This is from USAToday.com:
Link to article
Link to excerpt from Disney War
"Eisner at center of 'DisneyWar'
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
Disney CEO Michael Eisner made an astonishing decision in early 2003 when author James B. Stewart began the serious work on his new book DisneyWar.
The most image-conscious chief executive in a spin-obsessed industry agreed to speak at length with Stewart and invited him into private meetings. Eisner, who took charge in 1984, thought his company's prospects were on the upswing, the author writes. Eisner insisted he had nothing to hide. (Excerpt: 'Disneywar')
Eisner also may have imagined that Stewart would be uninterested in retelling old stories about how the CEO butted heads with virtually every executive, particularly after Disney President Frank Wells' death in 1994.
Eisner was wrong. Disney was still in trouble, particularly at ABC, which moved up from third place just this season. His hold on power was weakening. And he apparently didn't realize how many people in Hollywood felt so bitterly betrayed by him.
Now it's Eisner's turn.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Den of Thieves not only failed to deliver a Disneyesque happy ending — he casts Eisner as the villain.
DisneyWar now stands as the best of the fast-growing subgenre of business books about the selfishness and ineptitude that ended the era of the Imperial CEO.
While most focus on scandal-ridden Internet bubble icons, all show how complacent institutional investors and corporate directors enabled CEOs to wield autocratic power. They used it to entrench and enrich themselves, with disastrous results for shareholders and others.
That may not sound like a page turner, but DisneyWar is. Stewart is an accomplished storyteller who had the luck or foresight to stake out a company filled with colorful executives in a glamorous business — at the moment investors decided they had had enough.
Eisner was vulnerable after the 2001 terror attacks accelerated the fall in tech stocks. His closest ally, Texas' Bass family, had to sell its controlling stake in Disney to meet margin calls elsewhere.
By 2003, those still invested in Disney grew impatient for the stock price, and ABC's ratings, to rise. They feared that Eisner had alienated key partners, led by computer animation power Pixar, which hasn't renewed the deal that let Disney distribute hits such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
They also became fed up with Eisner's intolerance of dissent as he forced Roy Disney, Stanley Gold and other critics off the board.
Then Disney appeared startlingly vulnerable when Comcast made a hostile, if short-lived, takeover bid.
It all culminated with a shareholder vote last year in which 45% refused to back Eisner. The board replaced him as chairman, and he agreed to leave the CEO job in 2006. The company now is looking for a successor.
Eisner temporarily cut off cooperating with Stewart as the plot line inevitably changed.
But by then it was too late. The author had the goods to make the old stories relevant — and add new information with enough oh-my-God revelations to amaze or amuse even long-time Disney watchers. The characters and atmospherics are convincingly vivid. And Stewart's story speeds ahead as smoothly as a theme park ride, with a narrative more like a psychodrama than a business book.
Stewart begins by giving Eisner his due, showing how his energy, creativity and willingness to take risks woke Disney from its slumber in the 1980s. Yet the early successes led Eisner to believe he was as crucial to the company as Walt Disney had been.
It was only natural, then, that he make most major decisions — and a lot of minor ones.
Unfortunately, he substituted hubris for managerial training and temperament. For example, he belittled executives by telling them that he could fix ABC if he could focus on it for just one day a week. When he soured on people, he refused to talk to them.
Disney's corporate culture became toxic as Eisner flip-flopped on a series of executives — including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Sanford Litvack and Joe Roth — who hoped to become his anointed heir. He encouraged them, and then concluded that each fell short of his standards.
Among DisneyWar'smore startling revelations is how little Eisner seems to think even of Bob Iger, who finally did become president and is the only internal candidate to replace Eisner as CEO. Just a few years ago, Eisner said that his No. 2 lacked stature and therefore "can never succeed me."
Although Eisner thinks highly of his instincts, Stewart shows that they frequently failed Disney.
For example, Eisner wouldn't let ABC air CSI - a show Disney developed — and sniffed at ultimate hit Lost. In movies, he turned down Lord of the Rings, sold most rights to Sixth Sense before its blockbuster success and disparaged Finding Nemo.
Eisner's emotional approach to decisions failed him even more embarrassingly in disputes involving two of the people closest to him in his career.
He refused to pay a bonus contractually due to Katzenberg when the former studio chief left to launch rival DreamWorks SKG. Then Eisner nixed a proposed settlement for $90 million. After a lawsuit, in which Eisner was found to have said about his former protégé, "I think I hate the little midget," he agreed to settle for $295 million.
In his eagerness to dump Ovitz after 14 months on the job, though, Eisner agreed to a severance package worth $140 million. That led to the current shareholder lawsuit that made public Eisner's privately expressed opinion at the time that his former friend was a "psychopath."
While much of Stewart's material is public record, a lot of it isn't — and he rarely cites sources for the dialogue and scenes he creates. It makes for a smooth read. But it also leaves readers wondering how much faith to put into some of his anecdotes.
Still, Stewart's thorough research is evident in the wealth of material he amassed to support his withering conclusion: Eisner's "management failures," he says, "include an inability to delegate, a frequent mistrust of subordinates, impulsive and uncritical judgments, his pitting of one executive against another, his disrespect for any hierarchy or authority other than his own, his encouragement of a culture of spying and back-channeling, his frequent failure to acknowledge the achievements of others, and above all, his inability to groom a successor."
Eisner insisted on being at the center of everything Disney. Now Stewart has hit the bull's-eye."
