Sarah Cirone:

Caring for Castomers, a Disney Inspired Approach to Employee Engagement. Hosted by HRDQ-U and presented by Lenn the Mouse Man Millbower. My name is Sarah and I will moderate today’s webinar. The webinar will last around one hour. If you have any questions, please type them into the question area on your GoTo Webinar control panel and we’ll answer them as we can or after the session by email. Let’s keep this conversation going over on our socials today. Share your thoughts and comments using the hashtag #CaringforCastomers. You can see on the screen here our social media accounts. We’d love to hear your thoughts. And now I’d like to give a warm welcome to our presenter today, Lenn Millbower, the Mouse Man and author of Care Like a Mouse.

Sarah Cirone:

Lenn teachers Walt Disney inspired service, leadership, innovation, training and success strategies. Everything Disney touched seems magical, but it isn’t. It’s method. And Lenn saw that method up close. He spent 25 years at Walt Disney World as an Epcot operations trainer, Disney MGM Studios stage manager, Animal Kingdom opening crew and was part of Disney Institute, Disney Universe, and Walt Disney Entertainment Management.

Sarah Cirone:

Now he shares his methodologies that would help you make your own magic. It’s an honor to have you speaking with us today Lenn.

Lenn Millbower:

Well thank you, thank you very much and thank you very much, I’m … so let’s talk about Caring for Castomers. Sarah, can you hear me now? Apparently the mic had gotten muted.

Sarah Cirone:

Yes, we can hear you now, Lenn.

Lenn Millbower:

Perfect, sorry about that folks, it’s technology. You never know what’s going to happen. We’re going to talk about caring for cast members and what Walt Disney eventually came to as a system for taking care of people so they can take care of the guests. There’s this famous story about Walt and it’s, I use it in my book as well as … him walking the halls at the studio. Now candidly this picture is not at the studio, this is of Disney University, the training arm at Walt Disney world. But he walked the hallways, he found the janitor and he asked the janitor what color the wall should be.

Lenn Millbower:

And now think about Walt Disney has thousands of colorers for the animated films and here he is asking the janitor. And when the janitor said well why would you want my opinion? Walt said you’re the one that sees this every day so you would know better than anyone else what color it should be. And that attitude continues to this day.

Lenn Millbower:

Now this is something that just recently happened. The guy in the picture is named Josh D’Amaro. He was the vice president of Disneyland and much loved out there. I’ve never met him but I know the reviews on him were good. And he just moved to Walt Disney World and he told the Orlando Business Journal this quote I’m about to read to you. And I should explain that he decided rather than spending a lot money on another new attraction here’s what he said he was going to do.

Lenn Millbower:

We could spend billions of dollars on a new Land or attraction, but you need to be putting that money back into the common areas or the break rooms to make sure that they are equipped so you feel good. To me it’s a sign of respect to make people feel good about their surroundings. Not only do you have to be in the right state of mind to do the job our cast members do but you have to feel good physically too. So in the end it’s tied to you feeling better so you can do better on stage and better out in the community and bring that home to your family.

Lenn Millbower:

So this whole system of the cast experience is important. And that’s why he’s spending a million dollars upgrading backstage facilities. It is a attitude that you would see around the Disney properties in spades if you knew how to look for it. Now just as a placeholder, when we talk about the Disney properties, my experience was at Walt Disney World and there are four theme parts there.

Lenn Millbower:

Magic Kingdom’s upper left, Epcot’s upper right. Hollywood Studios lower left, and Animal Kingdoms lower right. And there is construction galore going on. New things being built at Epcot, Epcot’s being completely re imagined. And of course the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge just opened at Hollywood Studios. But it’s a very dynamic place and the team members that work there, cast members they’re called are a vital part of this.

Lenn Millbower:

Now what I’d like to ask you is what have you observed about the performance of Disney cast members? And how this is going to work is put your observations if you have any in chat and Sarah’s going to read some of those out and we’ll use those as a jump off point for the rest of our conversation. So what have you observed, if you’ve been there, about the performance of Disney cast members?

Sarah Cirone:

So we have a response coming in from Michelle saying friendly and helpful. Ron says they never stop playing the role. Stephanie says they’re never tired and always smiling. Oh yeah we have a lot of friendly coming in, people being happy. Helpful and upbeat. They’re always on, they’re neat, dress and courteous always.

Lenn Millbower:

Interesting. So how does that happen? Is that an accident? I would suggest to you it’s not. And let me take you through how I think that happens. And just for my bonafides, I’m … these are pictures of me. Upper left I’m a whole lot more hair and a lot less middle at the Land Boat ride in the 1980’s. And the various positions I held. Probably the most interesting thing that’s appropriate for us today is over in the far right, you see me holding a statue. That’s a Partners in Excellence Statue, that’s a lifetime achievement award that they would give out to exemplary team members.

Lenn Millbower:

So I’ve seen this up close and I have to qualify this by saying that this is not a Disney sponsored presentation. I’m not affiliated, endorsed by or authorized by them to talk. It’s just my observations based on all my years of experience. So having gotten the legal junk out of the way. Let’s dive into this. My Care Like a Mouse book suggests that success comes from an emotive message delivered with caring interaction in a flawless context.

