PPCD Group Assignment

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WALT DISNEY&HIS TEAM

PPCD ASSIGNMENT 2

Assignment reference: PDFULL/July11/2/Group

Tatiana Gerasina 8220447

Tamer Nassar 8244373

Tameem ALZOABI 7995650

Tarek Fahmy 7986821

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 1

DISNEY’S TEAM INPUTS ................................................................................................................. 2

TEAM PROSESSES ............................................................................................................................ 4

Corporate culture ................................................................................................................................. 5

Work place organization ...................................................................................................................... 6

Leadership ........................................................................................................................................... 6

Brainstorming – a “three room” idea management ................................................................................ 7

Brainstorming – Storyboarding ........................................................................................................... 10

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................. 11

REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................. 12

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INTRODUCTION

Walt Disney Studio made an innovative breakthrough in an entertainment industry, which

started from cartoons and all-famous Mickey Mouse, Disney’s first Cartoon Hero. Walt Disney

and his team were the first who steered cartoons away from the "rubber hose" style of the silent

and encouraged his artists to develop a realistic, naturalist style of animation in the early 1930s.

Later on Disney continued innovative way as they produced great movies and created

worldwide known cartoon characters, such groundbreaking films as “Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs" (1937), the first full-length animated feature, and "Pinocchio (1940), a film whose

intricate levels of technical brilliance many animators feel has never been surpassed.

Walt Disney started his career as an artist with Pesman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he

met Ubbe Iwwerks. Later, Walt worked in different places as cartoonists until finally he moved

to Hollywood with an aim to become a director. As Hollywood’s companies rejected his

candidacy, he started a small business to make animated movies and cartoons together with his

friend Ube Iwerks and his brother Roy Disney. Ube and Walt started their work in a small office

in an old building, where mice could be seen running around. They worked on drawing the

cartoon mouse walking on two legs that turned to be the Mickey Mouse.

No doubt that the success of any project doesn’t depend only on one or few people. The success

of the project depends on the extent to which individuals in the group can forge themselves into

a team, cooperating effectively, flexibly and consistently towards the achievement of

thoughtfully defined and agreed goals.

The framework developed by Hackman and Morris (1975) named Input-Processes-Outcomes (I-

P-O) can help us to identify the key factors that led Disney’s team to success. Inputs contain the

drivers of a team, such as materials or human resources. Processes are dynamic interactions

among team members. Outcomes refer to the task and non-task-related results of a team’s

operation.

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DISNEY’S TEAM INPUTS

Input relates to size of the team, the skills and abilities of team members and how long team

members have worked together. Inputs influence the way how teams operate and perform.

Walter Disney made great efforts to form a talented team of animators, he encouraged people

from all over the country to join his studio. After joining, new employees were sent to the best

art schools. No doubt that Disney attracted the best talents, they were masters of the form, but

they also had to have attitude of the student to acquire new knowledge and develop themselves.

Walt Disney believed that people working in his team should dream, believe and dare to do

something different. A well-known principle of Walt Disney “Make everyone’s Dream come

true; Believe in your people, your guests, your partners; Dare to make a difference; then just Do

it!” identifies the kind of people he wanted to have in his team. Disney wanted the people who

were able and who wanted to break the rules, rebels by nature, who dared to dream and had

crazy ideas (from youtube interview).

Finally, the core team was formed through decades with nine team members who he called: “my

old nine men” after Roosevelt’s name of his high Supreme Court judges.

-­‐ Les Clark, the first of the nine old men, the man who did Mickey Mouse animations for

decades, took over this specialty from Ube Iwerks.

-­‐ Marc Davis, the man who designed and animated Snow white, cruel de Vil, Maleficient

and Cinderella. Known as the Disney’s Ladies Man.

-­‐ Ollie Johnson, together with Frank Thomas, they formed a legendary “Frank & Ollie”

character animation team.

-­‐ Frank Thomas, the other half of “Frank and Ollie” team. The team has created the

characters like ‘Captain Hook’ &‘King Louie’.

-­‐ Mit Kahl, a brilliant artist who designed Tramp in Lady and the Tramp, Roger and Anita

Radcliffe in 101 Dalmations.

