- Bob Iger has served as chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company since 2005.
- Since his appointment, the company's stock has risen 335%, and in November, Disney debuted its new streaming service, Disney Plus.
- He was recently named TIME's Businessperson of the Year for combining creativity, technology, and business planning into an "epic, deal-packed 12 months."
- Here's how Iger's leadership strategies shaped the upward trajectory of the company.
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Bob Iger bet big with the launch of Disney Plus, but his legacy extends well beyond the streaming service and the internet-breaking debut of Baby Yoda.
Since Iger stepped into the chairman and CEO role in 2005, the company's stock has risen 335%. He brought Disney into the 2000s with major acquisitions, like Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009, and 21st Century Fox this year.
TIME likened his tenure to "one long CEO highlight reel," with 2019 as the best year yet — Disney's film division had its highest-grossing year yet in 2019, with the release of films like "Frozen 2" and "Aladdin." Iger's latest endeavor, Disney Plus, debuted on November 12, attracting more than 10 million sign-ups a day after launch.
For his deal-packed efforts in the past 12 months, Iger was named TIME's Businessperson of the Year.
This wasn't always the situation; a $260 billion market cap is not to be assumed. When Iger took the helm nearly 15 years ago, Disney was in a tough spot.
"We had been through a rough five-year period, with a hostile-takeover attempt, a shareholder revolt, and a battle with two prominent board members," Iger told Harvard Business Review in 2011.
His first task, then, was mending the relationships with the board members and allowing for internal peace. Then it was all about balancing the traditional with the modern and carving a place for Disney in modern times.
Iger plans to step down in 2021, and he'll be remembered for more than the quantifiable achievements that benchmark his career. Underneath it all lies a solid leadership strategy, one that allowed Disney to build on the success it experienced in the 20th century to secure a foothold in the 21st.
As Business Insider previously reported, Iger allows his work ethic to propel his career forward. His 4:15 a.m. wake-up time, morning workout in near darkness, and arrival at the office early enough to make coffee for everyone speak volumes about the kind of leader he is: disciplined, focused, and incredibly strategic.
He's had to be. Iger's leadership strategy started taking shape in his teenage years when he worked odd jobs to help support himself; more than 45 years later, his strategy colors the highlights of his professional career.
Personal discipline
With so many examples of how leaders can make disciples out of their employees, Iger stands apart with his discipline. From what he's written in his 2019 book, "The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company," Iger seems to strive for an authentic, rather than a bigger-than-life, presence.
"There's nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don't possess," Iger wrote. "True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else."
Iger has humble beginnings: He started his career as a weatherman before pivoting to more than 20 different positions within the studios of ABC Television, including president of entertainment at ABC, president of ABC Television, and president and chief operating officer of Capital Cities/ABC. He joined Disney's senior management team in 1996, ascending to chairman and CEO as a Disney insider less than 10 years later.
Even though Iger was personally familiar, and steeped, in how Disney had always done things, he wasn't afraid to explore the possibilities that the nearly century-old company hadn't developed.
"You can't allow tradition to get in the way of innovation," Iger told Harvard Business Review. "There's a need to respect the past, but it's a mistake to revere your past."
In that vein, Iger led the acquisitions of creative powerhouses like Pixar to inject an influx of fresh thought. At the same time, he's attempted to maintain the aspects of Disney culture that keep people working there. This encompasses the overall purpose that goes into working at a company with a generations-long influence like Disney.
Iger essentially wanted to preserve the feel of the brand while allowing for innovation within it — and this extends to the product level.
"There's a culture and a way of life at the company that you've bought that sometimes can be integral to the creative process or the process of creating product at that company," Iger told NPR in September. "And if you go about it in too heavy-handed a way, you can destroy spirit and culture and a sense of purpose — and in doing so, destroy the very essence of what you bought, or reduce value."
Iger's principles, the rule of 3, and the role of a CEO
Iger says failure should be kept in perspective as much as success is — and it's the job of a leader to be an optimist regardless of the circumstances.
"When you come to work, you've got to show enthusiasm and spirit," Iger said. "You can't let people see you brought down by the experience of failure. You don't have that luxury."
In Iger's book, he also points to qualities like courage, focus, decisiveness, curiosity, fairness, and thoughtfulness as essential to effective leadership. For example, Iger says every leader should create an environment in which fairness flourishes.
"This doesn't mean that you lower your expectations or convey the message that mistakes don't matter," Iger wrote. "It means that you create an environment where people know you'll hear them out, that you're emotionally consistent and fair-minded, and that they'll be given second chances for honest mistakes."
Part of what got Iger the CEO position was his ability to distill his strategic vision down to three priorities:
- He wanted to invest capital in content from the best minds in the industry. The acquisition of Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel, among others, made this possible.
- He aimed to use technology in new ways. This took the form of Disney Plus.
- He made it a goal to grow Disney's global presence, symbolized with the debut of Disney Shanghai, Disney's first theme park in mainland China.
Iger has fulfilled all of these goals with the help of his optimism, courage, and other effective leadership qualities.
As he stated, it's the CEO who cultivates the strategic vision of an organization.
"It's the CEO who determines strategy, who is its major proponent, and who says, 'This is where we're going,'" Iger said. "You also set the standards that are applied to your company: how people behave, how they treat one another, what ethics are expected of your company and its products, and how it behaves in the world."
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