You might “like” Disney, but that’s childsplay in comparison to my next guest. In this episode of Designed Today, my guest Adam Landefeld, the SVP of Product at Domo, shares insights he’s learned from the original Disney Imagineers and how he’s applied it to building software products.
Adam has been passionate about all things Disney from an early age. Studying what made Walt, Walt. Today he’s been able to become friends with many of the remaining original Disney Imagineers. If you’ve not heard of an Imagineer before, these were the folks that Walt hired to help bring a bit of the Disney Magic Cinema to his highly anticipated theme park, Disneyland.
You can find Adam on Linkedin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamlandefeld/
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Designed Today brings you insights to help bridge the world of Design & Business. Learn how you can improve your design, branding, marketing, and advertising skills all in one place. In this show, we’ll explore the startup world, flexing the entrepreneurial muscles, from a user experience perspective.
Episode #85 – Podcast Transcription.
Dillon Winspear (00:00:00):
You might like Disney, but I guarantee not to the extent of my next guest. Learn how his years of studying Walt has made him better at building products.
What’s up my friends? Thanks for coming back and joining me for another episode of design today, episode 85! I’m your host, Dillon Winspear. And before we get into the interview today, I want to say thanks for all the messages I received this last week, as I posted some pictures to the design today, Instagram account of my 10 year anniversary with my wife at Zion National Park. It was dope and if you’ve never been there, put it on your bucket list. Thank you for the messages. Prior to taking that week off and again this week, I’ve been able to do a handful of coaching sessions with you, the listeners. I love these sessions. We’ve talked about everything from soft skills, to resumes and portfolio reviews to career moves and career strategy, even down to a few things that felt more like therapy than anything else, and that’s okay. Now I’ve got a birthday coming up at the beginning of September and I want to give you all a gift from me. From now through the entire month of September, any coaching session booked using the promo code B-Day gift will receive 25% off the coaching session. I’ve not run any specials on this coaching session option since I started the coaching sessions. So take advantage of this while you can. There’s only a few slots that are open every week and many of them are filled over the next couple of weeks. So jump on this and schedule them soon. I hope to see you then. My guest today is Adam Landefeld. He’s the SVP of product where I work at Domo. I worked with him for 40 years and have enjoyed our conversations a ton. He’s also a huge Disney fan. And I mean like, huge Disney fan. A few months back, we’re exchanging some text messages and he was talking a bit about some of the core things and principles that he’s learned while studying Walton, the Disney Imagineers. And stirred up an idea where I needed to have him come on the podcast and share how he’s been able to become a better product leader and a builder of product by studying Walton Imagineers. This was easy to get him to agree to. So let’s jump into this week’s episode featuring Adam Landefeld. Having an opportunity to come and do this. This is pretty fun, especially in pandemic time. So thank you very much.
Adam Landefeld (00:02:23):
Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to it.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:26):
An opportunity to talk face to face with somebody.
Adam Landefeld (00:02:28):
With a human, with a real human.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:30):
Yep, here we are. Our topic of conversation today is something that I think you even wore a shirt to get us ready for it. Did you do that on purpose?
Adam Landefeld (00:02:39):
I’ve always been wearing one like this.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:41):
You are always wearing a Disney shirt?
Adam Landefeld (00:02:42):
Yeah, I think. I think I’ve gone like a consecutive 90 days.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:46):
So that wasn’t intentional.
Adam Landefeld (00:02:48):
No.
Dillon Winspear (00:02:49):
Okay, well, we’re gonna start talking a little bit about Disney. And we’ll get into why we’re talking Disney. But before we do that, I want you to introduce yourself and give a little bit of background how you got to where you’re at today as a Senior Vice President of Product at Domo. What is your journey in a two-minute nutshell?
Adam Landefeld (00:03:08):
Oh, two minutes. Well, or four? Don’t matter. So my name is Adam Landefeld, I’m SVP of product for Domo. I have quite an interesting journey. I always thought I was going to be a designer. I always thought that was my track. I didn’t know that. I went to design school. That was my college education. It wasn’t CS. And so I came out of design school before we had sort of this renaissance of UX D. So I came out when designers were still commoditized and they were still like the necessary evil. And I just got, I discovered that I wasn’t super marketable. I had, you know, I came from a high school, sort of background of winning several national art contests with my pen and ink and-.
Dillon Winspear (00:03:55):
What?
