Jim Hill has a post where he comments on Michael Eisner's management methods as Disney CEO in his post What does a Yeti smell like? where he writes
Michael Eisner is a micro-manager. Now, I know that that's not exactly a late breaking story. But I think that it's important to understand how truly obsessive Disney's CEO can be when it comes to getting the details at the company's theme parks just right. Take -- for example -- the Dolphin Resort Hotel. When Eisner wasn't entirely convinced that the giant banana leaves that architect Michael Graves wanted to paint on the sides of this resort would actually look good, Disney's CEO ordered that a huge sample leaf be painted on the backside of Epcot's Mexico pavilion. Just so he could see if this particular design element would look good when it was done to full scale. But Michael's almost-insane attention to detail doesn't just stop at just the outside of Disney's resorts. Oh, no. After all, for years now, Eisner has insisted that -- before he signs off on the construction of any new WDW hotel -- that a sample room from this proposed resort be prepared. One that features all the furnishings that guests will actually be using in this hotel. This sample room used to be located in a backstage area at the Caribbean Beach Resort. I've actually seen photos of this squat square structure back when the Imagineers were testing design elements for the All Star Music Resort. Which is why these pictures feature a giant sample maraca leaning against this tiny brightly painting building. As for the other part of this story ... That Michael reportedly insists on sleeping in each of these sample rooms before he will actually allow construction of the proposed resort to go forward ... That part, I've never been able to prove.
Michael Eisner is a micro-manager. Now, I know that that's not exactly a late breaking story. But I think that it's important to understand how truly obsessive Disney's CEO can be when it comes to getting the details at the company's theme parks just right.
Take -- for example -- the Dolphin Resort Hotel. When Eisner wasn't entirely convinced that the giant banana leaves that architect Michael Graves wanted to paint on the sides of this resort would actually look good, Disney's CEO ordered that a huge sample leaf be painted on the backside of Epcot's Mexico pavilion. Just so he could see if this particular design element would look good when it was done to full scale.
But Michael's almost-insane attention to detail doesn't just stop at just the outside of Disney's resorts. Oh, no. After all, for years now, Eisner has insisted that -- before he signs off on the construction of any new WDW hotel -- that a sample room from this proposed resort be prepared. One that features all the furnishings that guests will actually be using in this hotel.
This sample room used to be located in a backstage area at the Caribbean Beach Resort. I've actually seen photos of this squat square structure back when the Imagineers were testing design elements for the All Star Music Resort. Which is why these pictures feature a giant sample maraca leaning against this tiny brightly painting building.
As for the other part of this story ... That Michael reportedly insists on sleeping in each of these sample rooms before he will actually allow construction of the proposed resort to go forward ... That part, I've never been able to prove.
Although Jim Hill's intention is to paint Michael Eisner in a negative light with these examples I'm not sure I necessarily see them as being bad practices. Personally, I'd love it if I heard that Steve Ballmer (the CEO of the company that employs me) wouldn't allow Microsoft to ship a copy of Microsoft Money until he'd used it to manage his finances with relative success or that no MSN Direct SmartWatches should go out until he'd succesfully used one as his personal timepiece for a month or that no release of Internet Explorer would be shipped until he could browse any site on the Web without fear of his computer being taken over by spyware. Of course, I don't expect this to ever happen even if Steve Ballmer wanted to do this Microsoft ships too many products to introduce such a bottleneck in the product development process.
I do know people who've had VPs take personal interest in their products that have ended up disliking that level of scrutiny. One person even commented "Whenever I see a VP asking some nitpicky questions about one of my features, I wonder to myself why he's trying to micromanage my features instead of trying to figure out how to get our stock price out of the flat funk its been in for the past few years". Different strokes for different folks I guess. :)