Leaders on Leadership: Bob Iger

Bob Iger is president and CEO of Disney we are delighted you are here we're going to talk about risk and management and you were quoted as saying the riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo so you're our perfect guest so we're joined by risk and failure why do you think leaders fail well I think leaders fail for a number of reasons arrogance is a sure way to create failure sometimes in leadership positions in positions of power particularly when success ensues it's easy for people to allow success to go to their heads and to get arrogant sometimes they fail because leadership can be an isolating experience and in isolation you lose the ability for whatever reason to hear differing opinions sometimes with leadership comes a power that intimidates people to even express themselves in honest ways and I think the last thing with leaders which probably is a collection of all the things I just said is it can go to your head the old power corrupts I think is an apt truly apt statement our concept how do you fail you have so many companies that should manage and run and chief executive officer but you have other people that are presidents and other leaders all through your organization how do you tell someone has the leadership spark is there something you particularly you look for I think yes it is but I think it's something you you learn about someone over time you know you can make decisions on people pretty quickly in terms of whether there's someone you want to hire or not but in terms of whether they have absolute leadership capabilities the only thing you really know immediately is whether they look the part whatever that means and people have different definitions of what that means but I think you need time to really see someone and get to know them better to determine whether they're a leader see them in action see them interacting with people listening to whether they're open-minded how passionate they are you know whether they have the ability to take risks the quote you you threw back at me earlier I think there are a lot of things you have to see before you can actually stamp leader on a person's forehead so I'm sure you've had a couple of failures in your life in your business life how do you maintain your credibility as a leader and redirect once that's happened well a lot of it depends on the degree of failure and a lot of it depends on the route the route of failure I'm fond of reminding people at our company that honest mistakes deserve second chances that in effect it's okay to fail it's okay to make a mistake if it's the result of an honest error or trying hard working hard to fulfill a dream or to fulfill an instinct and learning over time that it doesn't work doesn't necessarily mean the career is over or reputation is killed when a reputation is killed is when failure comes as a result of loss of integrity thorough lapse of judgment breaking of rules standards laws for instance so there's it's very black-and-white for me in that regard one type of failure doesn't deserve a second chance in terms of failing in for legitimate reasons or business obviously there are degrees abject failure on a sustained basis is obviously something that unfortunately the environment doesn't allow us to tolerate initial failure whether it's mine or someone else's you know for reasons that it could be varied but don't necessarily are not necessarily rooted in tremendous personal error I think it's important to give to give people an opportunity to learn from that and to give them a chance to try again in some other form I to the point that Peter made earlier with a quote I'm a big believer in in taking chances and particularly in businesses that we're and they're very dynamic they're changing right before our eyes a lot led by or caused by digital technology and predicting the future or predicting the the business environment is not as easy as it once was and that's obviously going to take some risk because it's predictability as an issue and it will result in some failure and again I think we have to have the ability to tolerate that and we must exhort people particularly our leaders to take risks I talk often about incumbents versus insurgents big large companies like Disney had been around a long time moving some of our divisions espn/abc Pixar Marvel their incumbents in many ways we're competing with insurgents insurgents are great at taking risks because they approach everything within everything to gain nothing to lose mentality and it's important for us to understand that as incumbents if you take everything to lose nothing to gain or little to gain mentality then you're not going to try anything and so if you if you if you preach that philosophy and you preach the fact that you may not be an insurgent but ya have to act a little bit more like them then you have to be willing to tolerate mistake it's just it's it's inevitable can a leader succeed without really taking risks Kenny really or she really succeed without being being risk averse no I think if you completely play it safe you might get by for a while but eventually that will catch up with you and when you look at some of the content business you're in movies and television built into all the years of new programming on television built into all the new movies nobody can you go by the strata just make it Sam you're gonna have every don't work and then you know in creation creativity everything is a risk it's not a science right I tell it to people all the time I try to explain that to shareholders and the board members as well you're constantly taking chances your time constantly taking risks and you're bound to experience failure actually one of the I think the the critical characteristics or attributes of a leader of a creative business is the ability to tolerate failure because it's inevitable it's bound to happen there's no such thing as perfection at least over a long period of time in creativity Pixar has come close but there aren't many examples of that we've talked about really risk-taking on ideas but there's also was taking about people how do you factor the risks versus rewards with people well that's interesting too because I've been vocal with my team about this we tend to take more risks in business or with business decisions than we do with people were far more risk-averse with people and that stems from a number of things we we tend to want