Disney. Who has not heard about Disney? It the world’s most revered entertainment and media company. Disney is a company that doesn’t really need much introduction. Everyone knows its theme parks created by its founder Walt Disney. It kind of embodies this American nostalgia. It’s this iconic brand. Disney is the largest media company in the world. If you ask anyone what is Disney or who is Mickey Mouse, they’ll know. It’s the most valuable entertainment company in the world. It’s got huge studios – Fox Television, the ABC and ESPN TV networks. It’s just a sprawling, mammoth operation. Yet it got things wrong when it came to succession planning. Bob Iger had been one of the most successful chief executives in Hollywood history and was Disney’s CEO from 2005 to 2020. However his succession went terribly wrong. So if a mammoth company like Disney can get succession planning wrong, it goes to show how difficult this process is and how important it to plan it well ahead, to reduce the risk of it going wrong.

Let’s re-wind the tape a bit

Bob Iger is the typical charming and powerful guy, with a pretty stellar reputation in corporate America, comfortable in a room with actresses and actors in Hollywood, but also politicians. People that worked with Bob Iger speak of his great ability to read what the market trends are going and make decisions on how to place big bets. Bob Iger’s main success between 2005-2020 is that he did some really good and game-changing acquisitions for Disney. When Bob Iger became Disney CEO in 2005 and took over from Michael Eisner, he made some very decisive moves. First of all his predecessor, Michael Eisner seemed to be on a warpath with everyone. He changed all that and made peace with all, including Steve Jobs, which led to the acquisition of Pixar. Pixar went to even greater heights. Bog Iger made sure to place animation at the heart of Pixar. His second big acquisition was Marvel in 2009. It was a master’s stroke. Paramount looked at it and passed on it because they thought it was too expensive.This provided some of the biggest hits in Hollywood history, including the Avengers series. The third big transformative acquisition came in 2012, when Iger acquired Lucasfilm from George Lucas. The Lucasfilm acquisition felt like a pretty chunky price at the time. Again, this was one where people thought maybe Disney had overpaid. But this has really paid off with some of the biggest-grossing films in Hollywood history, not to mention all of the theme park attractions. All the films since and all the series since, it looked like the deal of all time.The film acquisitions that Bob Iger made were brilliant. Each one of them seemed very expensive, but they all drove the company’s business in ways that no one would have imagined at the time of acquisition.

The end result? When Bob Iger came to Disney in 2005, Disney’s content engine was not working. They were struggling in animation. When he left Disney in February 2020, it was the strongest IP content company in the entire world.

What about succession? The rumour mill on who is going to succeed Bob Iger had been alive and kicking for years. Then finally, in February 2020, Bob Chapek, a guy who ran Disney’s parks division, was eventually picked by Bob Iger. Bob Chapek, the new Disney CEO at the time was very unluck,. One week into his job as Dinsey CEO, the world shut down due to Covid -19.

Succession has also much to do with timing. As normally happens, when a business has a strong leader, it gets very difficult to have a succession plan as strong leaders on one hand happen to be enjoying their time and the success they have whilst leading the business. It wasn’t like Chapek was made president or COO for a period of time. He was instantly transitioned to becoming CEO. It was a rushed transition. Disney did the mother of all mistakes in succession planning. They dealt with it like an event and not a journey!

So, Bob Chapek, went from spending most of his time working in the theme parks side of the business, considered more operational, to Disney CEO. Chapek was not known in Hollywood circles. He wasn’t a TV guy. While Iger was strong in his communication & influencing skills, convincing both investors and actresses, Chapek was not. He lacked Iger’s tactility for dealing with people with big egos, for dealing with other powerful people.

In essence, Bob Iger had left very big shoes to fill. Bob Chapek just had a different personality. So one of the first things that happened publicly was a big fight with one of their big stars, Scarlett Johansson. Disney was going to release the film Black Widow on Disney+ on the same day as it was released in theatres. The money that big movie stars receive when they have a big theatrical release wasn’t going to happen, and this caused Scarlett Johansson to ultimately sue the company. It became a very public, quite messy round. Iger would never have done that in a million years. Never. Bob Iger was the king of keeping high-profile stars, their agents, directors, all the people who were essential, happy. There was no one better. A lot of the Disney shareholders felt that if had been Iger, Disney wouldn’t have been caught up in this negative media storm. The final straw for Bob Chapek was they had lost a billion and a half dollars in streaming because they were investing so heavily in the business. That weekend, he was out.

It could be that Bob Chapek’s story is also one of a series of unfortunate events. The pandemic, people not going to cinemas, people not going to Disney parks. But I really do think the number one issue in this succession planning failure is Bob Iger. You’re talking about one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Chapek was replacing someone who was more, really, than just a CEO. Chapek was also likely to be the the wrong guy. He didn’t have the management skills to build a team where everyone was rowing in the right direction.

The end result? Chapek was out and Bob Iger was brought back as Disney CEO in November 2020.

You can click HERE to watch an informative FT video on Disney and this succession gone wrong