Adam Landefeld (00:03:56):
Yeah, so I kind of came out of that, got a scholarship for two years at the Artists Institute San Fernando off a National Art contest that was put on by the VFW of all places. And you know, kind of came out and realized whoa, like I am, I’m starving to death, like, I have no money. And I’m taking jobs like designing t shirts. And I’m doing like all kinds of like, just crazy off the wall. If you ever bought one of those two for one discount cards and saw the like school artwork on it. I was doing the school artwork on those cards at one point. And so, it was fun. Like it really taught me a lot. I learned more about business during those days than I did about maximizing my design capabilities. But, you know, somewhere in there, I worked at a design shop where the owner of it came in one day and said, I’ve heard about this thing called the internet. Does anybody know anything about the internet? And I was like, well, Mark Ma had this insert that’s three pages long that talked about HTML, and he was like, great. You’re the internet expert. And I was like, Okay, I’m not sure where this is going. That was like 95. And so, I kind of started this journey of teaching myself programming, which wasn’t new. I was the kid. When you’re in like junior high, I was the kid who, when everybody else was out in the summer playing sports, I signed up for summer school to learn how to program like, because the school had a computer and it was the only computer in the county. And I wanted access to it. So I signed up for summer school. So it wasn’t weird that I would go there. But I just got on a track where I was like, you know what? It’s just as creative as painting and drawing coding software. Like it’s just as creative and it started to become this creative outlet for me to start learning how to and building software applications. And so, it was probably only a two-year journey from when I was a dyed in the wool designer to an on the line code writer writing Java for software shop.
Dillon Winspear (00:05:51):
Right.
Adam Landefeld (00:05:52):
So that was kind of what started me on this journey. And then during the course of that, what I found is that I was always that engineer that all of the business people hated. Because I would question everything. I would say, why do you want me to build that? I don’t see any value in that, I don’t think it’s going to help anybody, I think I understand what the customer actually needs better. So I kind of ended up on this journey, where, you know, a little coerce, a little bit forced, a little bit like people just like get out of here, they start pushing, you know, start getting more and more opportunities to lead the product vision. And that really got me to a spot where I started having a lot of fun. And then from there, in the middle of all that, I decided at a software company that I was at called Corta. We had a great product, but nobody, it was really technical, really complicated. We had lots of power, but we didn’t really have anybody helping the customer be successful with it. So I went to the CEO and I said, hey, we really need somebody to actually help customers use the software, what do you think? And he kind of looked at me and said, how many people do you think you would need? I was like, I wasn’t involved here, I just was pointing it out like you should do this. And that became an opportunity for me to work directly with customers, which was like the missing piece for me. So I went out in the world, started meeting with customers, worked with Apple, worked with Bank of America, worked with some of the biggest companies and learned how to decode what they wanted, learned how to be empathetic, and to understand what it was that they were trying to do. And that kind of became the final piece where everything kind of clicked. And I began my, that’s kind of when I really went after product management. And right about the same time was when kind of Josh came in, bought Corta, and I started working for Josh and he looked at me and he said, you’re not a CS guy. You’re a product guy.
Dillon Winspear (00:07:46):
Oh, I loved that.
Adam Landefeld (00:07:47):
He was like, why aren’t you over here and so he kind of like course me back, you know, out of CS, out of working directly with customers, back in just core product vision. And that’s where my journey has been since.
Dillon Winspear (00:07:57):
Sure.
Adam Landefeld (00:07:58):
But it works because of that background. It works because of my time as a designer. It works because of my time as a leader of consulting services. I kind of feel bad for people in product orgs that don’t have those backgrounds because I look at them, I go, how do you understand the customer? How do you put yourself in their shoes? And how do you be a champion of their cause? Because it’s tough. Like it’s almost unfathomable for me.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:24):
Right.
Adam Landefeld (00:08:25):
That you could get that experience, unless you’ve had that experience. That’s kind of that journey.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:31):
That’s crazy. So what was your title when you’re at Corta?
Adam Landefeld (00:08:35):
Senior software engineer, then vice president of consulting services. And it was vice president, consulting services when we started a company.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:43):
Did you and Josh click right away?
Adam Landefeld (00:08:46):
No.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:46):
You didn’t.
Adam Landefeld (00:08:47):
No.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:48):
What was that relationship or that dynamic like?
Adam Landefeld (00:08:50):
Super rocky. Super rocky, actually. And it was, so it was-.
Dillon Winspear (00:08:57):
I should prefix it. The reason I asked that question is because obviously you guys get along well now. You guys were able to get in the same room collaborating.
Adam Landefeld (00:09:04):
Oh, yeah.
Dillon Winspear (00:09:05):
Yeah. I mean, you guys can obviously bounce ideas really well. So it’s interesting that you say rocky.
