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?
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