Ed Who and Pompus Jay
Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:20 am
From MiceAge
And while all of that is going on, this winter will also see the usual refurbishments and upkeep schedule that has become the hallmark of Senior Vice President Greg Emmer. The last bit of 50th gold is being removed from the Main Street lamp posts as you read this, and work begins on repainting the Castle next week with paint tarps covering it in sections through February.
It might be good to remind folks that just a couple short years ago out in Florida, Greg Emmer was a standard Vice President with a reputation for traditional Disney standards and Ed Grier was one of his underlings at the Director level. Greg got a promotion to Senior Vice President and a move out to Disneyland to be Matt Ouimet’s operations expert, and in the meantime Ed Grier was plucked from lower executive obscurity to be a figurehead in Tokyo and then got a big promotion to the President of Disneyland. Ed hasn’t made any executive changes inside TDA, primarily because until just recently he himself was reporting up to the Vice President level himself and in Jay Rasulo’s new "global" structure the spider web of executive responsibility is so confusing now between Orlando and Anaheim that no one can really keep it straight anyway.
In the last two weeks Ed has been making a concerted effort to get out and walk the parks, with a few hours spent wandering around on Christmas Eve and on New Years Eve. It was a nice thought, but came only after his Human Resources handlers heard the grumblings about the invisible Ed loud and clear. It’s going to take a whole lot more shoe leather to approach the level of face time Matt Ouimet established with the Cast Members in just his first 90 days.
Ed now has a lot on his administrative plate, and not much of it is appetizing. He can rubber stamp Jay Rasulo’s plans for Anaheim for eternity, but he still has to deal with turnover rates for hourly Cast Members that have spiraled out of control, and a worsening morale problem for those CMs that have stuck around for more than a year. In addition to the hourly woes, Ed watches over downtrodden and overworked management that get e-mailed endless press releases from Jay Rasulo about the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit the theme parks make each year while they get the same measly 3.5% annual pay raise they’ve been getting for the last five years. That’s yet another example of how out-of-touch and pompous Rasulo comes across to most folks in the parks, as he touts record profits quarter after quarter but hasn’t done anything of any real substance to thank the front line management and their troops who made it all possible.
What worries senior managers who have worked at Disneyland for 20 years or more is that the office of the presidency at Disneyland now looks to be an increasingly meaningless position that will be occupied by the latest corporate climber for a year or two before being replaced by the next suit in line. While you’ve got a facility like Disneyland that has been in business for over 50 years and has to plan for the very long term if it is to succeed, the very nature of this new corporate structure Jay Rasulo has created only lends itself to executive leaders who think in the here and now.
Ed arrived this past fall, just as the new fiscal year had started and inherited an agenda set by his predecessor. It will be a year before Ed can craft his own fiscal priorities, after he figures them out of course, and by the time those priorities show up in the parks he may have moved on to Disney Consumer Products, Procter & Gamble or General Electric and his successor may have no interest in shepherding them to reality. Couple that with a soulless new division called "Disney Parks" that tries to snuff out any local charm or individuality at each property, and you have a recipe for some very interesting times ahead.
The one wild card in all of this, of course, is John Lasseter. His incessant drive for traditional Disney quality and his deep passion for Disneyland specifically is the one light at the end of this corporate tunnel. Lasseter has been crawling around the submarine ride more and more lately, and his recent field trip dragging along Ed to go ride Space Mountain and California Screamin’ with him is typical of his boyish charm. That both he and Ed share a distaste for most of the current offerings inside DCA is also a good sign, and it at least bodes well that Ed Grier feels DCA in its current form is simply not up to modern Disney standards. (He’s of course looking at DCA through a Tokyo DisneySea prism, but that can only be good for DCA’s future.)
For now though, Ed remains largely the photogenic executive ready to stand off to the side at the next Jay Rasulo media event. You’ll see him doing just that in a few weeks as Rasulo blusteringly announces rides and projects any Disneyland fan with an Internet connection already knows about.
