I enjoy studying the stories of “great men”. If you approach a biography of one of history’s great minds with the right filter, you can pick up some good data on what it takes to be great — just look out for the tendency of writers to get things wrong and get rid of the idea that they’re demi-gods that operate in isolation.
I recently finished a biography on Walt Disney (Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination). So what made Walt become the name of one of the greatest brands in the world?
He was willing to put up with a lot of shit — socialist instigators, animators walking out on him, unions, all the people that would try and screw him, not having any money, and on and on.- An interest in novelty. This is very important. Walt loved novel things. He took a fascination to trains and built a track at his house. He helped push Disney to add sound to cartoons. He liked things that were unusual. He liked new technologies and embraced them.
- He was not afraid to take credit. He took credit for things.
- He insisted on quality. He faced a constant struggle between quality films and budgets. This at times seemed like a fault, and very well may have been, but he did come out on top.
- A belief in and desire for utopia. Walt tried to build a utopian workplace for his company. It is also what later pushed him to make Disney Land.
There’s one other thing. People talk about how “failure is important” and “why you shouldn’t be afraid to fail” — a lot of stuff that isn’t true. So let me present the observation instead of trying to tout some sort of idiotic half truth on failure:
Overall, Walt Disney’s story sounds like a failure.
If you replaced his name with someone else’s, and removed the last 2 chapters of his life, you would think you were listening to a story about the disillusionment of the American dream, not a triumph of American imagination.
-Kevin
11.9.2011
