Hardwiring Magic

by Hardwiring Magic Consulting Group, Valerie Cockerell, Dan Cockerell

Take 3 leaders with a combined 67 years of Disney experience, add two experienced industrial engineers, and you get Hardwiring Magic. Great companies know that delivering their promise consistently is the key to growth. They also understand that their people are their most valuable resource. Lee, Dan and Valerie Cockerell, have partnered with business engineers, Jorge Ismael Torres and Enrique Sierra, to create a customized service framework approach and proprietary software tool that will enable your organization to deliver a consistent world class service experience that will differentiate you from your competition. Lee is the former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World® Resort. He is a US Army veteran with deep experience in operations management. As the Senior Operating Executive for ten years Lee led a team of 40,000 Cast Members and was responsible for the operations of 20 resort hotels, 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, a shopping & entertainment village and the ESPN sports and recreation complex in addition to the ancillary operations which supported the number one vacation destination in the world. Before Disney, Lee worked with Marriott International for 16 years achieving the position of Vice President of Food and Beverage Operations Planning Worldwide. Lee implemented clear expectations for performance, installed effective systems and performance metrics. Dan started as a parking attendant at Epcot at Walt Disney World and retired as the Vice-President of the Magic Kingdom. His career took him to Disneyland Paris as part of the opening team in 1992. After spending 5 years in France, Dan relocated to Florida and held a variety of executive roles at the Walt Disney World Resort, both in the theme parks and resort hotels. His last 9 years with the company, he was successively Vice President of Epcot, Vice president of Disney’s Hollywood Studios and eventually Vice President of the Magic Kingdom where he led 12,000 cast members and entertained over 20 million guests annually. Valerie spent most of her career in retail, opening and managing multiple merchandise locations at Disneyland Paris. When relocated to Walt Disney World, she managed assortments for World of Disney and both Epcot and the Disney Cruise Line. She also spent 6 years as a consultant for the world-renowned Disney Institute. She facilitated professional development classes and custom programs in both French and English. She drew from her international management experience in retail and operations to teach Disney’s approach to Leadership Excellence and Customer Service. Jorge is a Culture Architect and Senior Executive with over 25 years of experience in operations performance improvement and culture transformations. He has helped multiple organizations drastically improve and sustain performance results (safety, service, efficiency, morale, etc.) in service-intensive industries such as Healthcare, Hospitality and Transportation. His methodology has been successfully implemented in more than 100 operations in over 15 countries including the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Canada and China. His passion is to work directly with front-line leaders to teach and develop strong and effective leadership skills so they can ensure behavior consistency, process execution and great teamwork. Enrique is an executive Business Architect with broad experience in strategic modeling, analytics, process engineering and implementation of ROI-driven solutions. With 25+ years of experience as a process optimization specialist, he has been a results-driven executive consultant for more than 75 programs for Fortune 500 companies like HP, Levi’s, Praxair, Johnson Controls, Ashland Chemical, HBO, Grupo Mexico, SGS and Oneida.

63 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2021

Reviews

[Pablo Ladrón de Guevara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short self-explanatory book about how Disney managers and employees have been managing customer experience for over 20 years by changing first the behavior of the workers and making them part of the company's vision.

The book is a quick read that can serve as a starting point for developing new strategies for small to large businesses.

It is suggested that you have some prior administrative experience to apply the principles.

4 stars due to the lack of a storyline and examples of how to apply the principles in different fields.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's solid but compared to the other books by Lee Cockerell, it's lacking. It does set a framework to follow when it comes to service and tracking satisfaction, but just isn't as in depth as I personally would like.