Lenn Millbower:

And today what we’re going to focus on is interaction. Now you might think that interaction is between cast and guests but it’s actually between leader and cast and cast and guests. So I want to give you some examples of how the mouse cares for cast members.

Lenn Millbower:

The Walt Disney we remember is not the Walt Disney that started his journey. He didn’t go to business school, he didn’t know anything about an org chart. He certainly wouldn’t have drawn up the mission and vision statement while locked in a conference room with a bunch of suits figuring things out. He was just one guy with lots of creative vision. And this statue is at California Adventurer and this is a very young Walt coming to Hollywood with no money in his pocket.

Lenn Millbower:

Well he went through three leadership stages. Now when he first got to Hollywood there was no money. He was producing these [inaudible 00:08:03] shorts but the income was sporadic. Mickey Mouse hadn’t happened yet. It would soon happen but even then, he didn’t have much of a company and he didn’t have any way to pay people.

Lenn Millbower:

So what he did instead was he inspired. He inspired them, thinking that they were creating a new art form. This animation done better than anyone else. He was everybody’s pal. It’s very communal, we’re not in this for the money. We’re in this to build this art. And that worked. Until the money started coming in. Once Snow White hit, it became problematic.

Lenn Millbower:

But Walt needed these people, you see? Because he didn’t actually draw his characters. Now he was an okay artist, he’s certainly better than I could ever be. But he’s not the one who did the refinements that made Mickey Mouse looked right. He didn’t write his scripts although he knew how to fix a script. He didn’t compose the music, he didn’t direct the movies, he didn’t create the special effects, design the toys, build the rides. He couldn’t even read the first blueprint for Disneyland.

Lenn Millbower:

So he needed other people to bring his creativity to life. What he did was he stayed real. That’s why everybody at Disney call each other by first name because he didn’t want any suits, any pompousness at all. He dressed down. There’s an old TV show called Colombo and he was reported to have dressed like Colombo with a rumpled jacket. He shunned froufrou. There’s a story of him going to France and pulling out cans of chili and asking the maitre d’ in the fancy French restaurant to heat up his cans of chili.

Lenn Millbower:

He knew that he needed others so he hired experts and he inspired them and he kept pushing them to do more than they ever thought was possible. And he rewarded results. So, it worked. Until the money started coming in. When Snow White hit, it was a big big bonanza in dollars and then an interesting thing started happening. Animators started comparing who had the better chair or who had the larger drawing board, who got an extra day off.

Lenn Millbower:

And a lot of complaints started happening. And coupled with this we were coming up on World War II and the US Military basically invaded the studio and took it over so Disney was creating military shorts and it was just not a very happy time at the studio and Walt became surly, argumentative. Well, if you look at the structure chart you can see that the red here is basically Walt. Everything goes through Walt.

Lenn Millbower:

You see he’s at the top and that red circle, everything goes to that and they have to meet with Walt before they make any decision. And he was making himself crazy. Here’s a couple of quotes from that time period. “I tear the hell out of them, I pound, pound, pound.” “Every once in a while, I fire someone. And then I hire them back. That way they don’t get too complacent.” Does that sound like the Walt Disney we remember? But he was in a very bad place then.

Lenn Millbower:

And it led to bad things. It led to a studio strike, his health was practically ruined, he was close to a nervous breakdown. And ultimately Walt then walked away from the studio. Now his name’s on it so he was still involved when he needed to be. But he became more of a guide. He started tinkering with trains and that ended up with the development of Disneyland. But he would go back to the studio as they needed him to chart the course to tell people the grand vision and to help them fix problems they had.

Lenn Millbower:

So those are the three stages of Walt. The pal, the boss and the guide. And it wasn’t until the guide that Disney enterprises took off. So then that’s the Walt we remember, the kindly uncle with the twinkle in his eye. Now he always had the twinkle in his eye. But the business was not fun earlier than that. Here is him being the guide. “I think the part I’ve played is coordinating and encouraging. It’s like conducting an orchestra. They’re all talented but they need to be pulled together.”

Lenn Millbower:

Okay. That lead to in the 90’s from Judson Green who was the leader at Walt Disney World at the time. That led to him embracing a formula to bring about this guide mentality and leaders. Now the formula consists of four components. Business results, great leaders, satisfied guests and valued cast members. I’ve put them in alphabetical order here. And I’d like to do is challenge you, you have a drop down menu with four different version of this. So what do you think the right order of these four things? Guest, business, cast, leaders. Business, leaders, guests … I’ll give you a couple of minutes. What do you think is the right order?

Sarah Cirone:

So I’ll just give people a couple of minutes here to submit their answers.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, I can see it, cast plus leaders plus business equals satisfied guests is a … it’s far and away the winner here, isn’t it? Well let me share the real result with you. Here’s the formula. A great leader delivers a quality cast member experience. Valued cast members serve and satisfy guests. Satisfied guests come back, spend more money and as a result become loyal. So the fourth one is actually the correct one. And this is the formula that Disney follows.

