Believe: Create a quality cast experience – establish strategic partnerships.
“When values are clear, decisions are easy.” – Roy Disney
Carrying that theme a step further, we might add that if “seeing is believing,” then the unparalleled success of The Walt Disney Company is convincing proof of the power inherent in the Believe principle. But as our clients know, before success can be achieved, a personal set of core values must be formalized, communicated to the company at large, and actually lived day to day. Disney has shown the way. – The Disney Way, 3E: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company.
The Believe stage of The Disney Way certainly is about values and having the core values in place to support your dream. At face value, that is what most of us will think Believe is all about. Believe is also having the confidence that you can make that dream come true. As Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald (not Walt Disney) said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” You have to believe, however, to believe you have to understand and accept current reality.
Developing a current state is an integral part of the Believe stage. It is where we strive to understand the capabilities of ourselves, partners and customers. As much as the Dream stage challenges, I think the Believe Stage equally challenges us. Challenges us to accept our current position. It is at this stage that we really lay the groundwork in making the Dream a reality.
With our initial set of characters in our story, we have created an outline on how this particular project/campaign will be started, developed and end. We have created the journey. Now, is the time to look at who will be caring these tasks out. Are customers in position or understand the pain/gain clearly? Can our company deliver the outcomes needed for this entire journey? Do we have the right partners? Who else may we need? And, are we all inspired by the story to make it all happen?
We first focus on the story breaking it down into manageable parts. Much like a release plan that we use in agile project planning. We evaluate the process needed to carry out each of these stories and who most likely will be needed. This is not a small effort in itself because it is imperative before we exit this stage that we and others truly believe that we can make it happen.
In my reading of Disney projects and some of the work that was done in developing properties, I also “believe” that at this stage an idea was developed for the financial side of the project. Having proper funding at this point is imperative. One, of course, that you have resources to carry out the project, but also so we start understanding the trade-offs necessary during the project. We will at some point have to understand what we can and cannot do based on the scope of our dream, the time or schedule, and the cost.
As you can see believe is just not a culture thing. We may consider that we are narrowing the focus but without, this foundation seldom will we turn our Dreams into reality.
Walt Disney’s original success formula, “Dream, Believe, Dare, Do”, can transform both entrepreneurial and Fortune 500 companies alike. Bill Capodagli is the co-author of The Disney Way, 3E, along with several other books (I have them all), and can be found at Capodagli Jackson Consulting.
This is the second of a series of posts this week on the Four Stages of The Disney Way: Dream, Believe, Dare, Do.