-­‐ Ward Kimball, he was the man who loved music besides being a great animator.

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-­‐ Eric Larson, his great role of developing Disney’s Talent program and creating a next

generation of talents had huge influence on Disney.

-­‐ John Lounsbery, a comic animator who mastered great techniques, the man who co-

directed Winnie the Pooh and Tigeer Too.

-­‐ Wolfgang Reitherman, the man of action sequences. His work in Pinocchiio and

Sleeping beauty was great, he also directed 101 Dalmations and other movies.

This team has stood together with Walt Disney until his death in 1966.

Important to notice that Disney’s team size and composition were unique and diverse. At the

very beginning, the size of the team was only three people and at the same time they had diverse

talents. Walt – had outstanding artistic talent, but was an average animator. Roy Disney was a

pragmatic person, who managed financial and organizational part. Ube was a very good

animator from technical point of you. In order to create a complete studio they required

animators, technicians, musicians, administrators etc and they managed to find the best “old nine

men”. The formed team stayed together with Walt Disney until his death in 1966 and it was one

of the most productive and innovative teams the history ever knew.

Walt’s “core” team as we can see wasn’t so big and multiple researches also confirm that the

output of the teams decreases with the increase of team’s size above some certain size. This

happens because of team inhibitors such as social loafing, conformity or production blocking.

Team longevity is also important factor when we speak about creative team. In general, the

longer a team works together, the less innovative they become. First of all, the initial

breakthrough was done by a very young team, which supports the theory. Secondly, we believe

that the reason why the discussed team fountained innovative solutions for so many years was

an attitude of the students to everything they did, their “craziness” and the desire to do

something different of all members of the team. And of course the mixture of the materials

(people), done by Walt Disney was a genius one.

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TEAM PROSESSES

“Whatever we accomplish belongs to our entire group, a tribute of our combined effort”, Walt

Disney.

Shades of teamwork are everywhere in Disney films, but none better illustrates Walt's belief in

the value of collaboration than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. For many of us, those seven

individual characters—Happy, Sleepy, Doc, Bashful, Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey—are

treasured childhood friends. We remember them as a true team, always going off to work each

morning whistling a happy tune. Walt intentionally embedded the concept of teamwork and

cooperation into the script, with the dwarfs illustrating how different talents and personalities

can be brought together to accomplish shared goals (Capodagli and Jackson, 2001).

Director of Pixar, Brad Bird, said to his team when he only headed the company: “Look, this is a

young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we

interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth” (Rao et al,

2008).

Success doesn’t depend only on each team member’s talents and resources but also on the way

people interact with each other, in other words on processes within the group.

Which processes do separate normal team from outstanding creative team?

As was already said above, on the input stage it is very important to hire people who are

involved. Involved people make better innovations. Bird said “Involved people can be quite,

load or anything in-between – what they have in common is a restless, probing nature” (Rao et

al, 2008). Walt Disney’s team initially was a combination of “imagineers”, who were possessed

with cartoons and animation; they were determined to create cartoon stars and make a

difference.

The other component of the successful team is that people should be engaged and motivated.

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Engagement means that people should share their ideas, speak up and disagree. People’s input

should not be restricted, and problems should be brought up and discussed. If people don’t feel

motivated and don’t feel that they invest in work, productivity goes down. On the other hand, if

people share their ideas the learning curve goes up and productivity increases.

Corporate culture

Team or corporate culture – “the way we do things around here” (Deal and Kennedy) - is then

very important to create the atmosphere, to set the tone of a group’s work, to stimulate

involvement and engagement. Innovative companies therefore tend to have cultures, which

emphasize and reward values and norms that support the generation and implementation of new

ideas (Andriopoulos and Dawson, 2009).

Disney is well-known for its strong culture, behavioral norms and promotion of supportive

conflict. Disney Company builds its wholesome entertainment branding through the way it

manages the people. Culture created by Walt was – smart dresses code, no swearing, and the use

of euphemisms to describe people who work there – ‘cast’ members rather than employees

(Langdon, 2003). People, who worked in Disney studio from the very start, remember that Walt

was friendly with everyone and asked his newly hired employees to call him simply Walt.

