Self-management and organization – How to define goals and put them into practice (Part 2) 

In my previous blog article from February, I explained George T. Doran’s SMART formula, which is a proven way for defining achievable goals. In my article, I promised you a second part introducing another method: the Disney Method. It’s named after Walt Disney, who   ran his company according to this approach, and with highly successful results.

The Disney Method

Visionary and perfectionist Walt Disney created this organizational model. He first explained his approach to work in an interview with Robert Dilts: He’d created for himself three different “thinking chairs” – one for the “dreamer/visionary,” one for the “realist” and one for the “critic.”

Whenever he sat on the chair of the dreamer, he allowed himself to

  • be creative,
  • come up with dreams,
  • collect ideas and solutions,
  • have a positive attitude where anything at all was allow.

Once he had finished with the respective thought processes, he moved on to the chair of the realist. On that chair, based on the ideas of the visionary, he only allowed himself, with logic and realism, to

  • develop concrete implementation steps (plan),
  • put together whatever was needed for implementation,
  • distribute the tasks,
  • and determine the implementation costs.

When this perspective was also completed, he sat down in the critic’s chair. Here, in response to the realist, he only allowed himself to

  • carry out evaluations,
  • identify risks and dangers,
  • think of potential threats,
  • look for any weak points and
  • find opportunities for improvement.

He switched between chairs and roles until he was comfortable in all three chairs. Then he separated the thinking chairs both in terms of time and space to avoid disruptions in the process and to be able to fully engage in one view at a time. Later on, he also set up respective rooms in his company for his employees. This is how Walt Disney passed on his work approach to his entire team.

I invite you to give this method a try. In my next article I’ll show you how to transfer the Disney Method to self-coaching.

If you have any questions or would like me to write about a specific topic, feel free to contact me any time. And as always:

Go for it, 

Your crisis manager

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