Disney Delivers Again and Again

Dani Gammon joined Experts Exchange three years ago as a representative is the customer service group; she now manages Business Accounts for EE, but still keeps an eye on service. We asked her to provide a report on a recent seminar she and several of her colleagues attended in southern California; she pointed us to her blog and graciously gave us permission to reprint a post here.

As a child I loved anything Disney. From Aladdin to The Lion King I've been infatuated with Disney ever since I could remember. Even now, as a 26-year-old woman I enjoy Disney products because they take me back to a time when there were no bills, no homework (because we always visited Disneyland in the summer), no job, nothing but smiles and giggles all around.

Heck, I still remember the first time I rode Space Mountain. I must have been 7 or 8 and my uncle David who was in college at the time sat next to me. He kept telling me how scary it was but I didn't care, I wanted the thrill and I got it!

Last week, I had the same smiles and laughter I had as a child. A few coworkers and I went to the Grand Californian Hotel to take part in Disney's Institute approach to People Management and Quality Service and I was nothing but thrilled the entire time.

Before, everything I ever said about Disney related to an experience I had with their resorts or their movies even their games and costumes (I'm usually a Disney character for Halloween, everyone at work can attest to that) from a customer's point of view. But, this last week I got to see the other side. The business side, the employee side. And I was blown away once again.

At Disney, they value their employees in more ways than I can even count. Now I know that not EVERY employee is going to be happy with their job but I can tell you that from what I saw, there's a lot of happy people out there in Orange County and that just really made me think about the things that I could bring back to my office.

They usually say that it all started with a mouse but really, it all started with Walt Disney. See, Walt wanted the best for his employees so he felt that by treating them as customers he would always be treating them with respect.

He also knew that happy employees would equal happy customers directly through a philosophy that says that 'the front-line is the bottom-line.' In other words, the product doesn't make the customer happy, people do. So every interaction is an opportunity to make a customer's experience "magical" at Disney.

Now as an adult, I had to think back and really think hard of a time when Disney let me down... but I can't really think of any. I know there's a few movies that I didn't like or maybe a toy I didn't play with; but, I honestly can't remember a time where I wasn't happy with Disney.

Disney Institute's answer to this puzzling question is Disney University. A training program that ALL Disney cast members must go through and graduate in order to serve the public. And, this program doesn't even start at day #1 of work. It starts, the day you go to an interview and watch the Disney Culture video.

This video clearly states Disney's mission to make every interaction magical and the ways YOU as a cast member can make this happen for the public. It also states that every detail counts and Disney is all about the details.

The real reason behind this video is that they really focus on hiring people who want to work for a company that is all about the customer. If the employee isn't right, then they'll find out by viewing the video or going through the interview process. If it's not for you, they don't really want you there and hey, I think that's brilliant!

I mean, why hire people for the sake of hiring. Because they have the skills to do that job? So what! There's plenty of people that have the same skills... what we all need is the right attitude to fit with your company's culture and objectives.

That's the real reason for hiring someone. For me, I'm very serious about my job because I truly love what I do and I can't imagine doing anything else. That's why I can't have anyone that doesn't love what they do work under me. But thankfully, I have a great batch of co-workers to work with.

And I guess that the biggest take a way I got from those few days at the Disney Institute. If you hire the right people and train them from the very beginning with clear objectives and an open heart, the bottom line will show and your business will always see the benefits even in this harsh economy.

Rattling a Few Cages

An editor by trade, a writer by avocation and an Expert by some cosmic practical joke, ericpete puts together the newsletter for Experts Exchange.

About thirty years ago, give or take, a friend of ours bought a little men's clothing store in a little city in rural California. We wondered why a woman whose roots ran deep in the Mother Lode, whose husband had a great job and his own family's legacy (and land) in the area, with two kids and a home that was paid for would want to take on such a venture.

She told us that since her children were in school, she had taken a part-time job, and had watched from across the street as maybe two customers a day went into the store. When she went shopping for her spouse and son, she found almost nothing they would wear in the store, and when her neighbor -- the father of her son's best friend -- decided to put the place up for sale, she thought she could do better. "He had c**p," she said, "so nobody would shop there. No wonder he wanted to sell. He was losing his shirt." She wasn't one to think about the pun.

