NYT feature chronicles the Iger vs. Chapek saga at Disney

This is an exceptional piece of journalism. This is why I pay for a subscription.

All accounts of Chapek seem to imply that he was not the right guy for the job. But the article ends with the same question that I've been asking. How did Iger pick the wrong guy and see it through so quickly, even when he seemed to have his doubts then? He clearly didn't really want to retire.

I come out of this feeling more sympathetic towards Chapek than I do Iger and the board.

The article would have been a lot shorter if they didn't use "Mr" nearly every time they said a name. I don't recall seeing that before. Isn't it an accepted practice to use the full name the first time a name is stated in an article and then use the last name there after?

The Times generally always includes the appropriate honorific.

For some reason that made it a tough read for me.

Yeah, that's been in the NYT Style Guide for a long time, and they're probably the last ones to do it. They have relaxed it in sports and sometimes cultural stuff like TV and film. I've even seen them use gender neutral "Mx." AP Style used to require it only when quoting, but I suspect that's been dropped by now. Consistent style is one of the things that makes it easier to spot legitimate journalism, and I like it because it makes things easier to read, and usually more concise.

It's not very flattering for Iger. For a guy who otherwise has demonstrated a lot of self-awareness, I'm not sure what was going on here. But also, I don't know what walking away from that kind of success involves. Do people at that level wrap their whole identity in the job?

For some CEOs, only thing larger than their compensation is their ego. Takes a certain personality/type person to do the job well though. And a ton of time dedicated to the company/business to get the job and perform the job. Finding balances is often times a challenge.

Article doesn't paint a pretty picture of Iger. Ego wouldn't allow him to leave. Bad enough. But when he did step down, he set it up for Chapek to fail (and Iger's actions post-stepdown made it more likely Chapek would fail). All presumably with the idea that he could come back in and save the day. And don't pay me to come back because I don't want it to look like its about money. Instead lets make it look like something worse: my ego needed to boost of having to step back in as the white knight.

Jeff:

Do people at that level wrap their whole identity in the job?

Not just at that level. I used to think I'd "leave this job feet-first", because I could not imagine who I was apart from what I did. That's tied up in a lot of very old programming.

That's fascinating to me, and wouldn't mind hearing more about your journey if you're willing to share. I've had the opposite problem, in so many job changes. I think it's because I got to my "dream job" pretty quickly (radio), where I found it was a terrible job in a terrible industry. I don't truly know what work satisfaction is.

It's amazing how much this sounds like DisneyWar: The Sequel. A similar plot just with a different cast of characters from the original.

You know what would be great (but would never happen)? Bob Chapek as a special guest on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

I suspect that not even Conan could make Chapek seem funny.

Jeff:

wouldn't mind hearing more about your journey if you're willing to share

The short version: From a pretty young age, I believed that I was valued only for my accomplishments, and those accomplishments had a very short half-life. So, to remain "valued", I had to continue to accomplish things, no matter how big the pile of past accomplishments was. Next, combine this with the idea that only Other People can pass judgement on whether I was worthy or not.

As you can imagine, that's a tough existence.

It turns out the thing I was best at was "school", and that was something that my family-of-origin considered important. And, "school" has a well-defined sequence of things-to-accomplish: (1) Get good grades in K-12. (2) Get into a "good" undergraduate program, and graduate with good grades. (2) Get into a "good" graduate program, and get a PhD. (3) Land an Assistant Professor job at a "good" research university. (4) Get promoted to Associate with Tenure. (5) Get promoted to Full Professor.

Along the way, there are award papers, and successful grant proposals, and invited talks, and rooms full of students who write down everything you say. It's intoxicating, which you will notice includes the root "toxic." But it worked. And, because it worked, it was the source of my value in every sense of the word, so I could not imagine what it would be like to live without it.

Things fell apart when I was promoted to Full, at the ripe old age of 43. Once you get to that point, there is nothing more to accomplish. But, if my value is based on continuing-to-accomplish-things, "nothing more to accomplish" is a bug, not a feature, and staring at another 20-30 years of that was unbearable. My drinking was always at least a little problematic, but that's when I was truly out of control. Over the next four or five years I worked on slowly burning my life to the ground until I finally hit a crisis point that I couldn't ignore or explain away.

I spent the time since then getting (and staying) sober, digging through some of my core stuff in psychoanalysis, re-building how I thought of and valued myself, and re-arranging my relationships to jettison those which no longer worked. This took a LONG time but it was absolutely worth doing.

I am still trying to figure out what my relationship to work actually is, but now I know what it isn't.

As an aside: If, as you read this, any of this resonates with any of you, I highly recommend this book. I read it pretty early in my recovery phase, and it helped me frame a lot of what I was going through.

https://store.cac.org/produ...nd-updated

Thank you for sharing that. I hit my "nothing more" at 23, when I was already young and stupid anyway, so it was easier to deal with. But it took almost 15 years after that to realize that I had to manage my career instead of letting it happen to me. I also don't really understand what work means to me, but like you, I know what it isn't. Identity is still a mystery too, because I don't know if I've ever really "belonged" anywhere in any context. Talk about a midlife crisis. And I'm nearing a new record for a single job... three years. I'm sure that sounds completely foreign to most people.

I can relate to the rebuilding thing, though for me, it has been more about reframing the past while forming a new game plan for now and the future. Not officially understanding you have ASD and ADHD until you're 48 is not ideal. I've simultaneously given myself a little more grace for past outcomes with this new context, while currently beating myself up for never seeing it in the first place (which is also unreasonable since I am not, in fact, any kind of expert on those conditions).

It is worth noting that I didn't understand the first five paragraphs of that until doing the stuff in the sixth, and that took as long it took. Grace could be hard to come by during that time.

Yeah, I imagine that addiction is an impediment for any self-development. Dax Shepard talks a lot about that on Armchair Expert. Lots of people never get there.

It is. I'm also pretty sure that Just Not Drinking would not have gotten me very far without all the rest of it. There was a period where I was Just Not Drinking but hadn't really sorted the rest out when I had a couple of solid rounds of suicidal ideation. At least then I understood what the drinking was for---it was the solution, not the problem, but also was the problem if you follow me.

I've got a pretty decent gig, but when I can walk away...I'm walking away. This job, and any job, has always been, at least for me, the means to live my life. I give it my all (which means a lot of sacrifice) because that is the only way I know how to work...but when it's done, it's done.

Thanks for sharing that, Brian. I was on that track for a while (achievement = meaning) as well, but kind of got derailed in the grad school phase and simultaneously entered recovery for addiction. My life took a sharp turn and now I am a pastor which has a whole slew of entanglement between job, identity, and calling.