Adam Landefeld (00:09:08):
Yeah. So there was a little bit of he doesn’t know me. I don’t know him. There was a little bit of my hubris. So here, I’d been on this like, upward track, you know, where everything I did kind of worked well for me, I’d had so much great experience, and had so much success. I’d had fun. I felt like I was building my brand. I was understanding what I wanted to do. And then here comes a CEO that I’ve never heard that much about, other than you probably won’t like him. That’s what I’ve been told. And so he comes in, and he’s just as passionate. He’s just as hands on, he is just as eager to point out something that he believes is wrong as I am. Like, so like, that’s just like two alphas. And clearly, he’s the CEO. So guess which alpha gets to win?
Dillon Winspear (00:09:56):
Yeah.
Adam Landefeld (00:09:57):
And I actually had to get over my hubris. I’ve for so long felt like I can, I’m going to be able to be the smartest person in the room on these topics. Because I have the depth, I have the experience. And he came in and showed me that there could be another guy who also was the smartest guy in the room. And so, all of our rocky parts were the parts where I would just straight up challenge him and he would push back and say no, no, no, no, no, like don’t challenge me that way. Because like I am, I’m here too. Like it was never demeaning. Never anything like that. It was just, you know, he wouldn’t let me put him in his place.
Dillon Winspear (00:10:36):
Sure. And I don’t imagine you guys were ever like, you know, pinned against each other, like hating each other. And I mean you always kept professional because I know how you guys would keep it. But how long do you think it took before you guys realized that like, okay, we know how to work together now?
Adam Landefeld (00:10:51):
I don’t know. It took about a year for us to get there. And it really kind of, there was this point when we were in this conference room and it’s kind of like the all, you know, kind of like the early days of him buying Corter. And it’s like all the Corter old guard in the rooms yesterday, like all the people that have been running Corter and I’m in the room with him. And I straight up challenged him on something. I was like, I don’t agree with that. And he was like, oh, really? You know. So there we are in front of everybody kind of going back and forth with each other. For me, it was personal. I was like, oh, how dare you, you know, insult my intelligence. And for him. He was just like, no, let’s be clear about this. Like, that’s what I learned later. In my mind, I was like, no, this is survival right now, man. Well, we leave that meeting, and here’s how much it was a one-sided thing that I learned later, and he’ll tell you this. He comes into my office, he’s like you want to go to lunch? And I was like lunch? Why would I want to go to lunch with you? Like we were just like, you were just telling me that I wasn’t very smart. And he was like, I was like, well, the meeting and he was like, what? And he was like baffled, like couldn’t understand why I was wired up about it. And he’s like, that was just us getting to the best solution. And I was like, alright, let’s go to lunch. And it kind of ticked from there like, and so I will say he had to put some investment in it to kind of get it across the line, because I was, you know, I was the one having a hard time.
Dillon Winspear (00:12:25):
That’s funny. I think there could be a whole podcast about like Domo history stories, I think that’d be really interesting and entertaining, at least for me. That’s not what we’re here to talk about. But that’s extremely funny. I did not know that you came from a design background. But now that you’ve described some of these things and the different skill sets, you’ve been able to learn over the years, it makes a lot of sense while you’re in the position that you’re in and why you’ve always been able to give the feedback that you’ve been able to give. It’s never come across as misinformed. And I think that’s one of the things that all the designers appreciate is that, you’re obviously very familiar with the process. If you’re very familiar with the nuts and bolts of it, and that’s always been appreciated when we’re given the feedback and so now, I know why you’ve had experience with a lot of different things in that journey. So that’s really cool. It took me all of maybe the first week at Domo to realize that you were a Disney fan. And I think it probably happened the first time I walked into your office and saw a four foot tall Darth Vader, and then a shelf of all this other memorabilia that you’ve got in there. And you know, the first thing that I thought was like, hey, cool, I like Disney. Here’s something that we can connect on. It wasn’t until later that I said we like Disney. But we like Disney on completely different levels. And the level in which you like Disney is at a level I’ve never met. And I want you to speak to it because well, there’s a fun topic that we can get into here in a second but tell me where your love for Disney started and what you’ve been doing over the last few years because of this love for Disney.
Adam Landefeld (00:14:04):
Yes, definitely a love for Disney there and it reaches lots of different levels. So for me, originally it was, I love the cartoon. You know, as a kid, you know, 8, 9, 10 years old, I remember there was only one show that I would never miss on the television. And that was the reruns of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color that they would rerun on Sunday evenings. And for some reason, that was like, seeing the most amazing person in the world describe the most amazing topics in the world. And I thought how amazing is that life that that’s what you get to do when you wake up, and when you work all day and when you get done at the end of the day, that’s what you’ve accomplished is you’ve built things like Disneyland and you’ve made cartoons and you’ve, you know, and if you remember, I’m sure you are familiar with the show. There’s a lot of education to it as well. Like a lot of things like that was the one thing I loved about Walt Disney is he was very much a pull the curtain away and show you what’s behind it and like there was no, he found just as much enjoyment teaching you how they accomplish something as he did, doing it. So there’s a lot of people that I think, you know, really just focus on the commercial aspect of Disney and there certainly is a lot of that, but I kind of always I’m attached to that original vision of this guy, who is just like, the world is here for us to kind of maximize and use it to create better experiences for people and create better stories to tell and create, you know.
