Don’t Listen to Naysayers: Lesson from Walt Disney #2
I recently read a biography about Walt Disney and learned two important lessons. Here’s the second one (the first lesson is here):
Make big, contrarian bets to have transformative impact. Follow your conviction, and don’t listen to the naysayers.
This lesson comes from the stories about how Walt Disney created Steamboat Willie, the first animated short with sound; and Snow White, the first ever full-length animated film.
In my blog post “Making Big Bets,” I described a Big Bet as something that is profoundly better, radically different, and intrinsically surprising when compared to what’s currently available.
Disney had a history throughout his life and career of making contrarian Big Bets, stubbornly pursuing his ideas even when others thought he was crazy.
The first example of this happened in 1928, when Disney decided to add sound to his third Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie. The first motion picture with sound, The Jazz Singer, had just debuted in 1927. The prevailing view in the movie industry at the time was that sound in films was a passing fad. Disney thought the opposite. “Sound effects and talking pictures are more than a mere novelty,” Walt told his brother Roy at the time. “They are here to stay… The ones who get in on the ground floor are the ones who will more likely profit by its future development.”
Nobody was willing to finance Disney’s sound experiment. Convinced that sound was the future of motion pictures, Disney sold his car and mortgaged his home to finance Steamboat Willie, which became the first cartoon with sound. Steamboat Willie debuted on Nov. 18, 1928, and quickly became an international sensation. On the back of Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse became an iconic global character and Disney achieved extraordinary success. Cartoons without sound became a thing of the past.
Disney’s next Big Bet was even more ambitious and transformative than adding sound to cartoons. He wanted to produce a full-length animated film.
No one had ever produced a full-length animated movie before. Cartoons were supposed to be short films shown before the main live-action feature film. The overwhelming consensus view in the movie industry at the time was that nobody would ever sit through a full-length cartoon. When word circulated that Disney wanted to make a full-length animated movie, critics called it “Disney’s Folly.” Everyone predicted failure — even Walt’s own wife Lilly and his brother Roy thought it was a bad idea.
Disney didn’t care — he was excited about the possibilities of a full-length animated feature. He chose the fairy tale Snow White for the film because he thought it had all of the elements of a great story — lovable characters, an evil villain, the triumph of good over evil. Despite all of the naysayers, Disney went ahead with creating his full-length animated movie.
In the process, Disney pioneered a number of techniques which set the standard for the animated film industry. He was the first to portray animated characters as real people, with real movements and emotions. He created the multi-plane camera, which added perspective to animated film.
Creating Snow White took 3 years and more than 2 million drawings. When the movie premiered in December 1937, the audience gave it a standing ovation. The movie set box office records: in its first year, Snow White earned $8 million — the first movie ever to do so. Disney earned an honorary Academy Award for the film — the citation read: “For Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field.”
Disney showed time and again that he was willing to make big contrarian bets, despite the naysayers. When he believed in something, he was relentless in his pursuit. And in the process, he was able to have transformative impact. Disney himself sums up his perspective nicely in the pair of quotes below:
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible… If you can dream it, you can do it.”
and:
“When we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right.”
We should all learn from Disney’s great example. We can have transformative impact in our own field if we remember to make big, contrarian bets — and refuse to listen to the critics and naysayers. We need to have the conviction in our ideas and confidence in our ability to do it right.
Footnote: If you want to see how Walt Disney’s legacy is still being felt to this day, check out my post “5 Leadership Lessons from Bob Iger, CEO of Disney.”
