I’ve been on the road for nearly a month with two great stops in Florida. During my second speaking engagement in the sunshine state, I stayed at Walt Disney’s Grand Floridian, the flagship hotel for Disney World in Orlando. It’s a great place with fantastic service. But what resonates the most from my speaking event wasn’t the wonderful audience and standing ovation or grand hotel, but the backstage tour of the Disney facilities. You see, Walt Disney got safety right!
Vision. Walt Disney had a brilliant and creative mind with a vision for utopia in the Disney facilities. As an animator, he was exceptional about helping his world, objects, and animations come to life – he saw those things in his mind’s eye and was able to clearly share his vision in ways that made them believable, perceptible, and life-like. We need to be able to see, embrace, and communicate a great vision for safety, and the culture for safety, we want to create – in order to make it visible and life-like for others to see. Walt Disney’s vision not only included safety but safety was a deeply held value that remains as a “non-negotiable” part of the Disney culture. Nothing great gets started without a vision or some grand picture of the future, especially in terms of our need to create a “safety utopia.”
Courtesy. Disney also knew that everyone needed to be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone at his facilities was seen as special and needed to be treated that way too. People who work at any of the four world-wide facilities are called upon to go out of their way to make visitors feel special – be it in giving someone directions or helping them with suggestions during a visit. And that “specialness” is meant to not only bring others back for more, but their friends and relatives, too. Courtesy works well when it comes to how you treat others at work and engage them when it comes to safety. Courtesy and respect go hand-in-hand – everyone wants to experience them, but few are willing to first express courtesy and respect from their position, on a consistent basis.
Safety. The Disney facilities make safety come alive – it’s visible and perceptible. Walt Disney believed that every customer needed to feel and remain safe. If they didn’t feel safe their experience of his world would not be satisfactory. He also believed his workers needed to feel safe and remain safe, too. If his workers didn’t feel safe, he knew their performances would be lacking, and in turn would impact the visitors’ experience in a less than acceptable way. Safety remains as one of the pillars of the Disney quality standards – the first of the Disney quality-standards that’s always talked about from the very start. Without great safety as part of the cultural foundation, Walt Disney believed his world would not be all that it should be for his workers and his guests.
“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” Yes, that’s Walt Disney
I believe we can all do a better job in sharing our vision for safety, and we can do better when it comes to engaging people – engaging them in every viable process we create and hope to sustain. How about you?