2015: Disney’s Watershed Year
2015 was the year that Bob Iger made the decisions that set Disney on a course to oblivion. It was the year he made the choices that changed it irrecoverably from Walt Disney’s company to Bob Iger’s.
Several factors converged that year that would turn Disney into the trainwreck it is today. A lot of people blame Covid but truthfully that just accelerated a process that was already in motion. These factors in no particular order were; the selection of his successor who failed, the departure of the last real Disney executive, Iger’s war with Ike Perlmutter, the massive success of The Force Awakens, plus a few others. But the biggest factor was the McKinsey Report.
For those of you not familiar with the McKinsey Report, it was patient zero of the Woke mind virus that is Stakeholder Capitalism. It’s one of those black swan events that seem inexplicable. At least if you’re looking for a simple answer.
To make a long story very short the McKinsey Report purported to prove with the finest research magic available to parascience that Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity equals mega-huge super profits. Since there is no way in hell you’d read that kind of bullshit in a blog post I’ll boil down their methodology for you. They started with a conclusion they really liked and worked backwards from that.
What the McKinsey Report mostly proved was that ultra-successful giga-conglomerates like Amazon and Google have huge margins and therefore can afford to have a team of trans-lesbian bi-racial astrologers on staff. McKinsey claimed that these utterly useless mouths to feed were the real reason for the giants’ success. McKinsey threw a dart at the explanation board and came up with the diversity of opinions from these previously marginalized peoples as the bullshit reason that Amazon and Alphabet blew the the roof off.
The truth is that any company with wide profit margins has the option of taking on drones the various C-suite executives want to as status enhancer and when your company is making a billion a year it’s not going to affect the bottom line… At first. Contrast this with a company with very, very narrow profit margins like a restaurant for example. Putting a multi-ethnic, poly-sexual women’s studies major in the kitchen to facilitate disagreements between the line cooks and the executive chef, plus shutting down the kitchen for required sensitivity training for the sous-chef every time he screams at garbage boy and the restaurant would be shuttered in three days.
A company with $173 billion in market cap like Disney (in 2015) can survive for years. And it had room for this new way of thinking. Particularly when it made several Boomer obsessions look like a sound business strategy. It also gave Bob Iger the impetus to do something modern companies love doing anyway, namely shitcanning 55-year-old executives.
It also let Iger indulge himself in one of his favorite fantasies. That he is really tech-CEO who happens to be working at an entertainment company. It was a dream that first took hold when he sat down with Steve Jobs trying to convince the Apple CEO to put Disney content on the iPod. In his biography he admits (in a backhanded way) that he wanted Jobs to buy Disney. And the only reason Bob would want that is if he was going to get a promotion out of it. Truth be told, he always had before whenever there was a major buyout. The McKinsey Report let him think he was doing the same things Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos were.
It’s been nine years since that report came out and no one has been able to replicate McKinsey’s results. Several universities have tried but none have managed it. McKinsey is still claiming their research is solid, although what riches companies are gaining from following their advice are those of the spirit.