Dillon Winspear (00:15:45):
Let me interrupt. How old are you at that time?
Adam Landefeld (00:15:48):
So this would be 9, 10 years old. You know, so yeah.
Dillon Winspear (00:15:54):
Magical time.
Adam Landefeld (00:15:55):
Yeah, it was a time where I was just and that was where I decided I would be an artist. Like I will be an artist so that I can go work at a place like that. And what I thought at that point is there must be other places like that. I didn’t realize how truly unique it was. I also didn’t know that he was dead. Like, so here’s me only being able to capture these reruns of shows in my little bubble of a world here in Utah. I didn’t even realize he had passed away in 1966. I didn’t realize that what I was seeing was literally, you know, over 10 years old at that point, and it was a big shock to me when I actually figured that out. Because I was like, now what am I gonna go? Now, what am I gonna work for? But yeah, it was definitely a defining sort of characteristic of my childhood and it stayed true and has remained true since then.
Dillon Winspear (00:16:50):
When was the first time you went to Disneyland?
Adam Landefeld (00:16:52):
So that’s the kind of the funny thing is my parents never took us to Disneyland. We never went. I never got to go. I got to see it, fantasize about it then, I would just fantasize, I would have these pictures about what it was like. And finally, when I was a teenager, my dad relocated our family to Southern California. And I was willing to give up every friend I had and everything I had in Utah to be near Disneyland. Like, I’m gonna go to Disney. So I finally got my first trip to Disneyland in early mid 80s, like early to mid 80s. And it began a love like it sort of just like reinforced things like, now the sudden I could see these creations, I could see these buildings, I could see this sailing ship, I could see-.
Dillon Winspear (00:17:39):
Things that you’ve learned about now for a year.
Adam Landefeld (00:17:41):
Yeah. And then I’d heard like, how they approached designing, how they went about building it. I got to, you know, see the creations of some of these personalities I’d heard about because I kind of was starting to learn who the people were, like who the crew was below while that was doing this, and I finally got to see it all and it was like, I mean it was like addiction kicking in like into overtime as a graduating from like a starter addiction to like the full blown like you can’t get out of this addiction.
Dillon Winspear (00:18:12):
Now some of the people behind the curtain took me years to even realize that there was a name for him, right? The Imagineers when I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and I brought up that, you know, Walt had his Imagineers are like they had never even heard of that concept. So, explain to those who are listening, what is an Imagineer? Where did it start? And what are they today?
Adam Landefeld (00:18:31):
Yeah, it really kind of started back in the 50s. So an Imagineer is, and this is my interpretation. So this isn’t a sort of blessed definition. But an Imagineer is an employee that works for Disney, whose job it is to look at the world and kind of take in everything that’s available and look at experiences that have been you know, desired to be created and marry art technology and show together to deliver an experience. They are the people who have to pull that all together. And they originally came about, really kind of from the film industry, because when Walt Disney started building his park that he had dreamed about for a long time, he start building his park, it was really rapid. He got funding and in 52, 53, he mortgaged his house, he leveraged his life insurance policy. He did all kinds of stuff to get some money to work with on the side while Disney Studios was doing their thing and his brother Roy was saying, no, you can’t steal money from the studio, you have to do this separately. So he was kind of doing this and he started this park, got the funding, got the land, kind of got the go ahead, got Bank of America, got ABC to participate in it. That’s how he finally got the funding, built the park in a year. So they started in August of 1954.
Dillon Winspear (00:19:55):
Which is insane.
Adam Landefeld (00:19:56):
Yeah, they opened it in July of 1955.
Dillon Winspear (00:20:00):
One year.
Adam Landefeld (00:20:01):
Less than a year. And you know, there are stories about how rocky that start.
Dillon Winspear (00:20:05):
Right. That day, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a lot of documentaries on an opening day.
