The Ride of a Lifetime

Produktdetails

Verlag

Random House LLC US

Erschienen

2019

Sprache

English

Seiten

272

Infos

272 Seiten
8-PP COLOR PHOTO INSERT
231 mm x 152 mm

ISBN

978-1-984801-46-3

Besprechung

I expected a book written by the person who has led Disney for decades to be defined by both gripping storytelling and deep leadership wisdom. Bob Iger delivers, and then some! The Ride of a Lifetime is leadership gold you won t forget the stories or the lessons. Brené Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead
 
Nurturing creativity is less a skill than an art especially at a company where the brand alone is synonymous with creativity. That s a lot to live up to. Bob Iger has not only lived up to ninety-six years of groundbreaking history but has moved the Disney brand far beyond anyone s expectations, and he has done it with grace and audacity. This book shows you how that s happened. Steven Spielberg
 
People have been waiting years for Bob Iger to share his leadership secrets. Now he has, and they are utterly brilliant. The Ride of a Lifetime is not merely a memoir; it s a personal, all-access session with the wisest CEO you ve ever met and a playbook for handling the key challenges of our age: how to drive change, leverage technology, build an enduring culture, and empower people. It s a rippingly good, revelatory read. Daniel Coyle, New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Starting at the Bottom

This book is not a memoir, but it s impossible to talk about the traits that have served me well over the course of my professional life and not look back at my childhood. There are certain ways I ve always been, things I ve always done, that are the result of some inscrutable mix of nature and nurture. (I ve always woken early, for example, as far back as I can remember, and cherished those hours to myself before the rest of the world wakes up.) There are other qualities and habits that are the result of purposeful decisions I made along the path. As is the case with many of us, those decisions were partially made in response to my parents, in particular my father, a brilliant and troubled man who shaped me more than anyone.

My father made me curious about the world. We had a den lined with shelves full of books, and my dad had read every one of them. I didn t become a serious reader until I was in high school, but when I did finally fall in love with books, it was because of him. He had complete sets that he ordered from the Book of the Month Club of the works of all the American literary giants Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck and so on. I d pull down from the shelves his copy of Tender Is the Night or For Whom the Bell Tolls or dozens of others and devour them, and he d urge me to read even more. We also spent our dinners discussing world events, and as young as ten years old, I d grab the New York Times on our front lawn and read it at the kitchen table before anyone else woke up.

We lived in a split-level house in a small working-class town on Long Island called Oceanside. I was the older of two kids; my sister is three years younger. My mother was warm and loving, a stay-at-home mom until I went to high school, at which point she got a job in the local junior high school library. My dad was a Navy veteran who came back from the war and played the trumpet with some lesser big bands, but he figured he could never make much of a living as a musician, so never tried to do it full-time. He majored in marketing at the University of Pennsylvania s Wharton School, and his first job was working in marketing for a food manufacturing company, and that led him into advertising. He became an account executive at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue he handled the Old Milwaukee and Brunswick bowling accounts but eventually lost that job. He changed agencies several times, almost always lateral moves. By the time I was ten or eleven, he d changed jobs so many times that I began to wonder why.

He was always deeply politically engaged and had a very strong liberal bias. He once lost a job because he was determined to go to the March on Washington and see Martin Luther King, Jr., speak. His boss wouldn t give him the day off, but he went anyway. I don t know if he quit and went to the speech or if he was fired for going after he d been told he couldn t, but it was just one of several such endings.

I was proud of his strong character and his politics. He had a fierce sense of what was right and fair, and he was always on the side of the underdog. But he also had trouble regulating his moods and would often say things that got him into trouble. I later learned that he d been diagnosed with manic depression, and that he d tried several therapies, including electroshock therapy, to treat his illness. As the older child, I bore the brunt of his emotional unpredictability. I never felt threatened by his moods, but I was acutely aware of his dark side and felt sad for him. We never knew which Dad was coming home at night, and I can distinctly recall sitting in my room on the second floor of our house, knowing by the sound of the way he opened and shut the door and walked up the steps whether it was happy or sad Dad.

Langtext

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A memoir of leadership and success: The CEO of Disney shares the ideas and values he embraced while reinventing one of the world s most beloved companies and inspiring the people who bring the magic to life.

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Competition was more intense than ever and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company s history. His vision came down to three clear ideas: Recommit to the concept that quality matters, embrace technology instead of fighting it, and think bigger think global and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Today, Disney is the largest, most admired media company in the world, counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Under Iger s leadership, Disney s value grew nearly five times what it was, making Iger one of the most innovating and successful CEOs of our era.

In The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger shares the lessons he learned while running Disney and leading its 220,000-plus employees, and he explores the principles that are necessary for true leadership, including:

Optimism. Even in the face of difficulty, an optimistic leader will find the path toward the best possible outcome and focus on that, rather than give in to pessimism and blaming.
Courage. Leaders have to be willing to take risks and place big bets. Fear of failure destroys creativity.
Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can be made on a timely basis. Indecisiveness is both wasteful and destructive to morale.
Fairness. Treat people decently, with empathy, and be accessible to them.

This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.
 
The ideas in this book strike me as universal Iger writes.  Not just to the aspiring CEOs of the world, but to anyone wanting to feel less fearful, more confidently themselves, as they navigate their professional and even personal lives.

Über den AutorIn

Robert Iger is the CEO of The Walt Disney Company and directs the company s creative endeavors. He served as CEO from 2005 to 2020 and as executive chairman from 2020 to 2022. He previously was president and COO from 2000 to 2005. Iger began his career at ABC in 1974, and as chairman of the ABC Group he oversaw the broadcast television network and station group, managed the cable television properties, and guided the merger between Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., and The Walt Disney Company. Iger officially joined the Disney senior management team in 1996 as chairman of the Disney-owned ABC Group and in 1999 was given the additional responsibility of president, Walt Disney International. In that role, Iger expanded Disney s presence outside of the United States, establishing the blueprint for the company s international growth today. In 2023, he was named one of Time s 100 Most Influential People of the Year.