And while all of that is going on, this winter will also see the usual refurbishments and upkeep schedule that has become the hallmark of Senior Vice President Greg Emmer. The last bit of 50th gold is being removed from the Main Street lamp posts as you read this, and work begins on repainting the Castle next week with paint tarps covering it in sections through February.
It might be good to remind folks that just a couple short years ago out in Florida, Greg Emmer was a standard Vice President with a reputation for traditional Disney standards and Ed Grier was one of his underlings at the Director level. Greg got a promotion to Senior Vice President and a move out to Disneyland to be Matt Ouimet’s operations expert, and in the meantime Ed Grier was plucked from lower executive obscurity to be a figurehead in Tokyo and then got a big promotion to the President of Disneyland. Ed hasn’t made any executive changes inside TDA, primarily because until just recently he himself was reporting up to the Vice President level himself and in Jay Rasulo’s new "global" structure the spider web of executive responsibility is so confusing now between Orlando and Anaheim that no one can really keep it straight anyway.
In the last two weeks Ed has been making a concerted effort to get out and walk the parks, with a few hours spent wandering around on Christmas Eve and on New Years Eve. It was a nice thought, but came only after his Human Resources handlers heard the grumblings about the invisible Ed loud and clear. It’s going to take a whole lot more shoe leather to approach the level of face time Matt Ouimet established with the Cast Members in just his first 90 days.
Ed now has a lot on his administrative plate, and not much of it is appetizing. He can rubber stamp Jay Rasulo’s plans for Anaheim for eternity, but he still has to deal with turnover rates for hourly Cast Members that have spiraled out of control, and a worsening morale problem for those CMs that have stuck around for more than a year. In addition to the hourly woes, Ed watches over downtrodden and overworked management that get e-mailed endless press releases from Jay Rasulo about the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit the theme parks make each year while they get the same measly 3.5% annual pay raise they’ve been getting for the last five years. That’s yet another example of how out-of-touch and pompous Rasulo comes across to most folks in the parks, as he touts record profits quarter after quarter but hasn’t done anything of any real substance to thank the front line management and their troops who made it all possible.
What worries senior managers who have worked at Disneyland for 20 years or more is that the office of the presidency at Disneyland now looks to be an increasingly meaningless position that will be occupied by the latest corporate climber for a year or two before being replaced by the next suit in line. While you’ve got a facility like Disneyland that has been in business for over 50 years and has to plan for the very long term if it is to succeed, the very nature of this new corporate structure Jay Rasulo has created only lends itself to executive leaders who think in the here and now.
Ed arrived this past fall, just as the new fiscal year had started and inherited an agenda set by his predecessor. It will be a year before Ed can craft his own fiscal priorities, after he figures them out of course, and by the time those priorities show up in the parks he may have moved on to Disney Consumer Products, Procter & Gamble or General Electric and his successor may have no interest in shepherding them to reality. Couple that with a soulless new division called "Disney Parks" that tries to snuff out any local charm or individuality at each property, and you have a recipe for some very interesting times ahead.
The one wild card in all of this, of course, is John Lasseter. His incessant drive for traditional Disney quality and his deep passion for Disneyland specifically is the one light at the end of this corporate tunnel. Lasseter has been crawling around the submarine ride more and more lately, and his recent field trip dragging along Ed to go ride Space Mountain and California Screamin’ with him is typical of his boyish charm. That both he and Ed share a distaste for most of the current offerings inside DCA is also a good sign, and it at least bodes well that Ed Grier feels DCA in its current form is simply not up to modern Disney standards. (He’s of course looking at DCA through a Tokyo DisneySea prism, but that can only be good for DCA’s future.)
For now though, Ed remains largely the photogenic executive ready to stand off to the side at the next Jay Rasulo media event. You’ll see him doing just that in a few weeks as Rasulo blusteringly announces rides and projects any Disneyland fan with an Internet connection already knows about.