Adam Landefeld (00:20:09):
Yeah, but they did it. And one of the things that made it successful right off the birth was Imagineers. And this way of applying these different crafts, these trades and these ways of looking at the world to it, and how Imagineer started as he started pulling people from the film industry who knew set design and knew setting like set placement and background painting and how to create a shot and how to and he actually gave those people the lead on putting together what Disneyland would look like. Any polling animators who are really good at gags you know like to kind of think about cartoons that were made back in those days. They’re just gag after gag after gag, right? Like that was the thing. So he bring those people over and if you ever ride Pirates of the Caribbean, you can see Mark Davies’s influence and it’s just a long run of gags strung together in this cool story built the Imagineer way and that’s why you have that experience. So they really created a whole new art form of this, you know, this idea of pulling you know from technology, latest tech you can get your hands on and latest, you know, art you had up i-works, you know, using the first sodium screen techniques to do you know, cut ins and do things like that. And, you know, these guys were playing all the things together. And they were doing it under the leadership of a guy that said, I’m just going to focus on the big vision, I’m not gonna tell you how to do your thing. You’re smart people, you’re gonna figure out how to do it, but go do it, start now. This is what the vision I want is. And when I started learning more about how that impacted the business, I was like, that’s who I want to be. That’s who I want to be as a business leader. That’s who I want to be as a professional. I don’t care if I’m doing a tiny little thing or a big thing. That’s how I want to be you know, I want to be the guy who has persistence of vision. So that was another thing that I picked up along the way. I was like, wow, you this idea of sharing your vision, it’s hard to keep going, you have to have persistence. And I love that Walt Disney took an old animation term. The trick, you know, the term that means the trick of the eye that lets pictures look like they’re moving, when you flash them in sequence, that’s persistence of vision. And he sort of applied that to, it also means having the persistence of your vision to make sure you kind of drive it across the top and you get stuff done. So I know I’m kind of all over the place. I’m trying to cram literally like 60 years of experience in here. But it was transformational. It gave me something like my head would just swim thinking about Imagineers and how they would do their job and I’d see a video or a clip on the television about how they traveled to Mexico to learn something about this culture. So that when they built the ride that went with that, it was appropriate and it looked right. And I was just like that is how you should do everything. Everything in the world should be built with that kind of approach.
Dillon Winspear (00:23:12):
Right. And you’ve met many Imagineers. Is that right?
Adam Landefeld (00:23:16):
Yeah. Sadly, many of them are passing fast. But I have been able to meet quite a few and I think, you know.
Dillon Winspear (00:23:25):
Any original Imagineer still alive?
Adam Landefeld (00:23:27):
Yeah.
Dillon Winspear (00:23:28):
There are?
Adam Landefeld (00:23:29):
Yeah. You know, there’s Raleigh Crump. There is Bobger. I’m sure I’m forgetting some guys but there are definitely a few out there. And I bet both of those guys I spent, you know, more than one occasion with them. Just listening to them. You know, like, I still remember you know, before we had this lockdown, I was in LA area at lunch with Bobger, just like getting his thoughts on Disney and Star Wars and you know, it was really kind of interesting to hear his perspective and those guys, they have so much to teach you if you listen. And that’s what I realized is these guys were just gems. So I’ve really made it a focus to get in touch with and talk to as many of them as I can.
Dillon Winspear (00:24:15):
How did you get access to them though? Because I don’t think anyone can just look up their email and they go schedule lunch with these guys. So how did you build this relationship and get in touch with these people?
Adam Landefeld (00:24:24):
So I started with all the regular things, I went to the conventions, I went to the private dinners that really you could sign up to be part of and fund a certain project. And oh, by the way, if you fund this project, this guy is gonna be there, you know, talking that night. And so I went to all, like any of those I could go to, so that I could make the connections with these people. And then, those connections led to other connections. And what I found is they’re really open to making friends and discussing how they looked at the world. That thing I had with Bobger as I approached him at the first time I ever met him at a dinner and I said, you’re a car designer? And he was like, how do you know that? I was like, because I know that’s what you were doing before you were an Imagineer. Tell me about car design. And, you know, he was just like going off, you know, and talking about how he wanted to be. He had gone to school, and he wanted to work for GM. And he wanted to design the Corvette body. And they didn’t let him and he ended up, you know, ejecting out of there. And then he makes the Autopia car that looks a lot like a Corvette of that time. And so, you know, and I got to hear all those stories, but it just became this foothold for us to maximize. And that’s kind of been how all of them are, you know, Floyd Norman. Not a park Imagineer, but a very prestigious animator from Disney’s history. Same thing. I just saw him. I saw him at this event at Walt’s train barn in Southern California. And I just walked up to him and said, you did this work on Jungle Book, you did this work over here and he was like, oh, how are you? So, you know, now we talk to each other on Facebook Messenger about once a week, you know.
Dillon Winspear (00:24:15):
That’s cool.
Adam Landefeld (00:26:08):
And he just turned 80 and I’m worried that he’s not gonna, like I’m worried, like, I don’t know how much longer we’ll have him. So I’m just trying to as much as possible suck from these guys as much experience and things are willing to share as possible because I modeled myself after those approaches.