Lenn Millbower:

So it all has to start with a great leader. So what’s a great leader do? Well in Disney terms, friendly but not the pal. Bossy only when necessary. And is the guide and shares the vision of the results wanted and then gets out of the way. Now, what do cast members actually want? And I call them castomers and the reason I call them that is because they’re customers too. They don’t have to work there, they choose to work there. So what do they want? Well they want four things.

Lenn Millbower:

They want teach me, engage me, appreciate me, manage me. And we’re going to talk about those four things in order, starting with teach, which incidentally spells team, kind of fun. Walt was obsessed with the idea in life that you continually go to school. You never reach any plateau of final perfection. And he practiced that with everything he did. That was his brother Roy.

Lenn Millbower:

I’ll tell you how much he practiced that with everything he did. Imagine the CEO doing what I’m about to explain to you. He would drive his animators to an animation school after work hours and then pick them up and then take them home. Can you imagine anyone doing that now? I mean Walt was that dedicated to it. And no matter how hotshot of an animator you were, if you were hired from the New York City animator pool, you still had to start at the bottom at Disney and you got nonstop training so you knew how to do it the Walt way.

Lenn Millbower:

He was so fanatical on training that his money helped found the California Institute of the Arts because there was no place for these guys to get training so he had to create it. And it still exists to this day. This is the Disney University. The front of the U right outside of the Walt Disney World.

Lenn Millbower:

So one of the things that they teach is four priorities. They are courtesy, efficiency, safety and show. And I’ll explain how those work in a minute but I’d like to ask you something and Sarah I believe this is another poll. Now think about those four words and which … we can assume that every organization focuses on safety. But which of these three, courtesy, efficiency and show gets the most focus within your organization?

Sarah Cirone:

Okay, we’ll just give people a couple of minutes here to submit their answers before we wrap up the poll.

Lenn Millbower:

I feel like after the primary here, watching the results.

Sarah Cirone:

There we go.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah. And you know, your results aren’t surprising. Efficiency always seems to be at the forefront of every organization. But the interesting thing is it is the last on Disney’s menu. So this is them, those four priorities in ranked order. Safety comes first, courtesy next, show next, and efficiency last.

Lenn Millbower:

In my work with organizations and I’ve worked with hospitals and with groceries and with utilities and much to my surprise nobody gets show, everybody gets efficiency. Now the easiest thing to do is talk about grocery. They would, if somebody came into the store looking for something they’d say can I help you find something? Which they thought was being courteous but what they were really doing was being as efficient as possible so that they could get back to their stocking the shelves.

Lenn Millbower:

But this is the order Disney uses [inaudible 00:18:39] and this lovely lady on the screen, let’s say she’s talking to guests. She’s pen trading, she’s got these pens there. And she sees behind her somebody has spilled water on that ramp. She thinks in her mind is this a safety concern, a courtesy concern, a show concern or an efficiency concern. Well it’s a show concern because there’s water on the ground. It’s a courtesy concern because she has to interrupt her talk with the guests. But safety is the first priority. So she says to her guests, excuse me let me get this taken care of.

Lenn Millbower:

She does whatever she has to do to take care of it and then she comes back and resumes courtesy. In the process she’s cleaning show. And it’s not so efficient but it’s more efficient than if somebody tripped and fell. So let’s turn this around a little bit. She sees a napkin or two on the walkway and she’s talking to the guests. Well that’s definitely a show issue, but if she interrupts the conversation with the guest, it’s a courtesy issue. And people don’t usually trip over napkins so it’s probably not a safety issue. So she will finish the conversation with the guest, then she will go over and pick up the napkins.

Lenn Millbower:

And that’s how this works. And the way Disney defines it is efficiency is the result of safety, courtesy and show working together. Now let’s talk about show for one minute. Show is how do your surroundings look with the idea that your surroundings send a message about you. And if your surroundings don’t support what the message you’re trying to send, then they undercut the entire experience. So her job is to pick up those napkins, but not at the expense of courtesy or the expense of safety.

Lenn Millbower:

And Disney spends a lot of time teaching these priorities. So another thing they do that’s really interesting to help the new cast members is, this is Samantha and you notice she has a ribbon that says earning my ears. That ribbon tells the guests that she’s in training and Joe is standing by her side to make sure that she is living by safety, courtesy, show and efficiency.

Lenn Millbower:

So what about you? What are some best teach practices you use in your organization? Now obviously we don’t have time for huge paragraphs of stuff but if you could in a couple of words tell us some of the best teach practices you use, we would be interested in hearing those.

Sarah Cirone:

So just type your responses into the question area on your GoTo Webinar control panel. And we’ll give people a couple of minutes here to submit their response. Oh, we have clear, proactive expectations.

Lenn Millbower:

Important.

Sarah Cirone:

Tracy says mentoring. Michelle’s saying revisit the material, not the review. We have be a role model.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, very important.

Sarah Cirone:

Allow people to fail/make mistakes.

Lenn Millbower:

Important and not done enough.

Sarah Cirone:

And lead by example is another one we have in here.

Lenn Millbower:

Those are all great examples.