Nevertheless, ‘simply Walt’ demanded very high performance from his team and from himself.

Enthusiastic team worked together with Walter from 7am till 10pm, many hours of overtime

without any compensation. But interestedly, they also mentioned that they were happy to do

this, that proves once again that working atmosphere was positive. Disney company nowadays

also puts much time, effort and money into getting ‘new joiners’ to adopt the ‘company way’ of

doing things, which also called organizational socialization. It includes job previews, training

courses, ‘Traditions’ class for new hires about history language, organizational goals and values.

In addition, Disney Company, as in early days of establishment, continues to stimulate

employees to have all kinds of optional classes to encourage people to learn outside their

areas/boxes, which makes employees more complete and more open to new ideas.

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Work place organization

The way how work stations organised or internal design within the company also contributes to

the culture and the way people interact with each other. For example, Steve Jobs in Pixar

designed a huge atrium with the idea that people have to interact with each other constantly. He

believed that things happen when people make eye contact and run into each other.

Disney’s first studio in California had an atmosphere of free kind, very loose and open which

contributed to high creativity of the company. However, a newly built in 1940 Burbank studio

had a very different, revolutionary type of work place organisation, common for that time

Fordism principle. Walt created a new studio as a production line, with high specialization of

employees. It was a rationally planned new animation factory with high segregation of tasks,

with supervisors, impersonal and hierarchical atmosphere. Many authors mention that although

this new design resulted in decrease of costs and served the purpose of mass and increased

production, this new kind of designed later on contributed in decrease of creativity as well.

Leadership

Walt Disney defined Leadership as “the ability to establish and manage a creative climate where

people and teams are self-motivated to the successful achievement of long-term goals in an

environment of mutual respect and trust”.

Leader’s personality plays a crucial role in establishing conditions upon which creativity

flourish and under which team conflicts can be resolved.

No doubt that Disney personality was an outstanding one. Disney mantra was, “I don’t make

movies to make money, I make money to make movies”. Walt Disney himself was obsessed

with improving the quality of the cartoons. No doubt that the passion of Walt gave inspiration to

his team. At the same time Walt was a good task manager, who could choose the best people

and organise the working process in the way that creativity could bring the harvest. In general,

the team created by him was a combination of innovation, discipline and hard-working.

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Walt Disney was a perfectionist, he required attention to details. “How can we do better?” is the

question Walt asked at every turn. He strove continually to improve the quality of the products

that gave him and his team fuel to move further to creative and new ideas.

There is a general consensus among authors that a democratic-participative leadership style

facilitates creativity and innovation (Andriopoulos and Dawson 2009, p.166). It is a controversy

here of whether we can call Walt’s leadership style democratic. People who used to

communicate with him on work mentioned that it wasn’t easy to work with him. He was a

powerful person and sometimes could fire someone on spot if he didn’t like something about the

person or about what the person had said. They also mention that the environment wasn’t

democratic, but more autocratic inside the company.

Brainstorming – a “three room” idea management

Walt Disney’s concept was that the human being should think differently. He tried to think up

and refine ideas, they were brainstorming alone and in groups, they tend to fill the room with a

dreamer or two, a few realists, and a group of spoilers and work together to reach creative

unique ideas.

Walt Disney, credibly, being among of the most successful creative teams of all times, has

developed a rigorous process to generate creative ideas - a “three room” idea management

process. Disney team believed that a new creative idea should pass through three rooms in order

to materialize as a new innovation.

The first room is the dreaming room, dreams has no limitations; dreams can be crazy, wild or

completely irrational. This is exactly how developing new ideas should be free from any

restrictions on thoughts, no matter how odd an idea could be it should be spoken out. This goes

very well with the second rule of Osborn’s (1963) four rules, which emphasis on accepting free-

wheeling, where Walt Disney ensured a barriers free environment. Disney’s first management

principle (Capodagli and Jackson, 1999) was “Make Everyone’s Dream come true”. The first

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phase doesn’t take feasibility into account, thus judgment is suspended, enabling generation of

large numbers of ideas without the fear of being judged or criticized. It doesn’t matter whether

the idea is realistic or not. This fulfills Osborn’s (1963) first rule of effective use of

brainstorming which states that ‘criticism of ideas should be abolished during brainstorming

session’ and also makes the third rule materialize where Disney’s team could easily ‘go for large

quantities of ideas’ through setting aside any assumptions.

