Walt Disney’s purpose? Making people, especially children happy. Photo: Disney

It seems that lately I have been picking on the Walt Disney Company in these articles. There is, however, a real problem the Mouse leaders are trying to deal with, and that problem—transition or transformation—eventually affects all companies.

A business becomes successful when a strong founder has a specific purpose and, through hard work and shear willpower, brings that vision to life. For Walt Disney, it was making people of all ages, especially children happy. For Steve Jobs it was making insanely great products that anyone, without a manual, could immediately use.

In both cases, the company these men founded ran into difficulties when the founder died. Jobs, for instance, once explained that his primary purpose was saying, “No,” to product complexity. The products produced during his life were simple and easy to understand. If you’ve spent time trying to figure out how to do something on Apple's current OS, you know that is no longer the case. iPhones and other Apple products have become very complicated and a lot less intuitive.

In Disney’s case, the post-Walt company has run into trouble twice. First in the 1970s when it’s second generation leaders second guessed every decision they made. That crisis was solved when Michael Eisner and Frank Wells were hired to save the company. Eisner knew the core purpose of the company and built on Walt’s vision. He explained, “Walt’s genius had been to make Disney synonymous with the best in family entertainment.”

Current management seems to have forgotten that genius, and Disney’s push to inclusivity—which I suspect is being done after a cold-hearted study of changing demographics—risks its traditional family base. Management likely believed they could peacefully transition. They have, however, found themselves thrust into a transformative period. When a company takes a transformative risk, one of three things happen:

1. The business transforms into something different.
2. The new initiative fails, and the company returns to the founder's purpose.
3. The company goes out of business.

It is, at this point, difficult to tell which of those three results Disney will experience. We can, however, proclaim that there is great risk in abandoning what made the company successful.

For all of us, in business, at work, when training, and our own lives, there are some instructive lessons.

• Be cleareyed about what you offer, deliver, and are appreciated and celebrated for.
• Be purposeful in doing more of those things people value from you.
• When you change or expand, don’t abandon your purpose. Look to expand adjacent to it.
• Decide to transform only when transitioning will not deliver an adequate solution.

In most cases, however, success comes not from transformation, but from transitional adaptation.

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