Teaming at Disney Animation
What is a silo within a company structure? A silo within a company structure is the internal development of a team focusing on a specific issue or concern of the organization. Typically, silos segregate different types of employees to create a positive workflow. However, silos can often create long-term significant issues for the organization when employees within the silo cooperate inadequately to individuals outside the silo. Silos often split upper-tiered employers from employees working the front-line.
What are the pros and cons to silos? Communication is the largest pro and con to an organizational silo. The silo has opportunity for creating devastating communication barriers within the company. However, an effective silo will do just the opposite, and encourage streamline internal communication ensuring the organization flourishes. An example of the billing department does not adequately relay financial information to the managerial department resulting in financial disaster for the company. Furthermore, Gail Sessoms speaks of silos in her article “What are organizational silos” and states, “organizational silos cause redundancy and poor decision-making” (Sessoms, n.d.).
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The different teams, or silos, had a tendency to retain resources instead of using internally within the company for improving the overall status of Disney. The team managers were focusing on their teams alone while stockpiling any resources they could instead of assisting another team. They noticed a decrease in internal communication hindering the overall progression of the company (Edmondson, Ager, Haburg, Bartlett, 2014). Creating an “us versus them” mentality within Disney became detrimental and Geibel and Johnson took note while initiating
problems. In a study done on the role of the Walt Disney Company, Vincent Faherty explains
Disney Consumer Products (DCP) is one of the business segments of The Walt Disney Company. DCP was designed to bring new, exciting and intriguing product experiences across many categories –everything from toys and apparel to books and fine art. DCP as a whole is the worlds largest licensor and thinks of its self as liable for bringing the magic of all things Disney into the consumers homes with products they can enjoy anytime of the year. Revenue for Disney Consumer Products for the year of 2014 was at 3.93 million USD.
Executive Summary: The entertainment industry holds the immense potential for growth and development. The industry is constantly evolving and Walt Disney emerge as a global leader and recognized as the world’s second largest media conglomerate in the terms of revenue after Comcast. The Walt Disney Company is a multinational entertainment conglomerate headquartered at California, United States. The company integrated its products into five target segments are as follows: (1) Media Networks (2) Parks and Resorts (3) Walt Disney Studios (4) Disney Consumer Products (5) Disney Interactive.
The Walt Disney Company is a highly diversified media and entertainment company that has been growing by leaps and bounds since its inception in the late 1920’s. In the past few decades, The Walt Disney Company has expanded into numerous markets and diversified its business greatly. The company states that their corporate strategy is targeted at creating high-quality family content, exploiting technological innovations to make entertainment experiences more memorable, and expanding internationally. Upon studying the happenings of the company throughout the years, it is easy to see that the company is executing this strategy well through numerous strategic moves in the industry.
Disney’s long-run success is mainly due to creating value through diversification. Their corporate strategies (primarily under CEO Eisner) include three dimensions: horizontal and geographic expansion as well as vertical integration. Disney is a prime example of how to achieve long-run success through the choices of business, the choice of how many activities to undertake, the choice of how many businesses to be in, the choice of how to manage a portfolio of businesses and the choice of how to create synergies between those businesses (3, p.191-221). All these choices and decisions are made through Disney’s corporate strategies and enabled them to reach long-term success. One will discuss Disney’s long-run success through a general approach. Eisner’s turnaround of the company and his specific implications/strategies will be examined in detail in part II. Disney could reach long-run success mainly through the creation of value due to diversification and the management and fostering of creativity, brand image and synergies between businesses (1, p.11-14).
The Walt Disney Company’s organizational culture, or “the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs considered the correct way of thinking about and acting on problems and opportunities facing the organization” (University, 2002, p. 448) is shown in part by their in-depth employee education, their manufacturers’ code of conduct and their environmental commitment.
Disney has portrayed women in movies by the use of animation characters for over a century since the 1900s. There has been a very big change since the early 1900’s to modern day in Disney’s depiction of the personalities of the women, their attitudes and ideologies towards men, and the way they are portrayed in the movies. This progression has had a distinct development, from passive damsels in distress in need of the help of men, to being superheroes. Therefore, the evolution of women in Disney movies will be analyzed through the use of university level feminist essays, as well as a research paper written about gender roles in Disney animation. The evolution will also be analyzed through examination of the clips of the movies themselves.
