Background

“The ride of a lifetime” by Robert Iger is a book that I can highlight most of the sentences. Again, it was recommended by Bill Gates (I’m such a trend follower). It was a really really good book about business and life in general.

Interesting quotes and thoughts

On leader’s quality:

One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.

You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. If you don't articulate your priorities clearly, then the people around you don't know what their own should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted.

On “soft autocracy” - when you need to assert power to stubborn yet highly creative people saying that they think it’s impossible to do.

"Roone," I said "if there was ever an idea that people would assume came from you, this is it. It's big and bold. It could be impossible to execute, but when has that ever stopped you?"

On pitching to become the next CEO of Walt Disney. Iger was in a difficult situation when pitching to the board. He was still working under his boss (who would soon be ex-CEO) at this point but the board was in war with the CEO. So he had to think of a way to not criticise his boss in front of the board.

"I can't do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward. But we don't any get any do-overs. You wan to know where I'm going to take this company, not where it's been. Here's my plan."

On Disney’s strategic plan: 3 points. These 3 principles guided most of Iger’s actions during his tenure in Disney: from buying Pixar, Marvel,… to launching Disney+.

We needed to devote most of our time and capital to the creation of high-quality branded content.

We needed to embrace technology to the fullest extent, first by using it to enable the creation of higher quality products, and then to reach more consumers in more modern, more relevant ways.

We needed to become a truly global company.

At this point, the 3 points above coincided with the GLEe model that was popularised from Gibson Biddle. The GLEe model aims to give company a focus and also shows the ambition beyond current core business in a easy-to-understand terms:

• Get Big on: high quality-branded content
• Lead: technology application in content creation and distribution
• Expand: globally

Iger also mentioned when he needed his company to focus on the Lead part, they had to make significant short-term losses.

As one example, pulling all of our TV shows and movies-including Pixar and Marvel and Star Wars-from Netflix's platform and consolidating them all under our own subscription service would mean sacrificing hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees.

On firing people

You can't make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: "I've asked you to come in here for a difficult reason." And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn't working and why I didn't think it was going to change.

On an almost done-deal acquisition of Twitter and backing out shortly before the deal is done.

Twitter was a potentially powerful platform for us, but I couldn't get past the challenges that would come with it. The challenges and controversies where almost too much to list, but they included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom of speech, what do do about fake accounts algorithmically spewing out political "messaging" to influence elections, and the general rage and lack of civility that was sometimes evident on the platform.