She bought the store for almost nothing; she paid for the inventory at cost minus what it would cost to return, and she told her neighbor that there was no "blue sky" -- the term used for the intangible assets, such as good will, that might be used to set the value of an enterprise (anyone in the tech industry knows there is a lot of blue sky out there). Her first order of business was a clearance sale to get rid of most of the inventory and replace it with the merchandise people were going elsewhere to buy: Levi's jeans, shirts designed more recently than the Eisenhower administration, athletic socks and sweatshirts. She kept the location, the name, and most of the furnishings, but that was it.

Her plan was to keep the business long enough to put her children through college -- ten years at a minimum, and fifteen at the most; after about that much time, she said she would put it up for sale for sixty days and if it didn't sell on her terms, she would simply close it when the lease was up. During the time, unlike her predecessor, the inventory changed as styles and demand changed; she added sport coats, tux rentals, different kinds of shirts -- but stuck to her vision: she had a plan, and she made it work, even as she had to adjust to changing circumstances. She wasn't held back by "what used to work" or someone else's idea of what her store should be.

What reminded us of Bob's Clothing was blog post written about a year ago by Ben Horowitz, the founder with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital company that invests in technology startups. Mr Horowitz's post was largely an explanation of why his company invests in firms but doesn't insist on installing its own CEOs; the gist of the article is that by keeping the founders of companies, Horowitz and Andreessen feel the companies they invest in are more likely, in the long run, to be more successful.

There's a caveat to what the company is saying, of course: the companies that Andreessen Horovitz invests in are not the same kinds of companies that your great-aunt Suzie invests in, nor are they the companies you're likely to put your 401(k) into (unless you happen to be the founder and you want to attact the attention of Horovitz Andreessen, of course). Having made a pile of money by starting tech companies they later sold for billions of dollars, they now invest their money in companies that can later be sold (via IPOs or whatever) for billions. The money they put out is a bet (albeit a reasonably well-educated bet); they've put $900 million into GroupOn, and they could easily lose a lot of it if GroupOn keeps shooting itself in the foot or if someone else builds a better mousetrap. There's nothing wrong with that; it's their money to bet.

The reasons, Mr Horovitz said, that their company looks to keep founders are threefold:

• Comprehensive knowledge: The founder of a company is more likely to be intimately involved in everything about the company. He knows why everyone who works there does so. He knows everything about his product or service, including its raison d'etre. He knows who his customer is, and what his customer wants. The company is his baby.
• Moral authority: Because the founder made the original assumptions on which the company was built, it is a lot easier for him to revise those assumptions. Professional CEOs are more likely to want to stay the course, where the founder isn't above trying to shake things up to make his business grow.
• Total commitment to the long term: The difference between tech companies that succeed and those that are spectacular busts is that the commitment to the enterprise. For the founder, it's not just about meeting quarterly goals or making it to the IPO date; it's about being the best at what s/he does. The founder "gets it".

Mr Horovitz listed two exceptions: Google's Eric Schmidt and Cisco's John Morgridge. What is common to both is that they took the time to become, in essence, founders themselves. Instead of trying to take the company in a new direction, they adapted to the culture of the companies they were hired to lead; they took the red pill. Mr Horovitz also noted that some founders just aren't CEO material, but what he also said is that being a CEO requires skills; being a founder requires vision. Skills are something that can be learned (though nobody said it was easy), but knowing what the company is supposed to be accomplishing goes far beyond mere experience and an MBA.

Mr Schmidt's inclusion turns out to be more than interesting because of Google's recent campaign to improve search results. As our colleague Jenn Prentice noted in a blog post recently, Google's changes appear to have as much to do with the emergence of Blekko, which is building its base on giving "better" results than Google. Google's acquisition of ITA, the flight search software maker, is almost certainly a response to Microsoft's marketing of its search system as "Bing and Decide." The new plus one button is a sign that merely organizing the world's information might not be enough; the anonymous crowdsourcing that has propelled Google for 13 years might not have the staying power of people telling their friends (and Facebook's analytical systems) what they like. The company's stock price and earnings projections can charitably be described as "flat".