Dillon Winspear (00:26:27):
Yeah, well, and one thing that you have brought up that I had not thought of before, but these guys are multidisciplinary professionals. And it does kind of pattern your career journey as well, right? They started in cars, and maybe they got into now building theme park rides. And that wasn’t where they thought they were going. But that was the journey that they ended up on. And they’re able to take those craft, those principles and now applying to somebody else’s vision, and make what is arguably the best embargo that’s ever existed on the face of the earth, you know, and it’s funny because my wife and I, here’s actually a sad story. My wife and I took our kids to Legoland. And I will tell you this, you couldn’t pay me to go back there again. Because these theme parks are not the same. And we actually did Disneyland for a day. And then we traveled down to Southern California. And we went visit some families. So we also went to Legoland for a day. And they’re not the same experiences. There’s something missing. Have you ever experienced that? You know what I’m talking about? Have you visited Lego Land?
Adam Landefeld (00:26:30):
So I’ve visited a lot of places.
Dillon Winspear (00:27:32):
What’s the soul that’s missing? How do you explain that?
Adam Landefeld (00:27:35):
Well, so it’s actually probably the core thing I look at and why it’s so attractive to me. What Imagineers do and what I want to do as a product leader. Which is, I love that there is an attention to detail. I love that there is no part of the experience that they don’t think is worth considering. And that’s what you miss. So when you go to a Legoland or you go to any other place, Universal is getting a lot better. I will say Universal has really been stepping it up. If you go to Harry Potter World, you will see-.
Dillon Winspear (00:28:10):
Yeah. The Islands of Adventure and yep.
Adam Landefeld (00:28:13):
You will see attention to detail. But today I don’t think anybody has matched the Disney Company, the Walt Disney Incorporated. I don’t think you have seen the level of attention to detail matched anywhere else and what I appreciate is that same philosophy can apply to anything. It can apply to software, it can apply to you know, you working on your home and you know, doing some improvements, it can apply to anything you want to do if you kind of have that philosophy that no detail is sort of not worth the investment to make sure it’s the right thing. It’s amazing what happens, right? So what that means in a park is the transition spaces, where you know, in some place else, that might just be a walkway, maybe some grass, maybe some concrete, maybe a few trees. An Imagineer would never settle for that. An Imagineer would get down and look at that walkway from one direction and look where it was going. And then they’d go to the other end of it and look where it had come from. He or she would make sure that what you saw when you were on the walkway, match the theme of where you were going. No matter which direction you were going, and that it felt right, and it felt like you were easing into the scene. This is where the film industry was so important to this. They looked at every aspect of the park, as if it was a scene in a movie. And so, they back up.
Dillon Winspear (00:29:44):
And there’s unlimited angles.
Adam Landefeld (00:29:45):
Yeah, yeah. So they’ve got all these things they have to do. And everybody’s heard the stories about the force perspective that they apply in the architecture and things like that. So much more goes into what they’re doing there to make you feel that immersion, to make you feel that attention to detail.
Dillon Winspear (00:30:03):
So let me ask you this because if you’re not going to, you know, if you’re going to go with the quote unquote, no stone left unturned kind of mentality and like everything’s been designed, how do you keep them from designing forever? You know, how do you shape, how does Disney get Disneyland out in a year when they’re paying attention to all those details? Well, how do you, when do you marry those two ideas?
Adam Landefeld (00:30:26):
Yeah, I think that’s a great question, right? So there have been a lot of people that have approached projects, construction, park creation, software, with the same sort of, like, onus like, I am going to do it this way. And two years later, you talk to him and they’re still not done. They so much ship something or you know, there’s still sort of iterating on a thing. And that was where persistence of vision becomes important to me is because what Walt thought his job was to Disney was to make sure everybody got to destination. So what he would do is he didn’t invest a lot of himself, he would go through the projects that the Imagineers were working on, when they had gone home for the night. Just to like get familiar with where they were and kind of see maybe they’re struggling with this, maybe they’re struggling with that. But then he would kind of come back and his input was always keep painting the big vision, keep trusting those people can get there and keep giving them the, you know, the feedback that would guide them into pass the complete. And, you know, sometimes he was also the guy that would say, start over, like, we’re not going to get there with that approach. And I know it sucks, but start over, like we’re gonna start this one over. And that’s-.
Dillon Winspear (00:31:44):
It’s crazy that he had that veto power, though. And it’s still completed by these deadlines that they were setting for themselves. Like you can’t start over too many times and still hit your deadlines.
