Response-This week's roundtable discussion about leadership rotation at Disney

[Dodie]

I just wanted to respond to something from this week’s podcast, not because I disagree with what was said by any means, but because I think in this instance I may be able to explain what Disney is doing. (This kind of stuff happens to be what I do for a living so, right or wrong, at least I can explain it.)

Learning agility – the ability to succeed under first time, new, or different circumstances - is a proven indicator of additional leadership potential and one of the best ways to develop leaders is to get them out of their comfort zone and put them in charge of something new.

Rotation through various leadership positions that have been predetermined to be “key” learning and development opportunities is common in large corporations. It’s one of the tests to see how much more runway a leader may have until they max out in the organization. It’s also often a test to see if an individual has CEO or COO level potential.

From the outside looking in, it can look like a lot of churn and change for no reason and can especially appear that they are putting someone with the wrong experience in a particular role, but that’s usually purposeful and for the long term “good of the overall company” vs. for short term success of a particular part of that company.

Now – is this the right thing to do for the particular roles the team was talking about? Do those roles require particular expertise that shouldn’t be tackled by a newcomer? Are they truly the right roles for leadership development and “testing?” I don’t know that and I don’t know the inside workings of Disney enough to hazard a guess.

That’s your human resources/talent management/leadership development lesson for the day. Please carry on.

 

[corky441]

Dodie -

Understand that I'm posting this only to play "devil's advocate" so to speak -

I am reminded of a book I read many many years ago.

The Peter Principle - the central core of which is that people are continually promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.
IMHO - sometimes people are just set up to fail becuase of this

 

[Dodie]

I am reminded of a book I read many many years ago.

The Peter Principle - the central core of which is that people are continually promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.
IMHO - sometimes people are just set up to fail becuase of this

This is valid and it does happen all of the time. People are promoted or moved to that one role that they just can't do and it's either the end of their career or at least a huge setback. That's why I admit the following...

Now – is this the right thing to do for the particular roles the team was talking about? Do those roles require particular expertise that shouldn’t be tackled by a newcomer? Are they truly the right roles for leadership development and “testing?” I don’t know that and I don’t know the inside workings of Disney enough to hazard a guess.