What a Disney Training Manual Can Teach About Working Together

I have heard people describe how much they enjoyed working at a Disney park even when they were doing ordinary shifts. I wondered what made the work feel worth doing on a day when the park was crowded and the tasks were familiar.

My only visit to a Disney park was on a trip to Hong Kong. I remember the people working there being kind. That was a small part of what I took home, but I could still remember it when I found a book about how another Disney park trained its staff.

A former Tokyo Disney Resort employee explains the work

I came across Riki Ōsumi’s book at Seoul Library. It was short and addressed a question I rarely got to ask as a guest: how do the people who work at a park learn what to do?

Ōsumi joined Oriental Land, which operates Tokyo Disney Resort, and worked in the custodial section of General Services. After leaving, he founded the Sokoriki Education Institute in 2012 to work on staff training and consulting.

The book describes Disney-style training through comics. That is an unexpectedly practical way to show people working through a procedure.

Using comics to show a routine

The drawings make it easy to imagine the moment a rule becomes useful. Short recaps give the reader a place to return to after seeing how it works.

What stayed with me first was the difference between a vague instruction and a short, precise one. “Clean the restroom” leaves several questions. Here is how the book makes one of them concrete.

A washbasin procedure, in brief

1. Put any litter around the basin in the bin.
2. Clean inside the basin with a sponge and detergent.
3. Wring out a cloth and wipe the inside of the basin with one half of it.
4. Use the other half to wipe around the outside.
5. Use half of a dry cloth to dry the basin.
6. Use the remaining half on the mirror and taps.
7. Replenish the paper supply when it is a third full or less.

A routine has to work for the whole team

I think of teamwork when I read examples like this. Talented people can still get in one another’s way if they have different ideas about who is doing what.

Watching a good football side gives you some feel for that. A gifted player has to know how a move depends on what the other people on the field are doing.

The book asks what makes it easier for people in an ordinary workplace to do their part well, and how much of that can be built into the way a team trains.

Ōsumi organizes his argument in five steps. He expects a team that puts the procedures to use to see several changes.

1. Routine work gets easier to coordinate.
2. New staff learn what good work looks like.
3. People have more reasons to speak across roles and departments.
4. Staff can see how their tasks contribute to what the organization is there to do.

Step 1. Write for the result the team needs

Plenty of workplaces have manuals people read once and rarely open again. Ōsumi suspects some of them are simply too vague to answer the questions that arise during a shift.

He describes three ways people can lose a connection to the task in front of them.

1. Stranger — A person is willing to help but cannot tell what to do.
2. Disregard — A person treats the standard casually and the result begins to vary.
3. Mindlessness — A familiar task gets done without attention.

A clear procedure gives all three people something to check. A new employee should be able to use it and reach a result the rest of the team will recognize.

Here is what Ōsumi asks a manual to do.

• Raise the ability of the whole team.
• Address confusion, disregard and routines performed on autopilot.
• Make the expected result achievable by whoever is on shift.
• Say what has to be done and when.
• Make the order of the work and the standard for finishing clear.
• Start with the result you want, then work back through the steps.

Step 2. Bring the procedure into the workplace

The book mentions a 20–60–20 rule of thumb about how work is distributed across a team. Ōsumi is interested in what happens when you change the way the work is taught.

His aim is to give more people a reliable way to take on tasks, including people who have had less practice.

A new staff member might not know how to answer a visitor’s question. In the example he gives, the employee can ask the visitor to wait briefly, then call a dedicated number for an answer.

Some procedures deal with messes around the rides. The book uses a cleanup example to show why the order of a routine should be easy to follow under pressure.

The book’s cleanup example

1. First contain the affected spot.
2. Apply the product specified for that stage.
3. Allow the specified time for it to work.
4. Collect the material using the designated equipment.
5. Treat the affected area as the procedure directs.
6. Take the waste to the designated disposal point.

The cleanup example is there to show how a manual sets priorities, from dealing with the immediate mess to leaving the site ready for use.

