Eisner's Comeuppance Welcomed

The Wall Street Journal had a front-page article yesterday on Michael Eisner and his rather rough boardroom tactics. I didn't get to read it all, unfortunately, and can't remedy that because there site is subscription only. But it was very negative and unflattering in tone. I have to confess to a fair amount of schadenfreude on the topic.

1. I have not been a big fan of Eisner, or Disney. Why do I not care for Disney?
2. Their theme parks are outrageously expensive.
3. They are the poster child for all the advertisers causing parents misery by inciting wants in children.
4. I abhor their video release strategy. Whereby a movie is released on video for a period of a few months, then is deliberately "out of print" for several years. The point is to cause a stampeded to buy the video right then and there. I have even heard young adults, planning to start a family in the next year or two, proceed to buy the video for their unconceived children! American capitalism is all about making things ever more available and convenient to buy--the Disney strategy, while very successful, is simply un-American.
5. The insipid ritual in which athletes and lottery winners proclaim "going to Disney World!" in response to the "what's the first thing you are going to do?" query. You are an adult and a gazillionaire--can't you think of something a bit more imaginative?!
6. Many of their movies are not especially wholesome.
7. I don't like how they get a "free ride" as having a squeaky-clean, "nice company" image. In addition to their content, their policies and business practices are actually quite ruthless. Not necessarily unethical or worse than anyone else's, but they certainly don't deserve to be held up as some kind of higher standard.

Why do I have it in for Eisner? I took an instant dislike to Eisner (actually, to Eisner's public persona--of course I have never met him), upon first acquaintance. Beth and I were vacationing at Disney, and we were watching one of those 360-degree in-the-round movies. There was a brief intro to it that was actually a self-congratulating Disney commercial. That would have been bad enough. But the commercial featured a hyper version of Mickey, both nervous and excited at the prospect of being called in to see "the big boss". At the time, I was very curious who that person was, since I kind of thought of Mickey as the crown prince of the Disney realm. Of course, the boss turned out to be the egotistical Disney CEO. Yecch.

That was my introduction to Eisner. In the next few years, I heard his name a lot, as Disney stock was soaring, and I was pursuing an MBA. It just seemed to me that he was over-rated, though to be fair, I was probably influenced strongly in that impression by my anti-Disney and anti-Eisner sentiments. The stock was certainly doing well. But, even if he deserved his share of credit for the performance of Disney stock, he was committing the classic sin of becoming the over-identified celebrity CEO. Hogging all the limelight and attention, taking most of the credit, and agitating for outrageous compensation. And therein lay the seeds of his dimunition. After a decade-long run of adulatory press, I started reading more negative things about Eisner. I think it really started with his falling out with Jeffrey Katzenberg. That seemed like an obvious, ego-driven mistake.

Then there was more press about the lack of succession planning. And of course the Ovitz affair (lawsuits surrounding which have been the occasion for the recent Eisner articles). The outright refusal to groom a successor became a very obvious, and unforgivable, failing. So, for fans of Good to Great, Eisner had clearly never become a Level 5 leader, and in more recent years, had sunk well below his Level 4 peak, to the detriment of the company he was charged with leading.