Adam Landefeld (00:31:53):
Right. That’s it. So that’s where some magic is. And that’s where it’s difficult to understand exactly how to replicate what he created, because of his belief in his people, because of how much he put to them to make happen, right? It resulted in them reciprocating with, like, an unfathomable love and desire to him to do what he needed to do. And that’s really tough. Like, that’s hard to replicate. And these are the same guys, I have sat next to an Imagineer that is telling me a story and starts crying in the story when it got to the part that he’s talking about Walt. Like, that’s amazing! And he’s like you get goosebumps, you’re like, man, that must have been amazing to work with a guy like that. And I think that’s really what the secret was, because I don’t think they had magical powers. I think they were so interested in getting to the vision that he was laying out there, that they made the right course, they would cut things they would, you know, choose to do the right, you know, the right reworking, but not rework here, if that was necessary, so they really have this really agile mentality that you kind of see show up all over the place. The other thing that is interesting is where if you talk to a guy like Bobger, you say to Bob, hey Bob, what’s your approach to project management? He will say, don’t do it. Don’t worry about project management. That’s not how you do it. He’s like, if you’re having meetings to discuss project management, you’re already behind. His approach was, start doing, start moving down the road, start putting something together, start understanding how it was going to work. Because if you do that, you are much more informed about what you need to solve for as you go, as opposed to trying to out think every problem that’s going to come up.
Dillon Winspear (00:33:55):
Do you think that’s something that you value now as a business leader yourself?
Adam Landefeld (00:34:00):
Absolutely. I also realize not everybody’s cut out for that way of thinking. I do think-.
Dillon Winspear (00:34:05):
Oh, sure. They need the direction, they need the meeting.
Adam Landefeld (00:34:08):
Yeah, I definitely seen, I’ve leaned too far on the, hey, just start running. This is kind of where we want to end up. Let’s see where you get to. Some folks in that, you know, kind of go on, ah, that’s not how I do it. Like, that doesn’t work for me. So that’s the only thing I realized is, there was another aspect of Disney that’s like, right people, like there was a people-.
Dillon Winspear (00:34:30):
Do you think Walt was grooming the people? Or do you think he got the people that he knew would fit this mold?
Adam Landefeld (00:34:35):
It was a little bit of both. In every one of those people, you’d find if you really trace them back, you’d find some that he connected with at a very young age when he recognized certain abilities to them and they will all have these stories. They all will say, I was just doing this thing and Walt came in and said well, you’re gonna do this. And you know, they will say like, I had no inkling that I could ever be that kind of person, but he told me I was going to be and then that was the journey I was on. And so, most of the Imagineers, especially the originals, and actually even the current crop, you know, they’ve all been people that showed great promise early. And they were given the opportunities to build into what he needed them to be.
Dillon Winspear (00:35:23):
You know, it’s funny, because a couple of things that you’re saying it’d be easy for people to take away going things like, you know, if you don’t like the product or the product setting, stop and start over. Like, that’s not the takeaway from this conversation. The takeaway is not; just tell people what you want, and then they’ll go get it done. Like that’s not the takeaway either, right? And so, Walt had a way of facilitating maybe we call the persistent vision. He had this way of facilitating the process in a way that it’s hard to, as you said, replicate these results. It’s hard to say, Well, this is the lesson. But I mean, there’s a lot of people that idolized Walton, they’re trying to find these takeaways. So I just don’t know how to do that without hearing things like these stories.
Adam Landefeld (00:36:07):
Yeah. I think, you know, I think that man was a unique individual. And you trace him back to when he forged his birth date on a volunteer card to join the Red Cross in, you know, when he was 16 years old, proclaiming to be 17 so he could join the Red Cross and go to France, and help with World War One like, he was doing this sort of thing then as a teenager, like he was, you know, helping people get just the right view and kind of helping people understand that they could do this like he had all sorts of schemes going when he was over at the, was a new shuttle, hospital and placement in France. He actually got there after the war was officially concluded. So he kind of cut out some really interesting experiences, but you see evidence of him being able to get people to catch his vision, get people to adopt it, and then get people to act on their own toward it. And I really think that’s sort of like one of the keys. I think the other part to him was, he always was good at that sort of like reading the tea leaves and seeing where it was. Like, as people were working and people were driving toward their goals, he could not afford restarts, he could not afford, you know, there was a lot riding on a lot of the calls he made, he was always leveraged to the hilt to do something. And so, times when he would say, let’s start over, this came at great cost. So he was always good at sort of reading where something was and figuring out, is it gonna get to the right spot, or is it not? But what he didn’t do is he didn’t swoop in and crush people and came back in and he would say things like, I don’t know that’s gonna get where we’re going. Have you ever thought about maybe looking at it this way? And you know, when you hear a lot of the memoirs, you know, from some of the Imagineers, they will be like, that was exactly what I needed, was just him to say, have you ever thought about looking at it this way? Then it was back on my shoulders, back on me to get there. But all of a sudden, I found the path that opened up and so what he was really good at was just kind of surgically coming in there and finding that person that was a little stuck. And who had a big responsibility on their shoulders, and saying, maybe a different thought is what you need and given them the push, that direction. But then he would kind of back off and say, okay, you know, go from here.