Sarah Cirone:

Yeah they’re all great. We have a ton flowing in, a couple more that we have are explaining the why, and one on one, a training manual.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, the thing that always kills me is when you try to share a vision, a mission statement with a new hire and their eyes just glaze over. Because they’re so high level. Disney’s vision, mission if you want to call that can be described in three words. We create happiness. One of the reasons those cast members are so happy is they know that happiness is their most important job. Happiness is their purpose and like the custodian who is sweeping, he’s making people happy by cleaning the streets. So its not just about cleaning the streets, it’s about making people happy.

Lenn Millbower:

So here’s some thoughts about teach, what you can do. Invest in training, it actually pays for itself in productivity and innovation. Unify training throughout the organization if one area is being taught this way and another that way who knows what … in fact in one point in time early on at world, every park trained their own character performers. Now that’s madness, you’re training Mickey different ways in different parks? I don’t understand that.

Lenn Millbower:

Luckily they don’t do that anymore. Set clear design parameters and train, coach and champion them. You said that in your poll. And let your customers know your training is still learning. So that’s teach. Let’s talk about engage me. I think you’ll find that some of the things that you said as a result of teach will pop up as we’re talking about these next three components. Now, it’s guesstimated that the average guest has encounters with 20 or more cast members per day. It’s also guesstimated that there’s about 70,000 cast members working at Walt Disney world.

Lenn Millbower:

If you extrapolate those numbers that means there’s over a million, almost a million and a half possibilities for an interaction on any given day and any one of those interactions that goes bad can ruin the guest experience. Then when you think that there’s 44 square miles and four parks and 20 something hotels, how can management do it all? And the answer is they can’t. CEO Bob Iger said Disney has grown too large to be grown from the top. And that’s absolutely true.

Lenn Millbower:

The Castomers actually have to run it with proper guidance, with a guide, not a pal and not a boss. So there’s a number of ways Disney pulls the Castomers in to make them a part of the process. This is a rare thing to catch. I actually happened to catch this one morning waiting to get into Epcot. This is the front entrance crew and the guest relations crew and they’re all gathered around it’s 8:25 in the morning and they’re about to open the park. And the leader there, I’m not sure who the leaders are but I believe it’s the guy in the beard and the shorter woman next to him are sharing with the team the things that are happening that day.

Lenn Millbower:

What the weather’s going to be, if there’s any special guests in the park and any rides that aren’t functioning, anything you need to look out for, any special ticket pricing issues. Possibly what the attendance is and most importantly, who’s celebrating an anniversary, a birthday and what guest compliment they received the day before. And those compliments are read and yes even guest complaints are read as well. But they do this, they call it a track talk. And they do this every morning before they open. It’s just rare to see it because usually it’s at a ride track, which is why it’s called a track talk.

Lenn Millbower:

So leaders at the Mouse are always sharing information. They’re also involving employees in decisions that they can’t possibly make themselves. Here’s an example. At the Magic Kingdom, the parade has become so popular, the afternoon parade that people queue up and sit down on the curbs an hour or two before the parade even starts. So you have all these people sitting there and it’s hot and it gets tent the kids are cranky and management felt correctly that they needed some way to entertain these guests so that the time went by before the parade started.

Lenn Millbower:

Well, hiring a lot of equity actors would do it, but it’s a rather long parade route. So what they did instead was they asked the cast members what can you do to entertain our guests? And now if you attend a parade at the Magic Kingdom you’ll see hula hoops and hopscotch and chalk drawings and beach balls being tossed around and you might even see this guy. He’s a train conductor and he’s doing Simon Says with the guests. This is all cast members doing it, with leaders saying okay. But the leaders didn’t say to him you’re going to go out there and do Simon Says. He came up with that.

Lenn Millbower:

Now here’s another example. The Whispering Canyon restaurant at the Wilderness Lodge. Now the joke is there’s nothing quiet about it. They hoot and holler, the plot of this place, the show is that these are … this is a Western Town with some slightly wacky citizens who do not like ketchup. And the reason they don’t like ketchup is because they’re primarily a barbecue place and getting ketchup ruins the barbecue.

Lenn Millbower:

So the cast members, not the leaders, the cast members came up with this idea, any time you ask for ketchup they bring you every bottle they’ve got. And then this little girl here is laughing because somebody at the other side of the restaurant called out ketchup, who’s got the ketchup? And now she has to stand up and carry all these ketchup bottles over to that next table. And so it goes all through the mealtime.

Lenn Millbower:

But imagine leaders telling employees they would do this? It wouldn’t work. The employees came up with it. Then there are those tough decisions. There was a period in time where when I was hired on you would get to go home early on Christmas Eve so that you could spend time with our families. Well when Michael Eisner and Frank Wells came in and looked around, they realized that what they were doing was leaving a whole bunch of tourists frustrated and unhappy on Christmas Eve. So, they had some … they had the leaders at World do some sessions with cast members and asked for opinions on what should be done. And ultimately those committees came back and said you know, we just need to stay open later.

Lenn Millbower:

And then they made the announcement to the cast and they made this plenty in advance of the Christmas season that effective this year, we will be open late for Christmas Eve. And it was amazing, very few people complained. We all got that we were trying to make our guests happy and we were involved in the decision and it was the right decision.

