Finding beauty in balance

I had an opportunity to visit Disney’s Imagineering today; I left inspired. Not by the ‘products’ of Disney, but by the culture they’ve built. It seems Disney Imagineering has achieved what I might call a cultural elegance; that elegance perhaps made possibly by their achievement of true balance—and by that I mean a few things.

Balance between Disney’s remarkable history and its future; it was clear the organization had a deep affection for its founder, Walt Disney, whose spirit was omnipresent. Yet at the same time, they were very future focused, evident by their robotic experimentation and state of the art visualization techniques.

Balance between the physical and the digital; this was cool, 40’x20’ scale maquettes of theme parks were being built in windowless halls that smelled of machine oil from band saws and lathes. And in the rooms next-door, hardware and software developers we creating digital animatronics that required a second and third look to be sure it wasn’t the ‘real thing.’

Balance between entrepreneurial spirit and corporate sophistication; Disney is $36 billion Company yet Imagineering felt completely unscripted and spontaneous, and more engaging as a result.

Sound familiar? My thought exactly. Teague too seeks balance between its history and future, between the physical and digital, and between spirited spontaneity and composed calculation. Now we just got to work on that $36 billion!