What to carry over from Step 2

• Reduce unnecessary variation in routine work.
• Give the whole team practice using the procedure.
• Make it possible to check instructions after the first demonstration.
• Identify the first thing that matters when you write the steps.
• Use the time a reliable routine gives back to pay attention to guests.

Step 3. Pair a new employee with a mentor

What Ōsumi calls the “brother system” pairs a new staff member with a more experienced one for close, one-to-one guidance.

The mentor gets to know how the other person learns and what might be getting in their way. In practice, the relationship is what makes it possible to ask for help early.

The mentor can give someone time to think about a mistake, and say exactly what they did well when a task goes right.

Ōsumi describes several parts of the arrangement.

• Give the new employee a regular person to learn from.
• Find a task on which the new employee can build confidence.
• What the mentor can do
  • Get to know the person beyond the immediate task.
  • Leave room for them to think through a problem themselves.
  • Give them a meaningful responsibility when they are ready.
• The arrangement helps a new person learn both the written procedure and what it takes to use it well.

Step 4. Give people a chance to see whom they helped

Ōsumi sees value in the moment an employee discovers that something they did actually helped someone. An ordinary thank-you from a guest can make that visible.

He describes three small chances for staff to offer help during the day.

1. Pick up litter before it becomes someone else’s problem.
2. Offer to take a photo for a guest.
3. Help a guest find where they are going.

In his account, staff could expect to answer questions and give directions in the course of a shift. Those ordinary conversations made it possible for a guest to notice the person who helped.

An office has its own small opportunities, such as refilling paper at the printer or picking up something that fell. The book asks whether the people around you notice and thank you for taking the trouble.

What to carry over from Step 4

• Give people a chance to see the effect of their work.
• Build opportunities to help into the routine.
• Remember that directions and other small favors matter to the person who needs them.
• Make gratitude something people can express in the course of the day.
• Say thank you directly when you are responsible for a team.

Step 5. Keep the purpose of the work in view

Ōsumi distinguishes between a duty you can teach in a manual and a mission that asks people to exercise judgment.

• Mission — Use your judgment to work toward a shared purpose.
• Duty — Use a procedure for work that has to be repeatable.
  • It is work someone has to do.
  • The result should be consistent across staff and shifts.
  • The procedure should be clear enough to follow without having to solve it again.

In the book’s suggested balance, duties take up roughly 60 percent of the work. The rest is space to think about what would make a guest’s visit better.

Finishing every item in a procedure can leave questions about what a particular person needs. The mission gives staff a reason to notice and respond.

Ōsumi describes a practice he calls cross-communication, in which people with different levels of seniority and experience talk face to face. A conversation about something that went well that day can lead to a more specific question about what guests value.

Talking about an actual encounter gives a team somewhere to begin when it asks why the job matters.

Here are the points the book returns to.

• Make room for both mission and duty.
• Use conversations across roles to connect daily work to its purpose.
• Give everybody in the room a fair chance to speak plainly.
• Look at how the founding ideas took shape in practice.
• Listen for points where people recognize the same experience.
• Choose a question that helps the group see what it can do.

Why the book asks a crowd to applaud

Ōsumi also describes asking spectators to applaud as a parade begins. In his account, the request has a practical purpose as well as a festive one.

A person clapping is less likely to be holding the rope or pushing toward the front at that moment. I liked seeing how a small invitation could change what a crowd was doing with its hands.

A member of staff can use that invitation without giving the crowd a lecture. The example brings together two things the book keeps asking about: what outcome the team needs and what it can easily ask people to do.

The instructions I would take back to work

I expected a short account of rules behind the scenes. The comics made it easy to see people using those rules, or running up against their limits. I came away thinking about which procedures in my own workplace would make a new colleague’s day easier and which decisions I would want that colleague to make for themselves.

Book details

How to: Disney Systems and Manuals

Author

Riki Ōsumi (Korean translation by Son Na-young)

Korean edition published

August 31, 2021

ISBN-13

9791188166329

View on YES24

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