If it isn't panic, it sure seems a little bit like desperation, which leads one to wonder why Mr Schmidt decided to step down as the CEO, effective a few weeks ago, in favor of Larry Page, one of the two founders. That begs the question: In Mr Horowitz' terms, which one is the founder? Mr Schmidt took over three years before Google went public, at about the same time it was developing the systems that turned it into a financial juggernaut. He is an engineer whose PhD thesis was on managing distributed software -- certainly something integral to Google -- and it was during his watch that most of Google's revenue-generating products were developed. He is responsible for hiring the management team; because they are his people, there is a natural authority he enjoys with them. There is no question of his commitment to Google; even in stepping down as the CEO, he is still the "executive chairman" of the company.

Mr Page has some challenges ahead, many of which will be mitigated by his continuous involvement in the company; he fits the Horowitz paradigm. Mr Horowitz wrote, "Professional CEOs are effective at maximizing, but not finding, product cycles. Conversely, founding CEOs are excellent at finding, but not maximizing, product cycles. Our experience shows -- and the data supports -- that teaching a founding CEO how to maximize the product cycle is easier than teaching the professional CEO how to find the new product cycle." Indeed, Page may be just the shot in the arm -- or course correction -- Google needs.

Technology, Mr Horowitz wrote, is innovation; it is new ways of doing things. Founders understand that; as he says, it's easy for them to change the rules because they made the rules in the first place. It was Mr Page's new way of looking at the web that is the underpinning of Google; his task is to look at a radically changed landscape and adapt his company to it. He won't be the first.

Mr Horowitz cited everyone's favorite messiah, Steve Jobs. When Jobs came back to Apple, he was the CEO of a little workstation manufacturer that had been acquired by Apple, courtesy of a professional CEO who was trying to compete with Microsoft on Microsoft's turf. Jobs undid pretty much everything that had been done in his absence, and if anything did even more to differentiate his company from everyone else. A year ago, Apple was worth about $211 billion, which put it in fourth place on the list of most valuable American companies just behind Wal-Mart; Microsoft was at $260 billion, "comfortably ahead of Apple". Fast forward eleven months, and Apple is worth $324 billion; Microsoft has dropped to $224 billion.

The difference, Mr Horowitz explained, is that Jobs wasn't willing to settle, and certainly wasn't going to accept that other people's opinons about his company were more valuable than his. He was willing to take risks because he believes. "Let's just say he didn't have the benefit of the doubt," Mr Horowitz wrote. "What he did have: the founder's courage to innovate despite the doubters."

More News and Notes

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer." -- Robert Frost ...but in this case it will be a court of eight persons. The US Supreme Court heard arguments a week or so ago in Microsoft's case against i4i, a Canadian company that convinced a court that Microsoft infringed on its patent and was awarded $290 million for its trouble. Microsoft is arguing that the standards for invalidating a patent should be lowered (in this case, because "prior art" existed), and has a host of high tech firms lined up behind it.

The circumstances of the case are somewhat trivial, because the actual decision will not be about whether Microsoft infringed, but on the standard for whether i4i's patent should have been judged as valid by the courts. What is drawing so much attention, though, is that the decision will go a long way toward determining how much protection patents will give to innovation. If the court sides with Microsoft, it will be easier for a company like Microsoft to defend itself against claims of patent infringement; if the court sides with i4i, then it is likely that Microsoft (and Google, Apple, Facebook, Intel, eBay and a host of others) will face more lawsuits they say will inhibit them from coming up with new ways of doing things. Given the state of affars at RIM -- which may well have started with a similar set of circumstances -- virtually every company that has any kind of patent will be watching the case closely -- and chiming in.

Therefore, in the spirit of public service (and to see how the economy is improving -- at least for attorneys), there is a chart that will help you keep track of who is suing whom.

Falling on blind eyes: Sophos.com blogger Graham Cluely posted an open letter for Facebook about privacy and security a week or so ago -- which was nice, but which will also go ignored by Mr Zuckerberg & Company, for a wide variety of reasons:

1. There is no evidence that Facebook has any interest in becoming responsible, as a company, for what its users post. None. Nada. Zip.
2. There is no evidence that Facebook wants to be the policeman for its site. It wants to be the new Internet, and like the ISPs have long argued, they're not responsible for what their customers do. "Servers don't prey on the gullibility of people to get them to download malware that creates monster botnets onto their computers; people do."
3. Don't you get it? People want to share. They want to show up on Google searches; the only time they're interested in privacy is when they're embarrassed by something. It's their own fifteen minutes.
4. Games run too slow on HTTPS. How can someone get that new cow for their farm if they're not quick enough?
5. "All your data are belong to Facebook." That's how they can target advertising to you, and that's how they make money.

