How to think like Walt Disney

I have been fascinated by Walt Disney since I was a young child. Fascinated by everything that he created but also fascinated by HOW he could create and execute with such finesse and quality.

I remember studying the Disney animation process when I was a child and marvelling at all the techological innovations that were invented to push the envelope of innovation for Disney films. From Mickey Mouse to Mary Poppins, Disneyland to Disneyworld, live action special effects that had never been done before. The list is endless. We're pretty jaded today, but I remember the time before computer assisted special effects and I wanted to know how they did the magic.

Walt Disney was an integrative thinker. He drew from everything he had ever experienced in life and tumbled it in his mind until it clicked into something completely new by the unique combination of ideas from diverse disciplines and sources. And the key to manifesting those innovative ideas lay in disciplined and extremely organized production processes from stem to stern.

I finally had the opportunity to work for Disney back in 1997 when Disney Online was breaking ground on ways to leverage the internet to innovate new business models, services and entertainment. Disney Online produced their web site with the same disciplined process that they used for every other product produced by Disney Studios. They would story board their web sites, distribute the work tasks across a diverse team of skilled talent and merged it all together for the producers to review, adjust and approve.

My challenge was to take Disney Online from using email to route individual web site components through the development/reviewal process to using a system solution to support the whole process. I designed a web production support system that allowed the teams to organize their web story board, assign the work for the diverse talent sets, collect revision notes and allow producers to preview the components assembled together within a web browser. The solution was a Disney Masterpiece of organized, controlled web site production.

But it's only now that I truly understand how I was able to come up with that type of solution and how Walt Disney himself would have been thrilled to see how it worked. I had read the "Request For Proposal" from the folks at Disney Online and had interviewed all the people in the department that were struggling with the rapid pace of web site production. I was able to formulate a mutli-dimensional and cross-functional understanding of the complexity of what they were trying to accomplish. The issues and problems and objects and production process tumbled in my brain. I examined in from all possible angles and morphed the technology that we had available to us into a model of the Disney animation production process to arrive at a concept that embodied the culture of how the company has worked for over 50 years and how the technology and processes could be used to create a harmonious working solution.

It was a work of art. Sometime I wish I could capture the concept in a simple form like a painting to be able to show people how cool it was.

Today after pondering Walt Disney's life and innovations in entertainment, I can see the patterns of his integrative thinking process. I wonder if he felt the thrill of the rush when solutions crystalize like I do. It occurs to me that there is infinite potential for businesses to succeed if they can tap into the type of thinking that must have been brewing in Walt's mind. And so my quest to build an organization of integrative thinkers continues. A company that organizations can turn to when they need to innovate. A company that organizations can trust to help them drive their business forward in ways that had not previously been dreamed of. Maybe it will be as simple as helping them improve their cross-functional operational efficiency, or maybe it will be a totally new way of working.

Most importantly, I know that the discplined and organized production process was fundamental for Walt Disney and without it, where would our entertainment industry be?