Tag: Institute

Acknowledging Anchorage

two disney institute facilitators in Anchorage
L-R: Dennis, Jack, me. Leaving Anchorage, Alaska airport for The Hotel Captain Cook, downtown.

Acknowledging my past-Disney travel schedule.

Why?

Because the photo above just hit my feed.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

The need to grow, home

Three ski jump ramps in Lahti, Finland.
Never dreamed of being a Senior Olympian. Yet in 2009, here i was. Lahti, Finland. Representing Team USA at the 2009 Masters Track and Field World Championships.
two black frames with personal items
From the office wall where i blog most days, these two photos are a few feet away. Photo: My ‘racing bib’ from 2009 and a newspaper article photo from 1977.

My greatest “personal-life” growth opportunity surfaced while teaching Disney Institute (DI) business principles for 15 years.

Disney has, since 1955’s Disneyland opening, operated with four foundational Quality Standards.

They are, in alphabetical order:

  1. Courtesy
  2. Efficiency
  3. Safety
  4. Show

The key however is putting these in an operational priority order.

While teaching this nebulous business wisdom to outsiders, the time-tested DI curriculum never (literally never) rallied outsiders to work through the pain, and risk, that comes from committing to a ‘carved-in-stone’ holy-grail operational imperative.

To help solve this i created a heretofore undiscovered prioritization filter:

  1. Non-negotiable
  2. Famous-for
  3. #1 Business-need

Watch how this becomes easy to put the four alphabetized quality standards into an operational-priority order.

Non-negotiable = Safety

Famous-for = Courtesy and Show (in that order)

#1 Business-need = Efficiency

This business wisdom is context neutral and can be applied in any domain. So, long ago i applied this (and still apply it) to create our family quality standards.

Note: Quality standards are simply a prioritized decision-making matrix. It’s applied by everyone, everywhere at Disney. Your work scope and department NEVER alters the order. Consistency is the hallmark of world-class organizations. This is how we do it at Disney. It’s also how i run my personal life. Safety, Service, Simplicity.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

Disney Institute headquarters in Celebration, Florida

Met a Disney and Disney Institute colleague at Panera across the street from our former office building. DI is still there and doing well without us. Photo: from my parking space at Panera.

Disney Institute (DI) headquarters in Celebration, Florida.

Son, you remember being there a couple times as a child, when i needed to pick something up (or drop off something) on the weekend.

i was one of the first to work remotely from home.

DI does just fine without Bob and me.

We are doing exceptionally well since leaving DI.

Son, life has a funny way of living up to the theory that risk and reward are decently proportional.

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This website is about our home health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my mental attitude website, click here.

If you want to stay on this site and read more posts from this Blog, click here.

No shortage of expensive theory

Disney Institute speakers
Imagine spending only one day to find solutions to all your personal and business challenges. Impossible, right?

 

Do you see the time you use for organizing your systems and processes at home as an expense to be managed or as a non-negotiable investment?

 

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This website is about our home health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my mental attitude website, click here.

If you want to stay on this site and read more posts from this Blog, click here.

 

Organized for firsts?

Going to the sun road open 2016
The 50-mile long Going-To-The-Sun Road opened two days ago, June 17, 2016. Family visit in 40 days.

 

 

Find a million ways to stay motivated.

 

It spontaneously came out of my mouth one day while answering a Disney Institute class participant’s question that went something like this:

“But Jeff, you don’t understand, our business is way different from Disney. What would you recommend we do to create our own industry specific Magic?”

I repeat:

 

Find a million ways to stay motivated.

 

One way (of the million ways) is to have fun with it. i have a small (but growing) list of firsts i keep track of:

Firsts:

  • First freeze of the season (a rare occasion, one worth noting, often damaging sub-tropical plants)
  • First morning hearing a Robin singing  (our unofficial start of Winter)
  • First morning the temperature reaches at least 70 degrees (our unofficial start of Spring)
  • First morning the temperature dips below 70 degrees (our unofficial start of Fall)
  • First day i see the caladiums break through the soil (another unofficial start to Spring)
  • And two days ago, a new “first” was added – The first day Going-To-The-Sun Road opens (someday be there when it happens)

 

Find a millions ways is not a theory.

 

 

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On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.

 

This website is about our home health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my mental attitude website, click here.