Disneywar by James B. Stewart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The scope of this book seems pretty modest: it covers the reign of one Michael Eisner, who from his introduction as CEO took Disney as a static company and revitalized it as a meta-conglomerate it is today. Whats interesting about this nearly 600 page book is that how it chronicles the 20 years he worked as CEO… mostly as a series of conversations he had with others. The main interest in this book has to do with the internal politics and policies that the high level managers of Disney implemented… mainly that while Eisner was highly successful in his earlier years, in his later years he kind of lost touch with creative innovation and took to securing his own stardom and success at the expense of the talent he sought to bring into Disney.
If you know the history of some of the worst tyrants, who started off good, you can see this trend, when power blinds one to their short-comings. The last 1/3 of the book is intensely interesting as Eisner seeks to maintain control of the board of directors, the very people who he needs to answer to, rather than letting them keep him in check.
If you want a short analysis here it is: the main flaw in Shakesphearean tragedy is hubris; extensive pride. Any civilization or individual letting their ego run wild will have excessive pride. How this is flaw is easy: one coasts on past success and lets that speak for their present action. One over extends or hyper-focuses on specific problems at the expense of maintaining a balanced ecology. This is what happened. In Eisner’s profit chasing and empire making, he made many profoundly bad choices, which where really only bad in hindsight. Towards the end of his tenure as CEO he focused on securing his position against all others who might contend with him… creating an environment of spying, hostility and backstabbing.
I won’t go over much of the book’s narrative line in detail, but this book, while I thought it might be boring, turned out to be the exact opposite. I can’t really think too much of what more I’d like to have seen, in its construction. I think Stewart did an excellent job… the book seems pretty thorough, considering much of the “plot” is dialogue and conversation which may or may not have been recorded. It’s actually a very fascinating human drama.
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