I have been seeing some media buzz about a clashing between the management style of former CEO Iger and the new CEO Chapek with the announced increase in the cost of Disney+, making it more expensive than its rivals. This was not Iger’s plan as he was going to make the increases more in line with the competition and do so in $1.00 per month increases on an annual basis.
Walt
Walt, is there any specific article, mentioning this, as I would be interested in reading it. I have also read some articles a couple months ago about the difference in styles, but nothing recent that says the $1/year increase issue (by the way, I assume that is what you meant…price raised once per year by a $1?)
To be honest, I am a bit intrigued by Chapek’s style, in a positive way. Iger was relatively unique, but Chapek in a sense is taking what Iger created (i.e., his acquisition ecosystem) and seems to be applying data to it to make disciplined decisions. Iger was maybe more intuitive, while Chapek is more algorithmic. Chapek is probably more analogous to Michael Eisner, and in a sense, Eisner did some good things too in terms of discipline. However, there may be a point where Chapek doesn’t do bold things like Iger did - i.e., go after some acquisition target - that essentially indicates weakness in leadership and not enough needed innovation. Iger, too, I should mention, also was a data guy - and he had his weaknesses, especially with not properly running the video-game department (honestly, the cancellation of Infinity still is a weird thing to me after investing so much capital; the company could have made that work, but again, I do understand that the company was looking at numbers that probably made any experimentation toward success ill-advised and scary to contemplate).
Just some thoughts off the top of my head…
Chapek is more algorithmic…Chapek doesn’t do bold things like Iger did
On another page, I have been ranting about management being taken over by “analytics”. Analytics is the big thing in management now, fed to every student at the b-school I went to, regardless of concentration.
The traits you are assigning to Chapek are exactly what analytics would produce: entirely data driven, no innovation, no intuition. How may “Star Wars” movies have been made, and how many more in the pipeline? That is what you would expect from analytics: previous entries produced a profit, so do more of the same. Don’t do something different, because something different does not have the profit track record, so it is discounted.
As for the streaming price increases, a recent article compared the prices. The Disney offerings are still cheaper than Netflix, but, last quarter, Netflix lost 1M subscribers, and spun that as “better than expected”, because it wasn’t a 2M subscriber loss. I would not want to use Netflix as an exemplar of the industry with a trend like that.
Steve
Steve,
On another page, I have been ranting about management being taken over by “analytics”. Analytics is the big thing in management now, fed to every student at the b-school I went to, regardless of concentration.
The traits you are assigning to Chapek are exactly what analytics would produce: entirely data driven, no innovation, no intuition. How may “Star Wars” movies have been made, and how many more in the pipeline? That is what you would expect from analytics: previous entries produced a profit, so do more of the same. Don’t do something different, because something different does not have the profit track record, so it is discounted.
It’s even worse than you suppose. The “Harvard MBA” mindset is that anybody who can manage can manage anything because one manages by the numbers and hires technical experts to advise one in whatever it is that one is trying to manage. Of course, this mindset begs the question of how one knows whether one’s technical experts really understand the technical aspects of the organization or are just BS artists winging it as they go. If one does not understand the technical aspects of the organization, one does NOT know.
This stands in stark contrast to Admiral Hyman Rickover’s philosophy, best summed up by the adage that you are not qualified to supervise a worker if you are not qualified to do that worker’s job. Companies that adhere to this philosophy at all levels of management and executive leadership usually are a LOT more successful than those that don’t.
Norm.