Acquisitions, global growth, and Baby Yoda: How CEO Bob Iger's leadership style turned Disney into a $260 billion colossus

David McNew/Reuters

Bob Iger, CEO of Disney.

• Bob Iger has served as chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company since 2005.
• Since his appointment, the company's stock has risen 335%, and in November, Disney debuted its new streaming service, Disney+.
• Here's how Iger's leadership strategies shaped the upwards trajectory of the company.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Bob Iger bet big with the launch of Disney+ but his legacy extends well beyond the streaming service and the internet-breaking debut of Baby Yoda.

Since Iger stepped into the chairman and CEO role in 2005, the company's stock has risen 335%. He brought Disney into the 2000s with major acquisitions, like Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009, and 21st Century Fox this year. Disney's film division had its highest-grossing year yet in 2019, with the release of films like "Frozen 2" and "Aladdin." Iger's latest endeavor, Disney+, debuted on November 12, attracting more than 10 million sign-ups a day after launch.

This wasn't always the situation; a $260 billion market cap is not to be assumed. When Iger took the helm nearly 15 years ago, Disney was in a tough spot.

"We had been through a rough five-year period, with a hostile takeover attempt, a shareholder revolt, and a battle with two prominent board members," Iger told HBR in 2011.

His first task, then, was mending the relationships with the board members and allowing for internal peace. Then it was all about balancing the traditional with the modern and carving a place for Disney in modern times.

Iger plans to step down in 2021, and he'll be remembered for more than the quantifiable achievements that benchmark his career. Underneath it all lies a solid leadership strategy, one that allowed Disney to build on the success it experienced in the 20th century to secure a foothold in the 21st.

As Business Insider previously reported, Iger allows his work ethic to propel his career forward. His 4:15am wake-up time, morning workout in near-darkness, and arrival at the office early enough to make coffee for everyone speak volumes about the kind of leader he is: He's disciplined, focused, and incredibly strategic.

He's had to be. Iger's leadership strategy started taking shape in his teenage years when he worked odd jobs to help support himself; more than 45 years later, his strategy colors the highlights of his professional career.

Personal discipline

With so many examples of how leaders can make disciples out of their employees, Iger stands apart with his discipline. From what he's written in his 2019 book "The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company," Iger seems to strive for an authentic, rather than a bigger-than-life, presence.

"There's nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don't possess," Iger wrote. "True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else."

Iger has humble beginnings: He started off his career as a weatherman before pivoting to over 20 different positions within the studios of ABC Television, including president of entertainment at ABC, president of ABC Television, and president and COO of Capital Cities/ABC. He joined Disney's senior management team in 1996, ascending to chairman and CEO as a Disney insider less than 10 years later.

Even though Iger was personally familiar, and steeped, in how Disney had always done things, he wasn't afraid to explore the possibilities that the nearly century-old company hadn't developed.

"You can't allow tradition to get in the way of innovation," Iger told HBR. "There's a need to respect the past, but it's a mistake to revere your past."

In that vein, Iger led the acquisitions of creative powerhouses like Pixar to bring in an influx of fresh thought into the very workings of Disney itself. At the same time, he's attempted to maintain the aspects of Disney culture that keep people working there. This encompasses the overall purpose that goes into working at a company with a generations-long influence like Disney.

Iger essentially wanted to preserve the overall feel of the brand while allowing for innovation within it - and this extends down to the product level.

"There's a culture and a way of life at the company that you've bought that sometimes can be integral to the creative process or the process of creating product at that company," Iger told NPR in September. "And if you go about it in too heavy-handed a way, you can destroy spirit and culture and a sense of purpose - and in doing so, destroy the very essence of what you bought, or reduce value."

Iger's principles, the rule of three, and the role of a CEO

Iger says that failure should be kept in perspective as much as success is - and it's the job of a leader to be an optimist regardless of the circumstances.

"When you come to work, you've got to show enthusiasm and spirit," Iger said. "You can't let people see you brought down by the experience of failure. You don't have that luxury."

In Iger's book, he also points to qualities like courage, focus, decisiveness, curiosity, fairness, and thoughtfulness as essential to effective leadership. For example, Iger says that every leader should create an environment where fairness flourishes.

"This doesn't mean that you lower your expectations or convey the message that mistakes don't matter," Iger writes. "It means that you create an environment where people know you'll hear them out, that you're emotionally consistent and fair-minded, and that they'll be given second chances for honest mistakes."

Part of what got Iger the CEO position was his ability to distill his strategic vision down to three priorities:

1. He wanted to invest capital in content from the best minds in the industry. The acquisition of Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel, among others, made this possible.
2. He aimed to utilize technology in new ways. This took the form of Disney+.
3. He made it a goal to grow Disney's global presence, symbolized with the debut of Disney Shanghai, Disney's first theme park in mainland China.

Iger has fulfilled all of these goals with the help of his optimism, courage, and other effective leadership qualities.

As he stated, it's the CEO who cultivates the strategic vision of an organization.

"It's the CEO who determines strategy, who is its major proponent, and who says, 'This is where we're going,'" Iger said. "You also set the standards that are applied to your company: how people behave, how they treat one another, what ethics are expected of your company and its products, and how it behaves in the world."

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