The second room is where the focus moves to be on creative execution, thinking of means to

implement the idea and how the team would work on the tasks. Mainly in this phase the Disney

team starts to draft sketches of new characters, share views on how a storyboard can be built.

The phase mainly allows team members to look into ideas from first room, start to question

things and try to resolve issues. Applying Osborn’s (1963) Fourth rule - “combination and

improvement need to be sought”. Team starts to build on each other’s ideas, a team member

would need to find out how to develop others ideas and let others pick his own ideas that they

find attractive and adopt them with improvements or combine ideas forming an idea cross

pollination mechanism.

First and second room in Disney’s idea generation creative process resembles the idea

generation, which is the first stage according to Osborn’s (1963) who argued that creative

process is based on idea generation and idea evaluation. The brainstorming happens in the first

two rooms while the third room is where the evaluation phase takes place, questions like ‘is it

right to do it or do something else?’ and ‘why we do it?’ take place. Simply, a criticism is now

allowed in this room, doubts are raised, and difficult analytical questions are asked. The second

stage is mainly where the idea is evaluated based on business needs.

The three rooms are different in setup, each room is designed to meet the purpose it is used for,

the first room has high ceilings with good ventilation, allowing fresh air. High ceilings inspire

for unrestricted free dreams and unlimited thoughts. Team seating is also designed to serve the

goal of creative flow, a circled seating where team members face each other allows face to face

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interactions promoting collaboration. The second room setup is more like a classroom with

boards or wall facilities where team is seated in semi circular shape facing the boards, so that

team could easily share ideas and simultaneously go through ideas. This is some sort of using

brainwriting technique, which prevents the occurrence of the problem of production blocking.

The team seated facing the boards have access to ideas without the need to wait for others or to

take turns. Also a Shared sketch over the walls is another figure of brain walking, which is

discussed later. The third room setup is much simpler, team is seated facing project plan in a

single row formation. This serves the aim, project criticism rather than individual people

criticism. The different rooms enables team members to set their mentality to the right mode at

the right phase.

Advantages of Disney’s Brainstorming process

• The first two rooms, resembling the idea generation stage, with their setup and role in

the process enhances the brainstorming process and emphasis its advantages.

• Huge numbers of ideas are generated in the first room with the free dreaming

encouraged.

• Team morale went sky high with a belief that each member contributes strongly to the

creative abilities of the Disney visionaries.

• The team cohesiveness increased and members got to know each other very well and

hence more comfort in sharing experiences and ideas was achieved.

• Enjoyment, it is clear how the Disney old nine enjoyed their work and creative process,

they stick together with Walt Disney for lifetime.

• Impressed clients, who could impress clients more than Disney’s old nine team and their

sketches.

• Low cost, the room setup is much less expensive than what nowadays companys spend

on expensive equipment and tools. Disney rooms are located in work place and team utilizes

available resource.

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Disney’s method overcame Brainstorming disadvantages

While Brainstorming sessions have two major disadvantages, the structured Disney method

could minimize the drawbacks and avoid flaws.

• Generation of ideas without screening. Disney’s second room is the key solution to this

issue, while traditional brainstorming techniques result in large numbers of generated ideas that

has no limitations and end up there. Disney’s second room screen the ideas generated in room

one with a means of selecting ideas that would be developed and cross pollinated.

• Brainstorming is not always the answer to problems. This is because brainstorming has

four rules (Osborn 1963) that must be applied to result in an effective session. Disney’s method

is very well disciplined, the three phases/ rooms are very well defined and time management

was ensured. We have reflected above the fulfilment of the four rules within the rooms.

Brainstorming – Storyboarding

Disney Team also invented a unique way of brainstorming, which is called Storyboarding,

which is related to the second room technique described above. Storyboarding is a structured

exercise that quickly captures the thoughts and creative ideas from group of participants. These

thoughts and ideas recorded on cards and then displayed on a board or a wall. The result is an

idea landscape. Storyboarding is an ideal tool for generating solutions to problems and

enhancing communication. Visual element makes interconnection of ideas creative thoughts and

activities readily apparent.

