Weekly Bookmarks –
174th Edition – April 6, 2025
Find three hobbies you love: One to make you money, one to keep you in shape and one to be creative.
Anonymous
1. Walt Disney
I’ve read and listened to Bob Iger’s book The Ride of a Lifetime, and his Masterclass is also good. I don’t remember when I read it, but I recall recommending The Disney Way after finishing it more than ten years ago. While this qualifies me as knowing a little about the modern Disney enterprise, I knew little about the visionary founder even though he spent a couple of years in nearby Marceline, Missouri, and finished school and ran an unsuccessful business in Kansas City.
Yes, Walt Disney was a creative genius, but nuanced and flawed. He was a perfectionist, quick to fire staff on a whim, had a complicated relationship with his father, was a bit too trusting and naive in early business dealings, was consumed by business, and had few friends beyond the office. A smoking addiction cut short a life that impacted so many around the world who adored him.
Does that sound depressing? Yet, I still respect his vision, his natural tendency of product over money, and his commitment to excellence in an industry fixated on trends and formulaic movie scripts.
Walt Disney by Neal Gabler is probably the definitive work on the Mickey Mouse creator—it should be at nearly 900 pages long. I didn’t realize the role his older brother Roy played in the growth of the Disney enterprise. He was the money guy, and there was constant tension between the two, especially during the Disneyland construction period. Yet, it was Roy who supervised the opening of Disney World after Walt’s passing.
My rating: ★★★★★
Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi.
2. The Dreamer, The Realist, and The Critic
Good consultants remind me of great comedians who have keen observation skills. Similarly, consultants use their observational skills to identify the ordinary in everyday business life and create extraordinary solutions based on those insights.
Robert Dilts fits that description. He has been a developer, author, trainer, and consultant in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Through his analysis of Walt Disney:
In summary, it is clear that one of the major elements of Disney’s unique genius was his ability to explore something from a number of different perceptual positions. As one of his close associates pointed out: …there were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. You never knew which one was coming into your meeting.”
Strategies of Genius by Robert Dilts
The purpose of the series on "Strategies of Genius" is to apply neuro-linguistic programming to analyze important historical figures in order to characterize their strategies so they can be applied in other contexts. This volume analyzes Aristotle, Sherlock Holmes, Walt Disney, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
3. The Rise and Fall of Kmart
Kmart’s origin story starts with S.S. Kresge, whose stores pushed Woolco out of the discount chain business. Kresge launched the Kmart brand in the early 1960s, and for twenty years, it dominated the discount industry and ultimately became the retail king in sales by surpassing Sears.
The next twenty years saw them fighting for their lives as growth took a toll on their balance sheet, and rivals Walmart and Target slowly gained momentum.
Their final twenty years resulted in CEO turnover, bankruptcy, and store liquidation, with only one location remaining (hint: it’s not in the U.S.).
One of the founders of The Home Depot required management to read The Big Store to understand retail failure and what caused it. Had this book been published, he would have recommended Attention Kmart Shoppers: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Big Discounter. I will interview the author in a few weeks to discuss why Kmart failed.
How did Kmart grow to become one of the nation’s most dominant retailers and then lose it all in just a few decades? Attention Kmart Shoppers has the whole story, from the chain’s founding as an arm of the Kresge variety store company in 1962, all the way down to the five Kmart stores that are still in business today.
4. Young Men and Fire
According to Linda and Charlie Bloom, “We often tend to believe that something that feels “natural,” “normal,” or “familiar” is the correct option to choose. Choosing something other than the “correct” option feels uncomfortable and is often referred to as “counterintuitive,” meaning that our intuition tells us that it is wrong.”
In 1949, two firefighters did what was counterintuitive when their lives were in danger during a raging Montana fire. They survived. Thirteen of their peers perished as they tried to flee the Mann Gulch blaze.
I just started listening to Young Men and Fire. In post-mortem meetings, the two young firefighters explained that they had not been trained in how they saved themselves, nor was their method of escape from the wall of fire one practiced by other smokejumpers. If you are a student of the Cynefin Framework, this story is the perfect pairing for trying to understand Dave Snowden’s complex mental model.
A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service’s elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness.
5. The Shopify Story
Shopify powers over 1,000,000 merchants worldwide, including a few of my clients. They have no intention of leaving the platform soon.
There’s now a new book on their twenty-year-old startup journey. Expect a near-bankruptcy story, roadblocks, and bad strategic turns that were soon corrected. The title is The Shopify Story by Larry MacDonald, who investigates the factors behind Shopify’s growth and shares lessons for entrepreneurs, business managers, employees, programmers, policymakers, and investors.
Instead of reading the book, you can listen to an author interview here:
This portable lap pad reduces neck and wrist strain, ensuring a comfortable experience during extended use on any surface.
Recent Bookmarks: 173 | 172 | 171
Recent Podcast Episodes:
- The Early Investments of Warren Buffett
- The Rise and Fall of the Match King
- The World’s First Stock Exchange
- The Money Trap
Thank you for reading. If you like the content above and the posts at CFO Bookshelf, may I ask a favor? Feel free to share this with other readers and comment on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
Take care, and have a great week. Always be learning.
