 |
||
 |
||
|
|
||
Editorial
|
|
Disney, Dump Eisnerby Rob Spiegel Should Michael Eisner stay on at Disney? Eisner put in almost 20 years at Disney. He did some good things for the company. He revitalized Disney’s animation studios and added the distribution of Pixar Animation Studios Inc. (Finding Nemo, Toy Story). Under Eisner’s direction, Disney Acquired ABC Inc. television network in 1995. During the years Eisner led Disney, the company’s capitalization soared from $2 billion in 1984 to $61 billion today. But the last few years have been difficult. “Forbes” notes that Disney’s income shrank an average of 3.1 percent annually during the past five years. During that half-decade, the average publicly-held company grew 19 percent. Eisner was paid a total of $737 million in those five difficult years. That’s roughly five times the $38 million the average CEO made during those years, according to “Forbes.” That’s a pretty good paycheck for running a company on the slide. Just recently Disney lost its distribution deal with Pixar. Looks pretty gloomy, Michael. The question brings up the old cliché: managers are one thing, entrepreneurs are quite another. Eisner didn’t launch Disney. He grew the company over many years, but in recent times, the company has languished under his direction. His paycheck, however, looks like that of a founder not a manager. Sure he owns a lot of Disney stock now, but that’s just another version of a paycheck. Fact is, he’s an overpaid manager and it’s not surprising that Disney’s stockholders are furious. Eisner didn’t put his life saving on the line for Disney. Walt did. If Walt got filthy rich, great. The whole concept came rough and fragile from Walt’s brain. The same can’t be said for managers. Does it take the same creative genius to acquire ABC or foster a deal with a really creative studio, Pixar, which is run by a real entrepreneur, Steve Jobs? You have to credit Eisner for steering Disney away from its abominable live-action movies and back to its cartoon roots. But what kind of genius does it take to say, “Hey, we’re screwing up. Let’s go back to what we do well.”? Entrepreneurs live in the frontier. Managers are townsfolk. Entrepreneurs are barely civilized. They usually put creativity above manners and they put customer satisfaction above self satisfaction. These are extreme positions, and that’s what it takes to create a thriving business where before there was nothing. There are some managers who come with exceptional skills – Jack Welch of GE comes to mind. Perhaps Lou Gerstner who grew IBM from its business machine roots. But mostly, managers work to tame an entrepreneur’s wild business and consolidate its strengths. The manager’s hand doesn’t always deliver a stable, profitable company after wrestling it from the wild entrepreneurial founder. Apple dumped Steve Jobs and favor of a series of managers who successively ran the once-creative company into the ground. Finally the company wised up and hired Steve back, and consequently, the company is back to some semblance of relevancy again. I launched a magazine, Chile Pepper, in 1986. For ten years it grew consistently 20 to 30 percent year after year. When I sold it in 1996, it was still growing at a fast clip. The magazine was purchased by a magazine group. A year after I sold the magazine, its growth hit a plateau and stayed at that plateau for a few years. The new editor of the publication loved the product, but the magazine group was disenchanted. They thought they had purchased a growth machine. The editor’s heart was in the product, though. So he put a group together and purchased the magazine. Now he runs it with entrepreneurial fire and for the past few years, it’s been growing at a good clip again. Is that because entrepreneurs are smarter than managers? I’m proof that’s not true. The difference is the willingness to commit everything you have – inside and out – to create a product that meets a customer’s need way beyond expectations. You almost never get that from a manager. So why on earth pay a manager an owner’s wages? Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and The Shoestring Entrepreneur’s Guide to Internet Start-ups (St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at robspiegel@comcast.net.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