Link to article
Link to excerpt from Disney War
"Eisner at center of 'DisneyWar'
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
Disney CEO Michael Eisner made an astonishing decision in early 2003 when author James B. Stewart began the serious work on his new book DisneyWar.
The most image-conscious chief executive in a spin-obsessed industry agreed to speak at length with Stewart and invited him into private meetings. Eisner, who took charge in 1984, thought his company's prospects were on the upswing, the author writes. Eisner insisted he had nothing to hide. (Excerpt: 'Disneywar')
Eisner also may have imagined that Stewart would be uninterested in retelling old stories about how the CEO butted heads with virtually every executive, particularly after Disney President Frank Wells' death in 1994.
Eisner was wrong. Disney was still in trouble, particularly at ABC, which moved up from third place just this season. His hold on power was weakening. And he apparently didn't realize how many people in Hollywood felt so bitterly betrayed by him.
Now it's Eisner's turn.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Den of Thieves not only failed to deliver a Disneyesque happy ending — he casts Eisner as the villain.
DisneyWar now stands as the best of the fast-growing subgenre of business books about the selfishness and ineptitude that ended the era of the Imperial CEO.
While most focus on scandal-ridden Internet bubble icons, all show how complacent institutional investors and corporate directors enabled CEOs to wield autocratic power. They used it to entrench and enrich themselves, with disastrous results for shareholders and others.
That may not sound like a page turner, but DisneyWar is. Stewart is an accomplished storyteller who had the luck or foresight to stake out a company filled with colorful executives in a glamorous business — at the moment investors decided they had had enough.
Eisner was vulnerable after the 2001 terror attacks accelerated the fall in tech stocks. His closest ally, Texas' Bass family, had to sell its controlling stake in Disney to meet margin calls elsewhere.
By 2003, those still invested in Disney grew impatient for the stock price, and ABC's ratings, to rise. They feared that Eisner had alienated key partners, led by computer animation power Pixar, which hasn't renewed the deal that let Disney distribute hits such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
They also became fed up with Eisner's intolerance of dissent as he forced Roy Disney, Stanley Gold and other critics off the board.
Then Disney appeared startlingly vulnerable when Comcast made a hostile, if short-lived, takeover bid.
It all culminated with a shareholder vote last year in which 45% refused to back Eisner. The board replaced him as chairman, and he agreed to leave the CEO job in 2006. The company now is looking for a successor.
Eisner temporarily cut off cooperating with Stewart as the plot line inevitably changed.
But by then it was too late. The author had the goods to make the old stories relevant — and add new information with enough oh-my-God revelations to amaze or amuse even long-time Disney watchers. The characters and atmospherics are convincingly vivid. And Stewart's story speeds ahead as smoothly as a theme park ride, with a narrative more like a psychodrama than a business book.
Stewart begins by giving Eisner his due, showing how his energy, creativity and willingness to take risks woke Disney from its slumber in the 1980s. Yet the early successes led Eisner to believe he was as crucial to the company as Walt Disney had been.
It was only natural, then, that he make most major decisions — and a lot of minor ones.
Unfortunately, he substituted hubris for managerial training and temperament. For example, he belittled executives by telling them that he could fix ABC if he could focus on it for just one day a week. When he soured on people, he refused to talk to them.
Disney's corporate culture became toxic as Eisner flip-flopped on a series of executives — including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz, Sanford Litvack and Joe Roth — who hoped to become his anointed heir. He encouraged them, and then concluded that each fell short of his standards.
Among DisneyWar'smore startling revelations is how little Eisner seems to think even of Bob Iger, who finally did become president and is the only internal candidate to replace Eisner as CEO. Just a few years ago, Eisner said that his No. 2 lacked stature and therefore "can never succeed me."
Although Eisner thinks highly of his instincts, Stewart shows that they frequently failed Disney.
For example, Eisner wouldn't let ABC air CSI - a show Disney developed — and sniffed at ultimate hit Lost. In movies, he turned down Lord of the Rings, sold most rights to Sixth Sense before its blockbuster success and disparaged Finding Nemo.
Eisner's emotional approach to decisions failed him even more embarrassingly in disputes involving two of the people closest to him in his career.
He refused to pay a bonus contractually due to Katzenberg when the former studio chief left to launch rival DreamWorks SKG. Then Eisner nixed a proposed settlement for $90 million. After a lawsuit, in which Eisner was found to have said about his former protégé, "I think I hate the little midget," he agreed to settle for $295 million.
In his eagerness to dump Ovitz after 14 months on the job, though, Eisner agreed to a severance package worth $140 million. That led to the current shareholder lawsuit that made public Eisner's privately expressed opinion at the time that his former friend was a "psychopath."
While much of Stewart's material is public record, a lot of it isn't — and he rarely cites sources for the dialogue and scenes he creates. It makes for a smooth read. But it also leaves readers wondering how much faith to put into some of his anecdotes.
Still, Stewart's thorough research is evident in the wealth of material he amassed to support his withering conclusion: Eisner's "management failures," he says, "include an inability to delegate, a frequent mistrust of subordinates, impulsive and uncritical judgments, his pitting of one executive against another, his disrespect for any hierarchy or authority other than his own, his encouragement of a culture of spying and back-channeling, his frequent failure to acknowledge the achievements of others, and above all, his inability to groom a successor."
Eisner insisted on being at the center of everything Disney. Now Stewart has hit the bull's-eye."
