Three MORE ways your business can be more like Walt Disney World

(Part 2 of 2. For part 1, see the last post.)

In my last post, I responded to a request by a reader who asked how a small business could be more like Walt Disney World, which was a comment on this post. As I was outlining, I realized that for length considerations I’d have to break it into two parts. So here’s Part 2 of how your small business can be more like Walt Disney World.

Again, none of what I write here should be considered a “Disney secret.” (For my full disclosure, see Part 1.)

Keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle, kids, because it’s gonna be a fun ride. Here we go …

#4) Tell stories.

This seems to be a popular theme in business writing in recent years, although it’s nothing new. Disney was WAY ahead of the times in this regard, and let’s face it — they built an empire out of it. People enjoy stories because that’s how they learn. Sparksheet recently had an excellent article on storytelling in business, which I highly recommend reading. I found it today, after I had already outlined this post, but they really hit it home within the first few paragraphs with this line:

The ability to directly address problems and provide solutions to complexity is the bedrock of storytelling in the 21st century.

Sparksheet goes on to give some excellent examples of brands that have done this recently, including Charmin, HP, Nike, Dove, and American Express. But don’t let the fact that those are behemoth brands intimidate you into thinking you and your small business couldn’t do it. Remember my second point in Part One, which was “Celebrate and share your heritage”? That’s a good place to start.

Meet The French Laundry. It’s the most talked about restaurant of my hometown, Fenton, MI. Not only is it a hotspot for locals, but people come from miles around to eat here. The Laundry’s owner, Mark Hamel (not Luke Skywalker) says in his newsletter,

“… For me, it’s always been my cracker-barrel podium, or stand-up chat room where I’ve been able to share, one-on-one or in our classes, what I have learned, discovered, and come to appreciate about the amazing foods and beverages of our planet.”

… and that he does, and always has. At any given time, you can find Mark walking around, greeting his patrons, and having conversations with them. Yes, they do have classes at the Laundry, but I’ve always found that the small-town camaraderie of both Mark and his staff the most appealing. Everybody at the Laundry has a story to share. Like at The Laundry, if you do it right, your customers will then start telling their stories about your business for you.

#5) Have a parade every day.

Well, not literally, although Disney does.  Find something to celebrate. I’m not saying you should have a sale every day. What I am saying is to have fun and enjoy what you do. Shake things up a bit and color outside the lines. For example, declare Thursday “Hawaiian Shirt Day” just for kicks.

Need an example of a small business who has a proverbial parade every day? Meet another business from my hometown, Uncle Ray’s Dairyland. Here’s a great clip from a couple years ago:

There’s not a person in town that doesn’t love Uncle Ray’s and doesn’t know the Durants. In fact, they’re doing it so well that their customers, too, are telling their stories for them now. From their customer service to making their ice cream right there in-house, Uncle Ray’s has made a name for itself as being “a landmark of Fenton.”

(Disclosure: I am friends with Dave Durant and have consulted him a little in the past, drawing from a lot of my Disney experience and training manuals.)

#6) Internal communication is key.

This is a biggie. As an organizational communication major and while interning at WDW, I was continually impressed at how well cast members were kept informed of everything they needed to know. This company of 60,000 employees (give or take, depending on the season) had internal communication flow so smoothly that there was no excuse for not knowing what was going on.

How did they do this? Multiple touchpoints within the organization.

Every area of every department had their own hotline, which was updated every single morning by the managers, who passed on the information that cast members needed to know. Whether it was upcoming promotions, changing of park hours, changing of times for fireworks or parades, which managers were on duty that day, etc. they had it covered. Everybody was expected to call that number on days they weren’t working.

Disney also utilizes an extensive intranet that they call “The Portal,” for which every cast member has a login and is expected to explore to find just about anything going on within the parks whatsoever, whether continuing education classes, clubs of their interest (Toastmasters, anyone? Crew club? You got it.), Disney history, if the (internal Disney) library had a certain movie they wanted to check out, look up a certain cast member in a certain department — literally anything they can think of.

Every park also has its own print newsletter that is published every week that includes information they need to know, heartwarming stories of cast members’ interactions with guests, etc.

There’s also a pocket-sized “cheat sheet” published every week that cast members are encouraged to use, which has basic things like hours for the parks, parades, and fireworks, special phone numbers they might need, special events, etc. Trust me when I say these cheat sheets have come in handy way more than I can count. Not every question is as easy to answer as “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?” (The fabled most commonly asked question in Magic Kingdom. Personally, I got “Do you work here?” more often.)

And of course, never underestimate the value of team meetings. Before every shift, there is a team meeting where managers would give everybody the lowdown and address any issues that need addressing.

Now, contrast all of the above to an independent coffee shop I worked in after my stint at WDW.  There were a total of nine employees, including the couple who owned the place. The entire year or so I worked there, we had a total of TWO all-staff meetings. Instead, the only way for any kind of “official” internal communication was a notebook we supervisors were expected to write in about anything pertinent, whether it was that we were low on espresso, that we signed for a shipment delivery, that we closed early one night because of a snowstorm, etc.

Sure, this sounds like it would be simple enough, right? Oh, no. Because of the very nature of having a passive-aggressive notebook be the sole medium from which employees communicated to the management, it created more internal politics, misunderstandings, and contempt than one could imagine. Sure, we had everybody’s phone number and once in a while would make a phone call about an issue, but for the most part, the passive-aggressive notebook, which was intended for internal communication, became a symbol of our disdain.

I remember a couple times that supervisors got reprimanded by the owners for not doing something that they were apparently supposed to do, but because it wasn’t written in the notebook, they didn’t even know they were supposed to. Never underestimate the power of face-to-face communication, and multiple internal touchpoints for employee communication. Don’t have a passive-aggressive notebook. If Walt Disney World, with 60,000 people working on-property, can keep all those people in the loop, there’s no reason whatsoever that a nine-person small business can’t keep everybody on the same page (no pun intended).

So there you have it, @roakian and others who have been following along at home. Between this post and the last I’ve laid out six ways your small business can be more like Walt Disney World.  I actually thought of more ways as I was writing this last part, but I’ll leave it at that for now. If you didn’t learn anything else, you ought to know by now that if you ask me a question, you should prepare yourself for a pretty lengthy answer.

If you’ve noticed any other ways small business can borrow from Disney’s best practices, please feel free to share!

Photo 1 is free stock I found somewhere, photos 2 and 3 are my own, and the notebook photo is courtesy of sarah.mckenzie11, whose license allows modification.