Book Summary — Ride of a Lifetime
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1 paragraph summary:
Bob Iger’s biography about how he became Disney’s CEO. At first you get an insight into his leadership lessons, but then you stay for his amazing career leading to Disney and acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Fox and Lucasfilms.
In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible not to make them, but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes. What’s not okay is to undermine others by lying about something or covering your own ass firstl
You have to ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can/ There’s nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.
As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have. You can’t let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity.
At its essence, good leadership isn’t about being indispensible, it’s about helping others be prepared to possible step into your shoes — giving them access to your own decision making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them imporve, and, as I’ve had to do, sometimes being honest with them about why they’re not ready for the next step up.
Michael had plenty of valid reasons to be pessimistic, but as a leader you can’t communicate that pessimism to the people around you. It’s ruinous to morale. It saps energy and inspiration. Decisions get made from a protective, defensive posture.
Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation.
The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.
A company’s culture is haped by a lot of things, but this is one of the most important — you have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. In my experience, it’s what separates great managers from the rest. If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be.
You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you just by taking the guesswork out of the day-to-day life. A CEO must provide the company and its senior team with a road map.
This is where we want to be. This is how we’re going to get there. Once those things are laid out simply, so many decisions become easier to make, and the overall anxiety of an entire org is lowered.
Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.
It’s a mindset, more than a specific set of rules. It’s not about perfectionism at all costs. It’s about creating an environment in which people refuse to accept mediocrity. It’s about pushing back agains the urge to say that “good enough” is good enough.
Michael Eisner used to say “Micromanagement is underrated.”
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