Book Sips #33 — ‘The Ride of a Lifetime’ by Robert Iger
🚀 The new PM Library is live! Join here.
If you have read “Creativity, Inc.” you are going to like this book as well. It’s the story on how ‘Bob’ Iger became CEO of one of the biggest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world. He shares his journey from starting as a weatherman in Ithaca to climbing the career ladder all the way up to the top of the Disney company.
It’s a great autobiography that offers good insight into the board meetings and struggles of a top-level executive. During his time, the company has built a theme park, a digital streaming platform and acquired Marvel, Lucasfilm, and my personal favourite Pixar. If you have read the books about Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull (CEO Pixar) you get the third angle on the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006.
There are countless lessons in this book, and it’s an excellent resource on leadership and problem-solving.
A sip:
‘Tom and Dan were the perfect bosses in this regard. They would talk about valuing ability more than experience, and they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them. It wasn’t that experience wasn’t important, but they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.’
The Ride of a Lifetime
Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
by Robert Iger
Why read?
This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, 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.
272 pages, Random House, 2019
Get this book here on Amazon!
