Michael Eisner Essays - Eisner, The Walt Disney Company,

Michael Eisner MICHAEL EISNER Common Sense Michael Eisner is an American entertainment executive, whose leadership in the 1980s and 1990s revitalized the Walt Disney Company. Born in New York City, Eisner was educated at Denison University, where he studied literature and theater. After graduating in 1964, he worked for six weeks as a clerk at NBC and then briefly in the programming department at CBS. His career crystallized at ABC, which he joined as a programming assistant in 1966 and where he spent the next ten years, ultimately becoming senior vice president of prime-time production and development. Eisner's rise through the corporate ranks was paralleled by ABC's leap from third place to first place in the network viewing ratings. In 1976 he was named president and CEO of Paramount Pictures. During his eight-year tenure the motion-picture studio moved from last place to first place among the six major studios. In 1984 Eisner left Paramount to become chairman and chief executive of Walt Disney Productions (renamed the Wal t Disney Company in 1986). Eisner admired Walt Disney and was especially interested in children's programming and family entertainment. The company's success included several feature-length animated films in the Disney tradition. Michael Eisner was an optimistic person and he was well known for being a genius in creativity. He has made Disney a company that is built on a strong combination of institutionalized creativeness that constantly produces potent ideas, and also having common sense. One question that we must ask ourselves is how does Michael Eisner have such good leadership. Well as he describes in his interview, he says that being a leader requires 4 main parts: being an example, being there, being a nudge and finally being an idea generator. There are many things that I agree upon in Michael Eisners way of having leadership in a company. One thing that I strongly agree on is that he has situated his company in being an idea generator, which to me is so powerful in a company. When setting your company to be an idea generator, you must have a loose environment so people are not afraid to speak their thoughts and ideas. He strongly encourages this type of behavior within his company. From seeing this way of leadership also shows me that the culture at Walt Disney is fun oriented, exciting and loose. Having this type of culture in an organization to me is so much better and it makes people motivated to work and also helps them get through the rough times. When you have a strict culture with a million rules, I see that it affects the whole organization and it makes the internal employees not perform as well as they should. At Walt Disney world, they are entertaining people so their culture is set in being energized, fun and e xciting. Having this type of culture also bring more people into the company and these talented individuals may have the next million-dollar idea. One of Eisners ways of getting people to be idea-generators was by having systems called the gong show and charettes. These two systems were great ways to get people to speak their thoughts and generate ideas. They would meet once a week and people would say ideas and they would get reactions from other people at the meeting. Having these two systems was a good way for people in an organization to know one another and how they tend to operate. Also, it is one way for an organization to become big and successful. One of the things I dont agree with in Eisners style of being an idea generator is how these meetings are driven with long hours, and sometimes being day after day. He would put everybody in the same room for ten to twelve hours or even for a couple of days. He feels the longer the better and the more excruciating the better. I cant see basically torturing people in one room for hours at a time thinking that it is going to help generate ideas. I feel that these meeting should have been broken up differently. They should have had meetings three times a week instead of one big one every week. This