In 1989, the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World opened to much fanfare. It’s focus was sharing the cinematic tricks of the movie making business. Disney had, thinking that its own movie catalog was too small to support a theme park, purchased the rights to use the MGM name.

But then two things happened. First, Hollywood began including those very same cinematic explanations on the DVDs they released. This made the whole point of the Disney-MGM Studios irrelevant. Secondly, use of the MGM named required a royalty payment every year. And, with each year that payment increased in cost. Clearly the name of the theme park had to be changed.

But how do you change the name of one of your signature products without confusing your customers? The solution was ingenious. I believe—based on my long Disney employment history—that the Mouse decided to evolve so gradually that most people would not notice.

My hunch is that the company decided to morph the park from Disney-MGM Studios to Disney’s Hollywood Adventure. The park would, in that way, be parallel to its California cousin, Disney California Adventure.

The first name change step, in 2008, was from Disney-MGM Studios to Disney's Hollywood Studios. We inside the Mouse House, at the time, thought it was a dumb name: too obvious and boring to be worthy of a Disney theme park. In retrospect, the name change was brilliant.

Some people had historically called the park MGM Studios. Others called it the Studios. There wasn’t much that could be done to salvage “MGM,” but Disney's Hollywood Studios kept the “Studios” in its title. The parks new logo, additionally, featured the word “Studios” in larger lettering than the word “Hollywood.” It, in that way, maintained continuity by downplaying Hollywood and highlighting Studios.

The second change was announced this week. It’s not a name change, but it is a step towards the end goal. The new park logo now features “Hollywood” in large lettering and “Studios” in lettering so small as to be non-existent.

Several years from now I suspect we will learn about another change; this one to Disney’s Hollywood Adventure. And, that is how you maintain continuity while evolving. The lessons I draw from this are:

• Customers like continuity in their product choices
• Consumer habits cannot be discounted when changing the name of a product
• The best way to change without disrupting your customer base is to do it graduallyLong term thinking is a better approach than focusing on the next quarter
• If you do the long-term planning correctly, you can still deliver quarterly results

What about you and your organization? Are you too focused on the short term? Or, do you plan for ten years out? If not, why not.