Lenn Millbower:

Then there’s something called the plussing process. Walt was always looking to better things. And this Fish and Chip cart, maybe some of you have seen this. This is at the United Kingdom at Epcot. This little building wasn’t always here. But a bartender noticed that people would be walking to the hostess stand in the restaurant and saying we’d like some fish and chips. The hostess would say, would ask them do you have a reservation?

Lenn Millbower:

Well no we don’t, we just want some fish and chips. So the hostess would send them into the pub. The bartender would reluctantly take an order and then tell the guest to wait over in the corner with his kids and the guest would say no, you know this is a bar I’m not waiting here with my kids, forget it. And walk away. When the leadership put in place the plussing process, they set it up so that any cast member could come forward and say here’s a problem and then they would following these steps you can see on the screen, they would investigate the problem try solutions. So what they did was they put a clipboard at the hostess stand and a clipboard in the pub and every time somebody asked for fish and chips they documented it with a slash.

Lenn Millbower:

It turned out to be a lot of fish and chips. So then they put up a rolling wagon with a sign saying fish and chips just to see if they would sell any. And they did. So they put up a tent. And the sales got better and better and better and finally for a permanent solution they built this building. The first year this building was in existence it was a 1.3 million dollar business. And people sitting in a conference room trying to manage would never have come up with that.

Lenn Millbower:

It happened because the bartender said we should do this. So that’s how they get their people involved. Here’s one other example. Textile services is where they launder all the laundry. The sheets and the towels for all the hotels. And there was some talk about outsourcing it because it was not efficient. Things were not getting cleaned properly. So instead of just outsourcing, they got the front line team together and said look, we’re in danger of losing our jobs, how can we make this easier? What would you change?

Lenn Millbower:

And they came up with some recommendations. As a result of those recommendations turnover dropped from 85%, 85% to 10%. They had $100,000 a year in savings and the most incredible part was the quotas that each team member was to meet were higher than what management set themselves. And this was all because they asked the Castomers. So how about you? What are some ways you engage your frontline? Why don’t we do that same thing with the text message? How do you engage your front line? What are some best practices?

Sarah Cirone:

Okay we’ll just give people a couple of minutes here. You can type your response into the question area in your GoTo Webinar control panel. Just while we’re waiting for a response Len, Erin said earlier that Epcot specifically World Pavilion is fantastic in terms of cast members. The authenticity of those cast members representing not only the brand but their home country is great, it’s a nice comment.

Lenn Millbower:

Yes [crosstalk 00:34:03] the interesting thing is some of those cast members are now here, they’re not just all exchange students but they still do a good job of representing the countries.

Sarah Cirone:

Yeah that’s amazing. So we have some responses that came in. Rose says having a voice in the team by providing solutions to problems that they identified.

Lenn Millbower:

Yep, good one.

Sarah Cirone:

Katie says we have a customer complaint tracker and make changes to policies based on the number of complaints. That’s a good one.

Lenn Millbower:

Yes it is. If you start to hear the same complaint over and over you have a process issue somewhere.

Sarah Cirone:

Ron says talking to the people doing the actual work, what is standing in their way and what thoughts they have to improve it.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, Ron I’ll give you an example when Disney executives toured Disney Land for the first time they asked where the offices were, and Walt said there’s not going to be any offices. I want you guys out and about with the guests. I want to know what they think.

Sarah Cirone:

We have another response here from Elizabeth, she says give them the power to resolve customer issues.

Lenn Millbower:

Critically important. And that filter, the priorities filter often will allow them to do that.

Sarah Cirone:

And maybe we’ll answer one last one here. Tony says when my consultants ask for a product I always try to work with them.

Lenn Millbower:

Often, it’s just a case of listening, even if you can’t give them what they want. All right, let’s move on to the next one. Here’s some of my tips. Conduct regular, even daily meetings. Encourage team members to identify problems you don’t even know you had. Ask team members to help you find solutions. Develop and apply a defined plussing process. Disney spent a lot of money training people on their plussing process but that money paid them back 10 times over.

Lenn Millbower:

And involve team members in tough decisions that will affect them. Really important instead of having effective immediately memos hanging up on the wall. Okay, let’s talk about appreciate me. Because it’s got to be a happy, if you want these cast members to be happy with guests, they’ve got to be happy too. Now happy doesn’t mean you’re giving them raises because raises don’t really make you happy. They do for a week or two and then you’re complaining that you’re not making enough money. It is more about being valued as a human being.

Lenn Millbower:

So there’s a few ways Disney does this. This is not from me, this, Kristen R. Was so enamored with these cards she got that she posted these in her blog online. Disneylittlethings.blogspot.com. Now this is Disney’s guest service fanatic card. And the way this works is anyone, anyone at any level in the organization can give anyone else one of these cards. You can give it to your boss, you can give it to each other. Now if you give it to each other you notice the leader’s signature has to be on this thing.

