The Danger Zone Nobody Warned Bob Iger About
In an HBR interview, Bob Iger says Disney picked his successor on strategic skill and missed what mattered most: whether that person could keep building a team through sustained crisis. He also sorts his own time into three buckets and lets the rest go.
Prompted by “Bob Iger on Power, Succession, and Leading Disney Through Upheaval”, HBR (Nitin Nohria).
Bob Iger said something in his HBR interview with Nitin Nohria that most CEOs won't say out loud. When Disney chose his successor in 2019, the board tested for strategic skill. What it missed was whether that person could hold up, and keep building a team, through sustained crisis rather than steady growth.
He also described how he spends his own time: the things he has to do no matter what, the things with real brand-level risk, and a smaller pile where his personal involvement changes the outcome. Everything else, he deliberately lets go.
What does that look like at a 30-person company?
Iger had Disney's brand and balance sheet behind him, but the sorting habit applies at any size. Most owners never sort their week that way. Everything feels equally urgent, so the best hours get eaten by the same low-value tasks as everything else. And succession, when it gets discussed at all, tends to test for competence under normal conditions, not for how someone holds up when three things break at once.
Test it out: go through next week's calendar and tag every meeting or task as must-do, real risk, or “only I add value here.” Don't fix anything yet. Just see how the week actually splits. Many owners are surprised how little lands in that third bucket and how much of their week goes to the other two.
Sorting where your time actually goes, and who could hold things together if you stepped back, is regular work in 1:1 Coaching.
Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