What A Business Can Learn from Jungle Cruise

OK, I don't mean the movie. Sorry, for the catfish. I mean the historic ride... Sorry.

In business class, we would cover well-run businesses. Go figure. Disney parks in the early '90s were a great example. We learned how all employee access doors are built into the sets so they're functionally invisible. We learned how the face characters NEVER break character. So, if you're filming in the tunnels under the park and you see a character, they will act as if they are in the park surrounded by fans. We also learned about the Jungle Cruise.

Jungle Cruise staff members have something like 7 pages of script to memorize. They have 9 pages of ad-libs they can inject (personally, this was always an issue for me as I didn't really think a scripted ad-lib counted as an ad-lib). That's when they hit us with it. They had 18 pages of Philosophy.

18 pages...

They had more pages on philosophy than they did script and ad-libs combined. Digest that for a second. It's OK. This is printed. I don't physically have to wait for you to take a moment.

Why? Really, why?? 18 pages? Then it starts to dawn on you. Every word was designed for that ride. Every single word was the script of ad-lib. It was thought out with great premeditation. They built the script, and they built the ad-libs and the philosophy was to tell you the Why. Simply put, if you just shot something off the cuff, it could break the people on the ride out of the story. That and that alone, keeping them in the moment, in the story was the most important thing. If you make a joke about a cell phone, they are no longer in the story. They are simply sweaty parkgoers spending thousands of dollars a day to be at a Disney Park. This is why many plays won't let you in after the first 15 minutes of the show. People are now in the story. The doors opening and light shining in breaks the reverie.

Disney got this, but the bigger concept they got was to let their staff know the Why. By building that in, the staff now was fully integrated and would more readily learn the script and the ad-libs to stay fully in character, and keep the people on the attraction fully in the story. Too often managers and owners are too busy and simply want to say, "Because I said so." When instead, by giving the Why, they can have their people better tuned in to what they are doing as a whole.

One of the best things I was taught in training people which was reiterated by my friend Dan Vega, was teaching employees on a new task Why the task is important. It can seem minuscule and unimportant, but when they learn the Why, they learn how many things depend on what seems like unimportant processes to be followed.

If you'd like to know the Why behind Sharing the Credit donating 40% of its profitability to Charity, contact us here. You can tell us your Why behind the charity you want your business supporting.

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Doing Good Is Good Business

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