Lenn Millbower:

But the point is most recognition is paternal. You have done well grasshopper, here’s the reward. This isn’t that. This is your peers recognizing you and this process is solely governed by a team of cast members and leaders working together governing the recognition. And then how it works is the top piece is torn off and put in a drawing and once a month they a have a drawing, you win a movie ticket or movie tickets and a dinner or something.

Lenn Millbower:

But the truth is most people just hang on to them because they’re so meaningful as this Kristen did. And then I mentioned earlier my Partners in Excellence award. They now have an award called Disney Legacy but it’s the same idea. It is rewarding your best people. Now the interesting thing though is you can’t nominate yourself. Like with the Guest Service Fanatic, you can’t give yourself one. It has to come from somebody else and there is very stringent standards on who can get one of these Partners in Excellence awards. It really has to come from your peers.

Lenn Millbower:

So instead of the leader granting, her or his all high and mighty position granting you recognition, the people working with you are the ones that’s saying you are the Disney legacy.

Lenn Millbower:

Another thing they did at least in Futureworld where I worked was they had competitions. It was called the Futureworld 500 and it ran every April and in this picture a thinner me and Ray Carson are holding up the trophy Spaceship Earth won that year. And we were scored based on safety, courtesy, show and efficiency. But this competition happened every year at Easter and it really kept the teams on their toes and it was all in good natured fun.

Lenn Millbower:

Then the other thing Disney does is team experiences. Now granted you can’t do this one but this is my team at Human Resources inside the Mouse. We all got to be in costume and be friends of Pluto or friends of Br’er Fox. I was a friend of the Prince off in the corner. But maybe it’s as simple as taking the team to the movies or taking them out to lunch. Or one time at Disney Institute we baked pancakes for the team. Did that once at the Land theaters too.

Lenn Millbower:

But the point is to have recognition events to thank team members. Every Friday at Walt Disney Entertainment they’d push an ice cream cart through the hall and we’d each get a Mickey bar. No wonder we were smiling.

Lenn Millbower:

So here is something they did recently. It’s an example of the kind of creative things they do. This probably doesn’t look like much but what this black thing with all the signatures on is is a pillar. One of four or five pillars that were soon to be installed inside the new Tron Light Cycle Power Run ride at Magic Kingdom. And the signatures are all the cast members who were let out of their shift long enough to come over here and sign the column.

Lenn Millbower:

Now isn’t that the coolest thing? You’ll know forever more than your name’s inside this ride. When they open new attractions the cast members get to ride first and this is the Smuggler’s Run ride at the new Star Wars Land. And all the cast members got to go before the guests ever got to do it. So it’s taking care of your cast first. It may seem counter productive but your cast is more important than your customers. Because if your cast are mistreated then your customers are going to be mistreated.

Lenn Millbower:

So how about you? What are some best appreciate practices? What are some things you do in your organization to let your front line know that you appreciate their work?

Sarah Cirone:

While people are submitting their responses to that question, Len, Michelle actually asked if cast members also signed something in the Haunted Mansion?

Lenn Millbower:

I don’t know the answer to that. The Haunted Mansion was built a fairly long time ago. I’m sure there are all sorts of cast references in that building but candidly I never worked Magic Kingdom. I got a backstage tour of the Mansion a couple of times but I wouldn’t call myself enough of an expert to know the answer to that.

Sarah Cirone:

So, Ron responded in to your question, he said we have an ovation board where everyone in the company who can see who was observed of doing something great.

Lenn Millbower:

That’s great.

Sarah Cirone:

Jodie says that they submit names for a pat on the back award.

Lenn Millbower:

Okay and then the question would be who decides who gets it and ideally that team should include front line people.

Sarah Cirone:

And Lisette says monthly doughnuts and quarterly team lunch or dinner. That sounds [crosstalk 00:43:00]

Lenn Millbower:

Oh, can I come and visit you?

Sarah Cirone:

Tammy says today, leaders in my program held a Valentine.

Lenn Millbower:

Wow.

Sarah Cirone:

Lisette also said weekly kudos email each week. So that’s cool.

Lenn Millbower:

It’s interesting, you know what to do. It’s sometimes the hard part is getting the organization to go along. Okay, let’s … sorry, go ahead.

Sarah Cirone:

I was going to just say one more here that was interesting from Elizabeth, she says a jeans day, contests with prizes, special food brought in for lunch.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, that’s an interesting point. At the theme parks you had to work on Thanksgiving the leaders would provide a turkey and the things that are more pricey and everybody would bring in a dish and you would have a thanksgiving meal with your teammates all day long. All right, so here’s just some suggestions from me.

Lenn Millbower:

Develop and maintain a real recognition program. Not a top down, but a bottom up. Champion team members who make a difference, celebrate anniversaries and special occasions and create special team events for your employees. And you guys, you already get this so let’s move on.

Lenn Millbower:

The last one, manage me. This looks like a great employee, does he not? I mean look at him, he’s smiling, his name tag’s on, he’s got his ID, he’s got pens to trade, he’s got a Buzz Lightyear mitt that says To Infinity and Beyond every time he folds it. He’s blowing bubbles, that little girl is certainly attracted by it. And this is like 8:32 in the morning, I mean this guy is on his game.

