The Ride of a Lifetime Bob Iger Review

Time taken to read: Half-day

I’ve always been a huge fan of Disney and its ability to maneuver and adapt to changes in the world. In this book, we gain insight into how Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney for 15 years, sees the world. What’s even cooler is that we get to see who has influenced and shaped his mindset.

It’s an incredible story of a guy who started from the bottom and constantly sought challenges that will help him grow. Always forward-thinking, passionate, and humble, he is truly one of the most inspirational CEOs I have ever read about.

The three guiding principles of Disney:

1) Create the highest quality content Disney could produce.

2) Embrace and adopt technology instead of fighting it. 3) Think global and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Lessons learned:

On work ethics:

• Ambition is always good but do not let it consume you. Focus on your current job and do it well while looking out for growth opportunities. If you fixate on a future job, you may become extremely unhappy with where you are currently. Trust the process.

• Ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don’t understand, and do the work to learn what you need to learn as quickly as you can.

• Iger made numerous mentions of his Chief Communication Officer Zenia Mucha, he said “she always has the interests of the company at heart”. As someone who is in Marketing, hearing from the CEO of Walt Disney on how I can be more of an asset to an organization was impactful.

• You can't communicate pessimism to people around you. It's ruinous to morale. No one wants to follow a pessimist

• Own your mistakes.

On leadership/career:

• Don’t be in the business of playing it safe. Be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness.

• True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

• The moment you look at yourself in the mirror and see a title on your forehead, you've lost your way

• From a strategy point of view - only have 2-3 priorities and communicate them passionately and repeatedly

I don't think I gave justice to this wonderful book of lessons, but it's undoubtedly one of my favorite books in 2020. It's been such a joy to get back into reading and I cannot wait to fill this blog with one-pagers of lessons gleaned from each book I've read. Speaking of which, follow me on Goodreads!