Walt Disney World

Walt Disney World

Thursday 28 May 2015

All I Need to Know About Leadership, I Learned from Star Wars



"The More you Tighten Your Grip Structure, The More Star Systems Customers will Slip Through Your Fingers"

It's called the Tarkin Doctrine, originally encapsulated in Princess Leia's quote (modified above) from Star Wars Episode IV.  That's right, it has an actual name.  Go ahead, look it up, I'll wait (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine).

So let's talk structure: tight & loose.  When you plan too tight, things slip by you and you can lose the very magic you were trying to create.  We showed up to Epcot at about 7:30pm today and of course, there were plenty of lines open for people to exit.  That makes sense toward the end of the day; I'm sure it's the plan put in place by the park's management.  Conversely, there were only two lines open for entrance.  Here was the result:


The line backed up about 300 feet.  Entering the park requires scanning your Magic Band and finger print.  Exiting the park has no process associated with it - other than a cast member wishing you fare well.  Let's take a look at those exit lanes:


If you look at the right-hand side of the photo, you'll be able to count four blue-shirted cast members in four lanes saying goodbye as guests exit.  There were another two or three outside of the frame.

It's a simple solution: be flexible.  The surge in new guests was simply the result of the monorail dropping off many guests at once.  If a supervisor were available to take two cast members off of the exit lanes and move them over to an entrance lane, then maybe we would have guests who didn't look like this as they entered the park:


Not exactly the facial expressions of guests experiencing all the magic that is Disney.

-Brett 2.0


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