All-American town that was safe, friendly, and convenient to live in eventually resulted in the building of the town of Celebration, years after Walt had died. Visions and passions can transcend our mortal beings.

After the conference I visited the Rain Forest Café in Downtown Disney. The ceiling, walls, and supporting columns of the café are covered with a thick tangle of local flora and fauna. Monkeys in perpetual motion peek out from crannies in the jungle while gigantic butterflies now and then flutter their wings. The café is lit by filtered light that seems to make its way in from above the forest canopy. A chorus of birds, hyenas, and monkeys fills the air, while safari guides rush bamboo trays laden with food to hungry customers seated on camp tables set by ponds and waterfalls. Everything in this place is exactly "on story." No detail has been missed. It soon dawns on me, however, that I may be the only thing not on story. When I return I will wear my safari clothes.

Leaving this magic kingdom for the real world, I head to the Kennedy Space Center, the embarkation point for much of the world's space travel. I dine in the Orbit Café, where there are futuristic aluminum tables and chairs. Beyond that, the place has all the charm and character of a strip-mall cafeteria. I glare at the woman working at the 7-Eleven-like checkout station. She is wearing Florida street clothes. Like nearly this entire place, she is "off story." I imagine her on story in her Darth Vader outfit, using her laser scanner on my Saturnalia salad with Venusian dressing. I see the café windows transformed into ports on a space ship where stars rush towards us at warp speed. Now and then a comet crashes into the caf�, drowning out the chatter of Andromedan aliens. How much better my lunch would have been if Disney ran this caf�.

For the rest of my trip I notice that outside of the Disney kingdom few things are ever on story. It is glaringly obvious at every restaurant, gas station, and even at the airport and on the plane home. I have to restrain myself from informing everyone that they are hopelessly off story. Back at the university, however, it is less obvious. Nothing seems to be off story, but then nothing seems to be on story either. I soon realize I am not sure what the story is. Do you know what the story is where you work? Really?

Leadership must be shared to the very lowest levels of an organization to be effective. That's another difference between management and leadership. People at the bottom don't manage anyone, so they are not managers, but they should be leaders. A leader's job is to stay "on story" and to ensure that everyone else does, too. A great leader must be a great storyteller. In fact, Michael Eisner, Disney's CEO, has said that the study of great literature is vital for executives, because, among other reasons, it helps them understand how to tell a great story. Every leader at every level is the teller, keeper, and enforcer of the story, and everyone must be empowered to do so. Staying on story means ensuring that everything that is done fits the vision. But of course there must be a vision before you can stay on story.

While leadership must be shared, it is not democratic. You cannot have leadership by committee or consensus. The leader at the top is the keeper and enforcer of the story for those who report directly to him or her. Those folks are the keepers and enforcers of the story for those who work for them, and so forth down through the organization. Leadership is everywhere in the organization, but vision flows from the top.

Visions are normally tested by economic and technical realities. Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride, as realistic as one would like to make it, can't really dive 20,000 leagues under the sea or even under an artificial lake. Visions are also tested and further developed by the team of leaders who are enlisted to make the vision a reality.

Not everyone will share even the best leader's vision. Many people think the town of Celebration is an awful idea; many think that theme parks are simplistic, silly, and worse. If you do not share a leader's vision (though a strong leader's passion will likely get you hooked), find another leader to serve or, if you have the passion and the vision, forge out on your own.

Disney's overarching story is "We create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages." This is their fifteen-word mission statement, and it is plastered everywhere cast members (but not guests) can see it. Sure, after a while employees hardly read it. But they know what it is and what it means, and they are reminded again and again that their job is not to flip hamburgers, clean hotel rooms, create spreadsheets, or attend board meetings, it is to "create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages."

What story is your institution trying to tell? Is the statement of it much longer than fifteen words? Does everyone know what it is, or do they have to look it up in a dusty book somewhere? Is it really a clear statement of what you expect everyone to be doing, or does it suggest some vague search for truth and the betterment of society? Are faculty and staff telling the same story? If your institution is like most, your story probably needs some work.

Once you have a good leader with passion and a good story to tell, it is vital that the story be told in the best way possible. Disney does this by fussing with every detail, using a process it calls "plussing." Plussing is simply looking for every opportunity to make something good even better. Disney believes that every detail speaks -- even details you might not notice. The result of fussing with thousands of tiny details, each of which seems inconsequential, is overwhelming. Even infinitesimal things, as students of calculus are well aware, can add up to something quite significant.

Disney, for example, asks that each cast member spend just five minutes a day creating a magical moment for a guest or for another cast member. That doesn't seem like much, but suppose that were done in a university with 1,000 faculty and staff. That's 5,000 magical moments a week or over a quarter million magical moments a year. How many magical moments are you delivering today? How would your users and staff react to a torrent of them?

Disney doesn't expect its cast to constantly blow people away with "knock your socks off" service. No staff, however well motivated, could manage to be that energized all the time. All the cast is expected to do is to exceed people's expectations all the time by just a little. Disney knows that guests encounter their employees dozens of times each day. If at every encounter each guest has his or her expectations exceeded -- even by just a smidgen -- the effect is overwhelming. Once your customers got over the shock of it, think what a difference it would make if your faculty and staff exceeded their expectations every time by even a little.

