The Ride of a Lifetime

Today I finished Bob Iger’s book: The Ride of a Lifetime – Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company. I enjoyed it very much. Now I can’t look at another Disney movie without thinking about Iger’s journey. Similar to how I shared Bob’s 10 principles to true leadership when I first started reading this book, I’m going to share some highlights from his Appendix on Lessons to Lead by:

  • Now more than ever: innovate or die. There can be no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new.
  • Excellence and fairness don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Strive for perfection but always be aware of the pitfalls of caring only about the product and never the people.
  • True integrity – a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong – is a kind of secret leadership weapon.
  • Value ability more than experience, and put people in roles that require more of them than they know they have in them.
  • Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.
  • Don’t let ambition get ahead of opportunity. …… It’s important to know how to find the balance – do the job you have well; be patient; look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow; and make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, whom your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises.
  • Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion.
  • Treating others with respect is an undervalued currency when it comes to negotiating. A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it can be very costly.
  • What people think of you is what they’ll think of your company.
  • When hiring, try to surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do. Genuine decency – an instinct for fairness and openness and mutual respect – is a rarer commodity in business than it should be, and you should look for it in the people you hire and nurture it in the people who work for you.
  • If you’re in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great.
  • Hold on to your awareness of yourself, even as the world tells you how important and powerful you are.

I look forward to introducing my kids to read this book. There are so many lessons in this book for everyone.