to be in business with or have people working for us that we're comfortable with that we know we bet and sometimes we overemphasize experience over vision over ability to take risks over sometimes intelligence experience becomes the almost the constant when it comes to people that's not always right sometimes you can find people that are far more talented and less experienced over time they'll gain the experience they need to succeed in the space but the talent that they brought to whatever the pursuit or whatever the endeavor can be really valuable and can result in phenomenal success but we reverse when it comes to taking risks on people without experience began you lead by example I'm fortunate to have been the product of a couple of bosses who took real chances with me who put me in jobs that I had no experience and whatsoever they took big risks now they might have been a little nuts but fortunately they paid off and that taught me a great lesson and I've tried to do that with people as well I just flipped the CFO of the Walt Disney Company with the head of our Parks and Resorts as an example and while they were both considerable in terms of their talents and their intellect their experience in each one's area was very limited that was somewhat of a risk they've done extremely well in their new positions I think they were kind of cautious at first about what I was offering them to some extent because they were risk-averse themselves about their careers but the signal that it sent to the rest of the company that it's okay to take risks with people put someone in the job that may not have experience but you really believe in them has resonated well we need to do more of that as a as a company I have one for me one last question I have was absolutely marveled at the mops and model to the experience of you taking over the company and making a very bold move in the very beginning with Pixar it was a very bold move because it brought in some sense of Fox into the chicken coop at Disney it was a major animation company world class you know brand and something that was Pixar there and you made that move how did you tell that story to your people who had such a vested interest in the market they had created well how I told that story to the board is kind of more important we had an issue with Disney Animation a business that is about his core as any businesses to the Walt Disney Company animation since Walt Disney's day has been a great wave maker as I've said the wave of great animation of the company has a ripple effect over all of our businesses all over the world over long periods of time and we had experienced quite a long period of time in animation where where we had little success and I felt it was imperative for me as a new CEO to address that immediately if I had a priority I had a few priorities but that was at the top of the list and as I looked at the alternatives the one that seemed the most obvious to me was an acquisition of Pixar however they were not for sale they would be expensive if they were for sale and I knew that it would be I never looked at his bringing a Fox into the henhouse we had a long relationship with them but I knew that it would shake things up big time all things by the way that I was perfectly willing to do particularly given the fact that I had a strategic hole or creative hole that had to be filled quickly and so I said about to examine whether it was possible and to fully analyze all of the issues related to it on the positive and the negative sign aside and ultimately felt that if we could get this done and it was not an easy task it would be fantastic for this company long term even if it bore a fair amount of risk which it did and fear amongst some of the people who were there in that category well there are people at Disney Animation whose jobs were definitely on the line when we made the acquisition and if their fear was not something I was just worried about the animators in general embraced it because we brought into the company animation leadership that was about as respected as you could get in the business John Lasseter right on the creative side ed catmull on the technology side and it was hard for them to do anything other than embrace that it was exciting for them and it was a shot in the arm for Disney Animation to have those leaders as partners and as collab collaborators in their animation pursuits so that really was that that didn't become or was not at any time the big issue for me the big issue was the size of the acquisition and convincing ourselves and then and then the board that it was a risk a risk worth taking that there would be value there because one of the biggest questions was how long could their success continue right and would an acquisition destroy the very essence of what Pixar was and essentially obliterate their ability to continue that great success and fortunately I think we've proven that that that has not been the case certainly what's your role as the see a CEO in prompting risk-taking is it that you're the idea person you're the person who seeds the strategic talent that comes to you how do you create that culture well first of all running a company like this takes a lot of people a lot of very talented people it's not one person but I know that my role is a CEO and as a leader obviously demands that I I set direction and that I set standards and then I act as a catalyst so the way the way I look at it my job is to inspire people my job is to be a catalyst whether it's a catalyst for risk-taking a catalyst for change at a catalyst for greater quality or experimentation and then I am conscience in many ways of the company we don't have a chief ethics officer I consider that one of my primary responsibilities and that's that that's what I try to portray and to my everyday life throughout the throughout the many places that our company does business with that comes you know the the need and the ability to inspire people to take risks to inspire people to act this and certaintly as they possibly can to be decisive take chances to value people there's a variety of different things that obviously it has to be considered it has to be performed in a job like this thank you so much for coming to UCLA Anderson thank you you

Channel: UCLA

Views: 37,239

Keywords: iger, guber, olian, disney, leadership, ucla, ucla anderson

Id: MSOyYr8SLMo

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2011