Walt took note and began asking his artists to pin their drawings – pencil sketches and fully

colored renderings alike – on boards. Walt then sequenced the boards, hung them on the walls,

and thus beheld the stories spring to life. Today, Disneys employees use the storyboard to

develop movie plot lines, design theme parks, solve business problems and plan corporate

strategy. Generating and putting ideas graphically, instead of just verbally, expands team

members’ perspective, sharpens their focus, and spurs them to see and feel and dream, not just

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think. Storyboarding is a very democratic process, engaging people at all levels and in all

functions and benefiting all personality types (Capodagli and Jackson, 2001):

• Quiet and reserved people need not to speak until they are ready;

• Assertive and talkative people focus on putting pencil to paper, and thus don’t dominate

the discussion;

• Visual people revel in generating and arranging pictures that become stories in front of

their eyes;

• Detail-oriented people can see how the smallest elements combine to create the big

picture. Now they see forest and the trees.

CONCLUSION

To accomplish something beyond the capabilities of individuals working on their own is the

reason for forming the teams. Organizations that invest the time and resources necessary to build

successful teams find that they benefit not just from the team meeting their goal, but also get

from the characteristics of the team itself. Through teamwork company benefits from diverse

exchanges of ideas and information. The heterogeneity aspects of a team can lead to a range of

skills and abilities that form different beliefs and opinions among its members. This diverse

views lead to increased creativity. An increase in creativity allows the organization to adjust to

new situations flexibly.

Based on the analysis performed above, we can conclude that Disney team headed by their

outstanding leader has managed to build such processes within the team which resulted in

production of many innovative products and ideas. These “know-how” processes, ideas and

methods are still widely used today in many companies all over the world. Moreover, team

which created Mickey Mouse gave a rise to the most powerful multi-national corporation in

the world.

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REFERENCES • Andriopoulos, C. and Dawson, P. (2009). Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation.

London: SAGE Publications ltd.

• Buchanan, D.A. and Huczynski, A.A. (2010). Organizational Behavior. 7th ed. Harlow:

Pearson Education Limited.

• Capodagli, B, & Jackson, L. (2001). Disney Way Fieldbook: How To Implement Walt

Disney's Vision Of 'Dream, Believe, Dare, Do' In Your Own Company, n.p.: McGraw-Hill,

eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 14 December 2012.

• Capodagli, B. and L. Jackson. (1999). The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company. McGraw-Hill. • Dilts, Robert. Walt Disney: Strategies of Genius. The Article of the Month. 27 Nov. 2001 • Ken Langdon. (2003). The 100 Greatest business ideas of all time. Capstone.

• Rao, H., Sutton, R. and Webb, A. (2008) . Innovation lessons from Pixar: An Interview

with Oscar-winning Brand Bird. The McKinsey Quarterly April 2008.

Available from: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Innovation_lessons_from_Pixar_An_interview_with_Oscar-winning_director_Brad_Bird_2127 [accessed 14 December 2012] • McCrimmon, M. (1995). Teams without roles: empowering team for greater creativity. Journal of Management & Development. Retrieved September 5, 2006, from the Apollo Library • Prichard, J.S, & Stanton, N.A. (1999). Testing Belbin's team role theory of effective groups. Journal of Management Development. Retrieved September 5, 2006 • Websites accesses 14 December 2012

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnpGiEjxN0 o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzyaoFe_wo o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b8KyzHpEvw o The Walt Disney Company website

http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/citizenship/report-archive o http://hoomancan.com/blog/2009/01/walt-­‐disney-­‐and-­‐his-­‐imagineers-­‐always-­‐strived-­‐

to-­‐plus-­‐it/  o http://www.arinanikitina.com/walt-­‐disney-­‐a-­‐person-­‐who-­‐never-­‐stopped-­‐

dreaming.html  o http://99u.com/tips/6993/Brainstorming-­‐20-­‐Making-­‐Ideas-­‐That-­‐Really-­‐Happen  o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2fZYTdIqA