Lenn Millbower:

The thing is he’s not an employee. He’s a leader. He’s demonstrating and you said this earlier today, in some of your chat comments. He’s demonstrating what he wants them to do. Now Disney leaders are scored basically on three areas. Positivity, knowledge, and accountability. Positivity meaning that they are a positive presence because cast members can’t be positive with guests if the leaders aren’t positive with the cast members. They are knowledgeable. They know their areas. As a matter of fact when I was right in the fireworks training, we insisted that the fireworks leaders pass the same test that the technician pass.

Lenn Millbower:

Because that way the technician couldn’t say of the ramps [inaudible 00:45:45] didn’t work and so therefore that’s why … no. The leader knew what was going on after that. And accountability, they are responsible for whatever happens in their area while allowing enough room for frontline people to step up and do the job.

Lenn Millbower:

Now, there’s a famous story about Walt. He’s walking through Tomorrowland with the supervisor of Tomorrowland attractions and Disneyland and he points out that there’s some trash on the ground by the trash can. And the poor supervisor said the absolute wrong thing. He said I’ll call custodial. Well you know what Walt did. He picked it up himself and that supervisor was soon gone. Everybody at Disney picks up trash. I’ve seen Eisner do it. I haven’t seen Iber do it but I haven’t seen Iber walking on stage.

Lenn Millbower:

But literally everybody picks up trash and everybody’s called by their first name. It’s like you set the example you want people to follow. And trash is ingrained. In fact you can tell when somebody works for Disney if you go into the local supermarket and you see somebody who doesn’t work for the supermarket picking up trash. You know they’re a Disney employee. So these two ladies are managers, I would guess merchandise because they’re on the main street at Hollywood Studios and you see they’ve got their grabbers.

Lenn Millbower:

They’re ready to pick up trash. It still goes on to this day because again you can’t expect the cast to care about cleanliness if you don’t. And you can’t expect a magical place if it’s dirty and that leads to unhappy people. Now one of my clients has been Lowes Foods. Many different clients but Lowes foods had this bizarre idea working with Martin Lindstrom who was a branding guru. They decided that any time chicken comes out of the oven, they were going to do the chicken dance.

Lenn Millbower:

So all the employees would stop whatever they’re doing and do the chicken dance. Okay, now imagine hiring somebody and telling them okay, you’re going to do the chicken dance. And how difficult that would be to maintain. Well it’s not in Lowes foods because here’s the leaders of the company all doing the chicken dance at the groundbreaking of a new Lowes foods. And the guy up top, Tim, he is the CEO. So they are bought into this. You can’t ask people to do something you won’t do yourself.

Lenn Millbower:

So some manage suggestions for you. Demonstrate the behaviors you expect. Get involved and help team members with their tasks otherwise you won’t know what their issues are. Guide, mentor, coach and discipline. And unfortunately if those don’t work then you’ve got to terminate somebody because nothing destroys morale as much as somebody who’s not carrying their weight hanging around and seemingly not being addressed about the issue.

Lenn Millbower:

Okay, so those are the four. Now my question for you is, how can you apply what we’ve talked about today? Maybe it’s something you’re already doing that you can reinforce but how can you apply teach, engage, appreciate, and manage? How can you apply that?

Sarah Cirone:

Okay, and again you can just type your answer, your response into the question area in your GoTo Webinar control panel. Oh, and they’re already flowing in. Ron says the guide mentality of empowering your employees. Katie says our plus, constantly conduct peer observations and provide positive reinforcement.

Lenn Millbower:

That’s a good thing. And that takes effort too, congratulations to you.

Sarah Cirone:

Arnold says by using the bottom up approach instead of always coming from the top.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, it’s an upside pyramid. You hear it called servant leadership fairly often. I think that’s a good definition.

Sarah Cirone:

Elizabeth shares give appreciation for specific actions, groom your employees. And we’ll answer one more here. How can you use these when you are the cast member?

Lenn Millbower:

When you are the cast member? Well actually it’s the same thing. You demonstrate by your behavior the behaviors the company wants. And hopefully you’ll lift those people around you up and you may find yourself in management pretty soon if you do that. It’s interesting when we were rewriting the face role training, how to be Snow White, Belle, et cetera. The new girls got a much better training than the old.

Lenn Millbower:

And when we had these discussions about whether the girls who had been trained previously should be put back through it and we decided it wasn’t necessary. That the new girls’ behaviors would push the old girls to a new level of performance. And that’s what happened. So you can be a role model anywhere and the difference is a manager and a leader. A manager handles things. A leader inspires people. You can be the building custodian and be a leader. It isn’t … it doesn’t have to be connected to title.

Sarah Cirone:

Awesome. And one more response here, Len, Erin says well it’s easier said than done. Come to work with personal issues left at home. I’ve never had an issue with a Disney cast member sulking about something, put on your best face and be positive.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, it is hard and I must confess when at the start of this presentation you were talking about they’re always happy, I’m thinking to myself well I know some days that there were some that weren’t so happy. It’s difficult. And it will always be difficult and there will always be one or two that are dragging things down and all you can do is, it’s the old saying about smother somebody with kindness.

