Creativity and collaboration using the Disney Strategy
What is the Disney Strategy? I hear you say. The Disney Strategy is a creative process that enables teams (and individuals) to collaboratively plan together, by focussing their attention on three mains areas:
⦁ What are we looking to achieve?
⦁ What can we do to make sure it happens?
⦁ What might go wrong along the way?
During each stage, the participants would step into a creative space (physically or virtually) that enables them to tap into their ability to dream big, get critical and then plan and problem solve.
Because the session is tailored for the team, it takes into account the views of everyone within the group, and therefore drives self-owned and team-initiated changes within an organisation at a rapid pace, spending more time in the preparation and exploration of the outcomes in a productive and structured way.
The process is called the Disney Strategy because it comes from modelling the approach of Walt Disney, who was known for thinking about projects from three distinct points of view.
What, if he was dreaming really big, would he want to achieve?
If he was being pessimistic, what might go wrong with those dreams?
What can he do to get his outcome achieved?
The Disney Imagineering team (the blend of imagination and engineering) still run their projects utilising these questions.
I have recently facilitated collaborative planning sessions for Chilly’s Bottles (A Sunday Times top 6 Fast Track 100 business) and a Multinational Pharmaceutical Company that carries out significant work in the field of medical advancement. These sessions were run virtually during January 2021 with approximately 70 people in each session.
As a trainer of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and I created the sessions to be part educational (looking at how the conscious and unconscious mind works to enable us to get connected with our motivators, values, and help shift any limiting beliefs that can hold you back) and part collaboration focussed with lots of interactive breakout groups.
With every one of my sessions designed to make the impact you need, they make a significant difference to the performance of employees and teams, as well as encourage significant growth and collaboration. The sessions about collaborative working for organisations are especially relevant at the moment, as teams are looking for creative ways to engage remote and rapidly expanding workforces. The Disney Strategy is a creative process that I have successfully facilitated within several teams and organisations (with a range of stakeholders) that allows for such collaboration.
As a business owner or manager, there should be no need to constantly keep ‘telling’ the stakeholders what to do, or to end up double-checking and ‘micro-managing’ them until you are both worn out! If everyone is involved in creating and sharing the vision and coming up with the path to get there, it makes a massive difference to the motivation of those involved.
I regularly speak to online audiences of 100s of people virtually across diverse sectors such as the NHS, charity, pharmaceutical and business with clients such as household names such as Groupon and Ubisoft as clients. My sessions are always uplifting and productive, which enables individuals to buy-in personally and bring with them new and innovative ideas that are born out of discussions with their peers.
If I can support your team in collaborating effectively, get in touch, this is a great process to be coached through personally or for teams to go through to allow for some creative brainstorming (backed up with a pathway to implementation).
If you’d like to know more about The Disney Strategy, visit my website for free resources which can be downloaded at www.andycoley.com/disneystrategy