Soft Skills Rule of 7: No 7. Adaptation

Disney has been an A-lister in entertainment since it’s very beginning in 1928. 

It all started with one character in a cartoon just under 8 minutes long.  By the 1950’s it had expanded to live features, television, and this little theme park you might have heard of.  By the 1980’s they had parks on both coasts, a film and music studio, and multiple resorts.

While the 90’s brought Euro Disney & Disney Theatrical... it also supersized their mogul empire as they bought up ABC TV, the bulk of ESPN, and launched a cruise line.

By the early 2000’s they had scooped up The Muppets, Pixar, and Marvel Studio, as well as opened Hong Kong Disney... followed in the 2010’s by acquiring LucasFilm (including Star Wars and Indiana Jones), A&E (including Lifetime and the History Channel), 20th Century Fox (including FX, National Geographic, and a large part of Hulu), invested  in GoPro at the ground floor, opened Shanghai Disney and started Disney+.

If any business has diversified their portfolio, expanded their horizons, and reinforced their empire, it's “The Mouse House.”  

Yet in May of 2020 Disney’s 2nd fiscal quarter earnings had plummeted by 90%, practically overnight, thanks directly to COVID-19.

Three of its core business units are suffering at a severe rate -- which considering their holdings, directly affects hundreds of thousands of jobs -- quite literally all over the world, in hundreds of industries, with millions of investors including not only other corporations, but average Joe stockholders like you and me. So: with this power—as they say—comes great responsibility. To fail would mean to take down a considerable part of the US and International workforce and commerce. Failure, then, is not an option, leaving adaptation as the only light at the end of the tunnel.

This is where the work of Action and Reaction collide.  It is the ultimate test: to pool all your resources, think-tank your butt off, and develop your Adaptation plan to reallocate your resources where they’re needed now—regardless of previous plans.

In the case of Disney, they elected to invest with extreme focus in the one thing going full steam ahead: their streaming service.  They’ve invented new ways to use the service, launched major releases to retain audiences, have given special accesses, and attempted to keep their marketing as lean and focused as they can to survive the cold devastation of 2020. 

With the wide release of the live action Mulan (originally meant to be in theaters in March), Disney is upping the stakes. By the first week of September, placing their hopes in their followers being eager as ever for the escapism they offer, they are launching their newest release into your home for a $30 ticket price.  Astronomical for a single ticket, they are betting the devotion to their brand will win out (while simultaneously offering a huge savings to the median family unit, where such a night out to the theater would rack up into a $100 or more). 

It’s an extraordinary gamble, and an unthinkable one even a year ago. But 2020 has permanently changed many landscapes. Adapt or die is the business battle-cry.

Unlike the dinosaurs, when travesty erupts, we do in fact have the capability for adaptation.  Even against seemingly monstrous odds, massive hits, gob-stopping financial and personal loss -- we as human beings have the ability to pool our resources and work together to find new perspectives, new options, and invent new ways to overcome the insurmountable.  It’s how we have pyramids in Egypt still standing to this day. It’s how Europe rebuilt itself after multiple World Wars.

...It’s how we can all refocus, repurpose, reallocate, and review our options moving forward. And it is how we will ultimately succeed.

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Soft Skills Rule of 7: No 1. Personal

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Soft Skills Rule of 7: No 6. Reaction