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THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME LESSONS IN CREATIVE LEADERSHIP FROM THE CEO OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY ROBERT IGER TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA www.penguin.co.uk Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com To Willow: Th is ride would not have been possible without you. First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers Kate, Amanda, Max, and Will: Th ank you for your love and Copyright © Robert Iger 2019 understanding and for all the joy you have given me. Robert Iger has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. To the thousands of Disney cast members and employees past The Ride of a Lifetime is a work of non-fiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed. and present: My pride in you and appreciation of you is boundless. Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBNs 9781787630468 (hb) 9781787630475 (tpb) Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 To Willow: Th is ride would not have been possible without you. Kate, Amanda, Max, and Will: Th ank you for your love and understanding and for all the joy you have given me. To the thousands of Disney cast members and employees past and present: My pride in you and appreciation of you is boundless. CONTENTS Prologue ix PART ONE LEARNING CHAPTER 1: Starting at the Bottom 3 CHAPTER 2: Betting on Talent 23 CHAPTER 3: Know What You Don’t Know (and Trust in What You Do) 36 CHAPTER 4: Enter Disney 50 CHAPTER 5: Second in Line 66 CHAPTER 6: Good Th ings Can Happen 79 CHAPTER 7: It’s About the Future 98 viii CONTENTS PART TWO LEADING CHAPTER 8: Th e Power of Respect 115 CHAPTER 9: Disney- Pixar and a New Path to the Future 127 PROLOGUE CHAPTER 10: Marvel and Massive Risks Th at Make Perfect Sense 151 CHAPTER 11: Star Wars 173 CHAPTER 12: If You Don’t Innovate, You Die 189 CHAPTER 13: No Price on Integrity 203 CHAPTER 14: Core Values 215 N JUNE 2016 I made my fortieth trip to China in eighteen years, Appendix: Lessons to Lead By 225 my eleventh in the past six months. I was there to oversee the 234 I Acknowledgments fi nal preparations before the opening of Shanghai Disneyland. I’d Index 237 been CEO of the Walt Disney Company for eleven years at that point, and my plan was to open Shanghai and then retire. It had been a thrilling run, and the creation of this park was the biggest accomplishment of my career. It felt like the right time to move on, but life doesn’t always go the way you expect it will. Th ings happen that you can’t possibly anticipate. Th e fact that I’m still running the company as I write this is a testament to that. Much more pro- foundly, so are the events of that week in Shanghai. We were opening the park on Th ursday, June 16. Th at Monday, the fi rst wave of VIPs was scheduled to arrive: Disney board mem- bers and key executives and their families, creative partners, inves- tors and Wall Street analysts. Th ere was a huge international media contingent already there and more coming in. I’d been in Shanghai for two weeks and was running on adrenaline. Since my fi rst location- scouting trip to China in 1998, I was the only person who viii CONTENTS PART TWO LEADING CHAPTER 8: Th e Power of Respect 115 CHAPTER 9: Disney- Pixar and a New Path to the Future 127 PROLOGUE CHAPTER 10: Marvel and Massive Risks Th at Make Perfect Sense 151 CHAPTER 11: Star Wars 173 CHAPTER 12: If You Don’t Innovate, You Die 189 CHAPTER 13: No Price on Integrity 203 CHAPTER 14: Core Values 215 N JUNE 2016 I made my fortieth trip to China in eighteen years, Appendix: Lessons to Lead By 225 my eleventh in the past six months. I was there to oversee the 234 I Acknowledgments fi nal preparations before the opening of Shanghai Disneyland. I’d Index 237 been CEO of the Walt Disney Company for eleven years at that point, and my plan was to open Shanghai and then retire. It had been a thrilling run, and the creation of this park was the biggest accomplishment of my career. It felt like the right time to move on, but life doesn’t always go the way you expect it will. Th ings happen that you can’t possibly anticipate. Th e fact that I’m still running the company as I write this is a testament to that. Much more pro- foundly, so are the events of that week in Shanghai. We were opening the park on Th ursday, June 16. Th at Monday, the fi rst wave of VIPs was scheduled to arrive: Disney board mem- bers and key executives and their families, creative partners, inves- tors and Wall Street analysts. Th ere was a huge international media contingent already there and more coming in. I’d been in Shanghai for two weeks and was running on adrenaline. Since my fi rst location- scouting trip to China in 1998, I was the only person who x PROLOGUE PROLOGUE xi had been involved in the project from day one, and I couldn’t wait night. Our head of security, Ron Iden, was with us in Shanghai, to show it to the world. and he immediately began calling his network of security contacts In the sixty- one years since Walt Disney built Disneyland in in the States. It was twelve hours earlier— just before dawn— in Anaheim, California, we’d opened parks in Orlando and Paris and Orlando when we fi rst heard the news. Ron told me he’d have more Tokyo and Hong Kong. Disney World in Orlando remains our information when I got up in the morning. largest, but Shanghai was of a diff erent order than all the others. It My fi rst event the next day was a presentation to investors over was one of the biggest investments in the history of the company. breakfast. Th en I had to record a long interview with Robin Roberts Numbers don’t really do the park justice, but here are a few to give of Good Morning America, which included touring the park and rid- some sense of its scope. Shanghai Disneyland cost about $6 billion ing attractions with Robin and her crew. Th en there was a meeting to build. It is 963 acres, about eleven times the size of Disneyland. with Chinese offi cials about protocol for the opening ceremonies, a At various stages of its construction, as many as fourteen thousand dinner with members of our board and senior executives, and fi - workers lived on the property. We held casting calls in six cities in nally a rehearsal for the opening- night concert that I was hosting. China to discover the thousand singers, dancers, and actors who Ron periodically gave me updates as I moved through the day. perform in our stage and street shows. Over the eighteen years it We knew that more than fi fty people had been killed and nearly took to complete the park, I met with three presidents of China, as many injured, and that the shooter was a man named Omar fi ve mayors of Shanghai, and more party secretaries than I can re- Mateen. Ron’s security team ran Mateen’s name through our data- member (one of whom was arrested for corruption and banished to base and found that he’d visited the Magic Kingdom a couple of northern China in the middle of our negotiations, setting the proj- months before the shooting, then again the weekend before. Th ere ect back nearly two years). was closed- circuit television footage of him on that last visit, pac- We had endless negotiations over land deals and partnership ing outside a park entrance near the House of Blues, in Downtown splits and management roles, and considered things as signifi cant Disney. as the safety and comfort of Chinese workers and as tiny as whether What we learned next shook me in a way few things have over we could cut a ribbon on opening day. Th e creation of the park was the course of my career. It wouldn’t be made public until nearly two an education in geopolitics, and a constant balancing act between years later, during the trial of Mateen’s wife as an accomplice to the the possibilities of global expansion and the perils of cultural impe- murders (she was later acquitted), but federal investigators informed rialism. Th e overwhelming challenge, which I repeated to our team Ron that they believed Disney World had been Mateen’s primary so often it became a mantra for everyone working on the project, target.