Review: The Ride of a Lifetime

I was recommended a few years back by a colleague to read through The Ride of a Lifetime. It’s an autobiographical memoir from the then—and current, unretired—CEO of the Walt Disney Corporation, Bob Iger. His book is primarily one of business, management, and leadership, recalling the totality of his career at Disney to draw lessons and give advice. In that way, within the first few chapters, I found myself comparing this book directly to another executive memoir I recently read, Disrupting the Game, in perspective and posture1.

Ride of a Lifetime goes through some of Iger’s early life but quickly hones in on his career at ABC Entertainment, starting from the lowest ranks of a stage manager—which, from his colorful descriptions, sounded closer to an internship than any sort of management. He eventually worked his way up the org chart, first running shows, then departments within ABC, eventually getting promoted into the executive ranks at the company. Through a pair of acquisitions—Capital Cities buying ABC, and Disney buying Capital Cities/ABC—Iger rode the series of mergers to the top ranks of Disney Corporation, eventually succeeding Michael Eisner as the CEO of the company for about 14 years. The book was written and published before he retired the first time around, though by the end it alluded to the end of his run at the expiration of his contract as chief executive.

And it was a hell of a run. As CEO, Iger expanded Disney’s theme parks, toys and merchandise deals and licensing, but the most impactful parts of his tenure were negotiating a series of acquisitions: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox. The rest of Disney’s businesses rely on their core intellectual properties, which means that the company needs to continually sustain popular characters, TV shows, and movies. The previous CEO struggled with keeping the content pipeline healthy and was ousted for that deficiency, and Iger’s move to buy some of the best-regarded franchises and creative talent in the industry—some, like Pixar at the time, was in direct competition with Disney Animation—paid off handsomely, both in personal stature and corporate profits.

The book goes in-depth into each of these deals, spending full chapters detailing how the strategy came about, the key discussions and negotiations, and all the twists and turns along the way. It’s a fascinating glimpse into how business development works at the highest levels: executives wining and dining each other, flying around the world to hammer out terms in a weekend marathon, dealing with multitudes of important people both internally and externally as well as answering to investors and the board. It’s also a reminder and reinforcement of some of the infamously egotistic and quixotic personalities of the entertainment industry; Iger consistently contrasts himself as the humble and logical narrator amidst the celebrity chaos. It validates the environment that the HBO series Succession created for its show2.

It’s on this topic of succession that shows some cracks in the façade, that Iger’s tenure at Disney, while indisputably great, is not as idyllic as his framing. The final chapters of the book talk about the need for a media company like Disney to embrace technology, even to disrupt themselves, and his answer was to launch the Disney+ streaming service. In reality, Disney+ was one of several streaming services launched at the time to chase Netflix, and most are now struggling or failing with stalled subscriber numbers and high churn rates. Iger kicked off this strategy but then passed it to his successor, Bob Chapek, who tried to execute said strategy for only 2 years before getting fired by the board and having Iger return for a second run. The lack of a thought-out succession plan, while isolating other Disney executives who were promoted and waiting for the top role, contradicts Iger’s stated beliefs on the role of strong leadership. He wrote a chapter on how painful it was for him to succeed Eisner and the hoops he jumped through to get the job as a dark horse candidate, only to succumb to a different type of corporate drama and turbulence.

In reading through Ride of a Lifetime, I’m struck by how all-consuming the job is for a top executive of a major corporation, much like Disrupting the Game. The mindset shifts wholly to the business, and seemingly everything else—hobbies, family, leisure—are minor side stories that in the retelling reinforce the primary ebbs and flows of work. An anecdote in the book mentions attending an NBA game with his son, which sounds like some wholesome family time, until he suffered what was later diagnosed as a panic attack, attributed to the stress he felt dealing with an uncertain CEO succession process. The story Iger tells has its characters and lessons and the hero’s journey, but I imagine it’d be impossible for most of his readers to truly relate to the protagonist.