Memo to Mr Cluely: If you want Facebook to change, then stop promoting it on your site by having people share your columns through it. Otherwise, accept it for what it is and get used to it -- because unless someone finds handwritten letters from him to the Winklevoss twins crowing about how much he took them for, Facebook isn't going to change its tune.

Why bosses should always make sure passwords get changed: A Wisconsin man is being sued (and probably prosecuted) for wiping out the files of a television show. Speaking of lawsuits, the one filed by a man who says he should own half of Facebook could have some merit. Also on someone's docket is a lawsuit by Apple against Samsung over the Galaxy smartphones and tablets, along with Samsung's countersuit.

"It's cloud's illusions I recall; I really don't know clouds at all." -- Joni Mitchell Our good friend Bob sent us the link to an item that expresses a question we've been wondering around for a while now: just what, for the love of Mike, is "the cloud" anyway? We suppose it doesn't really matter much at this point, because whatever it is, Amazon is selling it -- except when it fails -- and you can now get them for $25 off. Unfortunately, we're not ready to bet the farm on a network we don't control just yet.

Also up in the air: You'll be able to book flights to somewhere and back -- at least until the TSA claims jurisdiction and NASA starts charging baggage fees. Everything will be fine as long as they can find the right airport -- if it's still there.

In requiem: Sidney Lumet, who gave us Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men and Network; Walter Breuning, who could teach us all a thing or three; the long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life To Live; and the Cisco Flip (and 550 jobs).

The sound of crickets: Yahoo has cured the Buzz! nobody ever used; Google Video (not that YouTube thingy -- the other one) is also fading to black.

Then press ANY key: Can someone from the office please contact the British defense ministry about a business account? How about the US Postal Service? Also, new versions of Internet Explorer and Safari 5.

The new Silicon Valley economy: Had it not been a week early, we might have written this one off, but we came across an item about the perfect site for the guys we all know who spend way too much time sitting in front of their computers -- except that it wasn't scheduled to launch until late April (there's a joke about relationship sites in there somewhere, but we'll be nice). The "Powered by" link made us a little curious so we found LaunchRock, which purports to build you a "launching soon" page and collect email addresses of people who sign up to get notified when the your site launches. Besides the obvious "huh?" that any self-respecting web developer is now saying, we'll save you the trouble: in order to use the service (if it exists), you need an "invitation code", which you get by getting three other people to sign up -- using Twitter or Facebook. We played the game; we have no idea what we'll do with a launch page once we're able to build one, but you're welcome to find out. We promise, though: no spam from us.

There are worse things: Jamie Livingston was a film editor who took a Polaroid photo a day from 1979 until the day he died in 1997. Also, William and Kate Pez dispensers, and a very special jelly bean.

Signs of the Apocalypse: A grandmother in Georgia (the country, not the state) single-handedly took down the Internet in her country -- and the next one over. Also, lending a whole new meaning to "creative driving" and a high tech toilet.

Milestones

New Geniuses: Experience and longevity have been served over the past feww weeks, as three of Experts Exchange's longest tenured members have earned their third Genius certificates: objects -- who joined EE in May 2000 and has a Savant certificate in Java -- in Java Server pages; mplungjan, who recently celebrated 13 years at EE, in HTML; and emoreau, who will reach the 13-year-mark himself this summer, in .NET Programming. Also earning Genius ranking were arnold, who recently passed the 14-year mark, in Linux, while kaufmed, the relative rookie of the group (only seven years this month) became the eighth Genius in C# Programming. Congratulations on your certificates, and for supporting EE for all these years!

My First Million: Reaching 1,000,000 points in March were the following: MegaNuk3, DavisMcCarn, phototropic, omgang and hanccocka. Congratulations on your new stripes!

Milestones:

• zorvek has earned 12,000,000 points in his Experts Exchange career.
• byundt has earned 9,000,000 points in the Microsoft Excel topic area.
• mplungjan has earned 9,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange.
• boag2000 has 7,000,000 points overall.
• demazter has earned 5,000,000 points in the Exchange topic area, while RobSampson has earned that many in VB Script.
• dariusg has reached the 5,000,000 point level.
• sdstuber has become the seventh member of EE to have 2,000,000 points in each of three topic areas.