This case provides a brief history of management conflict and change at Walt Disney Company. Former CEO Michael Eisner was considered to be controversial because of his abrasive style and tendencies toward micromanagement. It was this style that strained several important relationships to the Disney Company. Though his reign as CEO during the 80’s and 90’s helped advance Disney Company, it was his conflicting management style that led to his demise and the beginning of Robert Iger’s epoch at Disney. Since Iger has taken the helm as CEO Disney was ranked 67th in the Fortune 500 list for largest companies, it has become the largest media conglomerate in the world, and relationships and disputes stemming from Eisner have been reconciled.
One of the key factors of the successful diversification is the very strong branding of the name Disney. That the name was famous after the success in the early years made it among other things possible to go into the theme park industry. Evaluated isolated, the theme parks was a success. But when also accounting for the synergies created, the decision to go into this industry was a huge success. It has created a spiral of synergies, where the characters in the movies get more popular due to the parks, as well as the fact that when people are visiting the parks they get stimulated to buy the merchandise. This is just one example of the synergies that exist in Disney. When Michael Eisner took over control in Disney, he kept focusing on same corporate values as earlier, which are quality, creativity, entrepreneurialism and teamwork. These values have been preserved despite of the size of Disney, and are an important factor in sustaining and building the Disney brand.
This is a publicly traded company in the US that has been ding quite well in the recent years. The company’s 10k filing for the year 2014. From this statement, the risks facing the company will be identified classified and suggestions made on how best to mitigate them in the subsequent areas. There are various areas that the risks can arise based on the company’s 10k filling (Mertz, 1999).
They include: excellence in leadership, excellence in casting, guest satisfaction, financial results, and repeat business (Coverly, 2013). As it pertains to leadership excellence, Walt Disney is cognizant of the fact that communication is indeed the key driver and foundation for a collaborative culture within the company. Therefore, in this regard, the company encourages the cultivation of collaboration by essentially creating an enabling environment where ideas are spoken without fear of favoritism. Hence, Walt Disney promotes the use of positive language as part of its strategy of fostering leadership and collaboration. The use of positive language lays a basis for the realization of excellence in casting as one of the company’s policies. It is necessary to note that according to Coverly (2013), Walt Disney does not refer to its staff as employees; rather, the company classifies them as casts within the whole business arena. This concept, as Coverly (2013) continues to elaborate, emanates from the cognizance by the company that each employee has an intrinsic and unique role to pay within the company. As such, it is more natural to refer to them as casts, rather than the traditional “employee” notation. This strategy is very influential in generating and sustaining employee motivation which stems
However, many companies and managers are put off by the very mention of the work team. Some people see teams as just another management fad, while others in management have had bad experiences with teams that have failed. As Magee points ou...
In addition to urgency, Gustavsson could not create a powerful guiding coalition. He established a cross-functional team to develop a new moisture-resistant product. But the team did not include a sales manager who knows customers' needs and eventually sells the product. Although the team developed a commercially-viable product, their efforts, at least in the short term, were unsatisfactory, because with sales people's own doubts about the new product, they were afraid of jeopardizing the reputation of current product. Moreover, these cross functional teams operated within the established organization maintained the company's dominate culture and past norms. We know that structurally independent teams that are tightly integrated into the existing hierarchy with different cultures and processes are often more successful.
"Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought" (Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi). When dealing with innovation, a company that is well known to most people is Disney. Their marketing strategy is one of the finest around the world when dealing with innovation. Another company that is as innovative as Disney is Pixar. Pixar is known for their unique approach in the work place. Both of these companies have a unique approach towards innovation. They are both similar, however, are exceptionally different. Disney and Pixar are both successful companies that have thrived from their uniqueness and innovative approaches.
Organizations use teamwork because it increases productivity. This concept was used in corporations as early as the 1920s, but it has become increasingly important in recent years as employ...