During a session at CAUSE97, speaker Liz Murphy of Datatel rattled off the names of some of her obvious competitors, but then said that the competitor she was most concerned about was Disney. Disney, I thought? Disney doesn't make a single product or offer a single service that is remotely related to anything done by Datatel. But Liz pointed out that the great service offered by Disney had raised the expectations of her users. Having seen what Disney could do, they expected the same level of service from Datatel and in fact from everyone. Disney service, Liz thought, had become the standard by which her customers measured everyone else's service, including, no doubt, ours at colleges and universities.

Disney, in fact, has a Disney University for internal training and a Disney Institute, which among other things offers management and leadership training to the outside world. When St. Mick was asked what he viewed as Disney Institute's competition, Harvard Business School was near the top of his list. Of course, he pointed out, the Disney Institute treated its students as guests (which is what it calls them), giving it some advantage over traditional places of higher education. Later, as I toured the Disney Institute's campus, I found the same Disney level of service at literally every turn. The forbidding guardhouse blocking my entrance to the Institute, for example, turned out to contain a guard whose major concern was that my visit wouldn't miss any of the key points I wanted to see. Once I was able to get past the guardhouse, Disney's magic really went into high gear.

After seeing the Disney Institute, I regretted that the universities that I had attended had not known about the Disney model. Why would anyone choose a conventional university if there were a Disney Institute option? It's not that the Disney Institute is a theme park. It's not; it works its guests very hard. But it also ensures that they have the best environment for learning, understands their needs, keeps them excited about their work, and does not allow their time to be wasted. Fortunately for most of our institutions, Disney has no plans to offer undergraduate degrees. But if some college or university decides to emulate Disney, it could spell big trouble for higher education as we know it.

During a lunch break at CAUSE97 in the Dolphin Hotel, we are given box lunches with barely cold glass bottles of soft drinks and are encouraged to eat our lunches in the blazing Florida sun. About 500 of us settle in by the pool, where I quickly spot the "No Glass at the Pool" sign. At about the same time, I see a young, smiling, clean-cut, perfectly tanned Disney cast member heading towards me with a stack of plastic cups and a garbage bag. Sensing that my marginally cold Coke is in great peril, I try to hide it. As a backup plan I decide I'll tell him that I'm responsible for all computers in all universities and will change all his grades to Fs if he forces me to pour my Coke into a warm plastic cup.

But before I can offer my strongest challenge, a bag of ice appears and I hear him say, "Hi, I'm Matt. Like me to pour your Coke over some ice for you? It's pretty hot out here. Let me take that glass bottle from you."

I'm ecstatic. Unasked, I've just been given a most welcome cup of ice. But I know that Matt is still in deep trouble.

"Thank you. That's very nice of you," I say, "but there are hundreds of people with glass bottles. There's no way you'll get all of those."

Matt pats a wireless communicator that every hotel employee seems to carry and points across the pool. There, a dozen or so Susans and Tyrones, recruited temporarily from elsewhere in the hotel, are working their way through the CAUSE crowd. In minutes, hundreds of contented conventioneers are sipping cold drinks by the pool, and not a single glass bottle remains.

How does Disney do it? How were they able to turn a looming nasty confrontation into a public relations coup? How does Disney get employees to be so dedicated and considerate, and to treat their guests and other employees so well? How do they get people like Matt, Susan, and Tyrone to understand that their real job is to create happiness for their guests -- not to be bellhops, lifeguards, accountants, or vice presidents?

Disney's employees are not special people. They are ordinary folks selected from the same pool of people that the rest of us use. It is Disney's vision and leadership that makes the difference.

Perhaps only Disney can do this, and perhaps this only applies to folks who run theme parks, not to people who run regular businesses such as universities, factories, and regular hotels. However, although Disney owns the Dolphin hotel, it is not run by Disney at all. It is a Sheraton hotel. Matt's paycheck, manager, and training are all from Sheraton, not from Disney. They deliver Disney service because they use Disney leadership techniques.

So can you. The Sheraton Dolphin employees are not special in any way. Chances are they are even lower paid than the staffs at the most financially challenged colleges. Their managers labor under worse conditions -- lower pay, less vacation, more mundane work, etc. -- than the folks at your institution do. But their managers have a vision that is shared and nurtured. Everyone knows the story the hotel is trying to tell, and management is passionate about keeping people on story and about developing and telling the best possible story.

Every institution, indeed every person, has a compelling story to tell, a passion that once unlocked moves everything inexorably with it. If you are a mover or shaker at your institution, it is your responsibility to discover or develop the story and to unlock that passion. If you are lower on the organizational food chain, it is your job to convince the necessary key players to act. Failing even that, you can institute the power of Disney leadership at whatever level you are. Having vision and passion and fussing with details are part of the very difficult task of leading.

Earning your Mouster's degree in leadership will not be easy, but doing so will take you from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Then you, and your students, and your faculty, and your administration will all live happily ever after.

Howard Jay Strauss ([email protected]) is manager of advanced applications at Princeton University.

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