Lenn Millbower:

All you can do is smother them with whatever you’re trying to accomplish. In Disney’s case it’s happiness, so that their bad example doesn’t shine so bright. But yes, it’s a challenge. It’s a continual challenge, it will always be a challenge and it has been for Disney and it is for every company.

Lenn Millbower:

Now, this picture here shows Roy Disney. He’s the little guy in the sweater in the center. Looking down at the muck that would become Walt Disney World. You’ve got to be thinking he’s thinking what the heck did I get myself up into here? Because see what happened was Walt Disney was his younger brother. And Roy Disney was getting ready to go into retirement when Walt Disney died. Now Walt never saw Walt Disney World. Roy had to come out of retirement and finish it.

Lenn Millbower:

As Walt once said the way to get started is to quit talking and start doing. Imagine what would have happened if Roy just sat in his rocker reminiscing about how wonderful it would have been if that place got built. Well he didn’t do that. He got up out of the rocker, he quit talking, he started doing and the result was Walt Disney World.

Lenn Millbower:

And three months later Roy was dead so you can literally argue that he gave his life for his brother’s dream. So maybe that’s my cue also to quit talking so you can start doing but the question becomes, so what can you start doing? Well, I would encourage you to visit the parks and don’t just do it as a tourist. Look around. If you look closely you’ll see managers standing with their team members, fully engaged.

Lenn Millbower:

Look for things that don’t work too. Look and see how long it takes a piece of trash to get picked up. I have a newsletter that it’s called Mickey Snaps and it comes out every other week and it’s a photo and I talk about what’s going on in the photo and it’s information like what you’ve seen today and you can get that at CareLikeaMouse.com.

Lenn Millbower:

I would also love to talk to you and I would encourage you to share this information with your team and come back to HRD-Q often for more learning. Sarah, before I … no I’ll close and then you’ve got a thing after that. So if you do those things, then hopefully I’ll in the mortal worlds of a very famous mouse, I will see you real soon!

Sarah Cirone:

Wow, Len, thank you. That was great. I just wanted to thank you all today as well, we appreciate you looking to HRD-Q for your training needs. We publish research based experiential learning products that you can deliver in your organization. Check out our online or print sub assessments, our up out of your seat games, our reproducible workshops that you can customize and more either at our website or give our customer service team a call. And if you need help learning a training program or you’d like one of our expert trainers to deliver it for you, we also provide those services.

Sarah Cirone:

We look forward to being your soft skills training resource and we actually have some time now Len for some questions so if you’d like to submit your questions into the question box in your GoTo Webinar control panel we can answer those for you. Give everybody a minute here to type in their question. While we’re waiting for a question one, Cindy actually says she’ll be at Disney World again next month, she can’t wait for it.

Lenn Millbower:

That’s great. Make sure you get to Hollywood Studios very very early in the morning, like 6:00 or so if you have any hope of riding Rise of the Resistance. Otherwise your best recourse would be to just not bother with it this time.

Sarah Cirone:

Aaron is asking, he wants to know if there were any hidden Mickeys in the presentation because he noticed the keys.

Lenn Millbower:

That’s the only hidden Mickey. I don’t want to step on Disney prerogative too much but that’s an excellent question. For those of you, just in case you don’t know what Aaron’s talking about, there are hidden Mickeys all over Walt Disney world and it’s his head and the two circles and if you just look close they’re everywhere.

Sarah Cirone:

Stephanie would like to know if you have any suggestions for showing appreciation for a small team without showing favor. For example if one team member consistently outperforms the other?

Lenn Millbower:

Well, if you’ve got a high performer you need to reward them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do things with the whole team. So I think you have to do a bridge of both and perhaps you also need to look for something that you can reward the others on as well.

Sarah Cirone:

We have another question coming in here from Tom and he wants to know what training issues does Disney face?

Lenn Millbower:

What training issues does Disney see?

Sarah Cirone:

Disney face?

Lenn Millbower:

The same issues you face. One of the biggest issues that I think is … I don’t know how it’s going to be solved over time, but it used to be really easy to train people because they all remembered Walt. And so, you were starting at a common place. Well Walt’s passed away in 66 and so that unifying factor isn’t there anymore. Another issue is and this is something I’ve always talked about and I know others have as well. There’s so much training is front loaded, it’s like trying to swallow a Big Mac in one bite.

Lenn Millbower:

So I would say one of the biggest issues is how do you spread training out? If you were to talk to some of the leaders an issue they would say is that it takes so long for people to get through training because Disney is very particular about its training that they need somebody now, they don’t need them in two weeks.

Sarah Cirone:

Great.

Lenn Millbower:

[inaudible 00:59:26]

Sarah Cirone:

All right, Len. It looks like we’re approaching the top of the hour here so that’s all the time we have for today. Thank you so much Len, this was wonderful.

Lenn Millbower:

Yeah, thank you for everyone for being here and your comments. They’re very helpful, they pushed us forward today.

Sarah Cirone:

Yes, thank you all for participating in today’s webinar. Happy training.

Lenn Millbower:

Happy training, see you real soon.