Just had a few days in Southern California, which included some Disneyland time, as you can see from the above shot our our daughter at the end of a busy day.
As a confirmed Disney sceptic before I first went to the park last year, I’m now something of a zealous convert.
This is partly because the whole thing makes my daughter so happy, which is hard for a parent to argue with.
But it’s partly because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about running companies based on core passions and painstaking implementation, and few organizations do that as well as Disney.
I’ll expound on this later, but it brings to mind something Dr Phil McGraw has been heard to say (he’s another thing I thought I’d hate but actually came to value). He argues that bring up children requires two things: ‘You’ve got to love your kids, and have a really good plan.’
I think the same is true of businesses – large or small. The people at the top need to have a real passion for what they do or else there’ll never care enough about it or be able to pass on the required commitment and enthusiasm to their employees.
But they also need a well-thought out set of plans for who does what, why and when – which should obviously draw its inspiration from the original passion and vision.
Like I say, there’ll be a lot more from me on this sort of topic in the near future, but that’s it for now.