Common Sense and Conflict: An Interview with Disney's Michael Eisner

Once upon a time, the Walt Disney Company was famous for a quaint little mouse, a collection of vintage animated films for children, and two enjoyable--but aging--theme parks. It was, in other words, a great American company in eclipse. Today, Disney may be going through some tough times, but it's tough times for a vast $23 billion empire. Along with animation blockbusters like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, Disney now owns three motion picture studios, as well as the ABC and ESPN television networks. The company is now poised to build new theme parks in Japan and China to go along with its EuroDisney attractions. Two Disney cruise ships sail the Bahamas. A Disney symphony to mark the millennium opened at the New York Philharmonic last fall. And an integrated network of Web sites--Disney.com, ABC.com, ABCNews.com, Go.com, and Family.com--stretches out over the Internet. The driving force behind all that growth was undoubtedly Michael Eisner, who became chairman and CEO in 1984. In this interview with senior editor Suzy Wetlaufer, Eisner vividly and colorfully describes the challenges he confronted as he built Disney. In a series of revealing anecdotes, he illustrates the workings of a culture that fosters creativity--an environment fraught with both carefully institutionalized conflict and good old-fashioned common sense. Eisner describes in detail the four pillars of his particular brand of leadership, which he maintains are the same in good times and bad: being an example; being there; being a nudge; and being, as he puts it, "an idea generator--all the time, all day, all night."

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