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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.