Dillon Winspear (00:38:41):
Do you think Walt benefited from having people like his brother Roy around or the Imagineers? I mean, do you think that was balanced? Or do you think the people around him slowed him down? Like how was that dynamic?
Adam Landefeld (00:38:53):
So Roy was the guy who made everything possible. So Walt was the guy who could do it, he was the dreamer, but none of it would have happened, had it not been for Roy. Roy was the guy where even when they were teenagers, and while he wanted to get this job where you get on a train and you sell snacks to people traveling on a train. Well, you have to buy all the snacks like you invest in all the inventory, then you go sell it. Roy is the guy who takes all the money he has and gives loans to Walt to build up his snack inventory. So he can get on this train, works it on the train, basically gives away all the snacks because he just wants to talk to people and once and he’s just so into trains, you can ride the train, and you know, right takes it on the chin. You know, never gets as long pay back. I think eventually they settled up with what Roy ended up with. But, you know, he was always that guy that was kind of there going, okay, that’s your dream. I’m gonna do all the real world things that have to happen to make sure you can actually do that. And that’s what was amazing about their partnership. When he finally did start believing in Disneyland, he was the one that closed most of the funding. You know, he was the one that got that to happen.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:06):
Was Roy the older brother?
Adam Landefeld (00:40:08):
Yeah.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:09):
Okay. How was the age difference?
Adam Landefeld (00:40:10):
Gosh, I can’t remember the age difference. They’re closer. There are two older brothers that are quite a bit older and an older sister.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:18):
I didn’t know that.
Adam Landefeld (00:40:10):
But Roy and Walt are the closest brothers, or Roy’s the closest to Walt. And there’s a sister, her name is Ruth.
Dillon Winspear (00:40:29):
You know, I remember from watching some of those documentaries that after Walt passed and Roy kind of stood in there that you started to see the dynamic of like, Roy would help facilitate Walt’s dreams. And now we lost the dreamer. And we kind of had these awkward years right there. So my thought is that they benefited from each other. I don’t know if Walt could have done the things that he did without Roy. Could you?
Adam Landefeld (00:40:53):
No, he really couldn’t have. And it’s kind of funny. Walt was always the guy that said I have no need of money. But I need money. So he was the guy like, money to him was unnecessary evil that was in the way of his dream. He looked at every film that they-, so I’ll take him to 1938. Snow white comes out most successful film launch, you know, in a long, long time, they made so much money. And this is after two years of all of Hollywood time, it’s gonna be a failure. They call it Walt’s folly like this, you’re investing in a full length animation film, to that point animation only been like shorts and commercials like ads. And this was the first full length animated film. And Walt had set the bar so high in his attention to detail, you know, he’d brought in character artists, he’d made sure that the animals were animated correctly, he’d made sure the background paintings were art pieces of themselves, and so you know, here’s the whole world going, you are going to fail. Here’s him and Roy, going, we’re going to not be able to pay payroll here shortly. And Walt is not letting off the dream. And so you know, Roy’s mortgaging things, you know, Walt is selling his car, and like they’re doing all kinds of stuff. Well, the premiere happens at Cathay’s circle, one of the most successful launches of a film ever. And all Walt can think to do afterwards is spend every dime they make from the movie, to build a bigger studio to do more things and to do more. And that’s like literally he just sunk all the money right back. And so, Roy had to be there or I’m pretty sure like Walt would have been, you know, popper somewhere.
Dillon Winspear (00:42:51):
Yeah, that’s really interesting. You know, we’re running short on time, but I do have two questions here. I want to ask you before we end this. In my mind, I envision Walt as curious like, I’m trying to put like a trait to him like obviously will say dreamer, but I feel like it’s kind of cliche when we talk about Walt. Can you put your finger on a trait that Walt exemplified? And you think that we can still apply today to tap into that?
Adam Landefeld (00:43:20):
Yeah. And it’s easy because you just said the word. He was a curious person. With the curiosity, he never let a barrier stop him from learning about something. Never. If you go to Disneyland, and you go into the Enchanted Tiki Room, and you see all the birds that exists because he got a gift of this little air operated mechanical bird that he was like, I’m so curious about how this works. And so he gets this amazing gift came from, I think it was France or somewhere. And the only thing he can think to do is have it taken apart so he can look at every single part. So they can figure out if there’s something they could use out of it. And then that’s what led way to animatronics. That’s where that started. That is that thinking? So, he’s just insanely curious. There was never a topic that he wouldn’t want to go understand more about.
Dillon Winspear (00:44:16):
I love that. I think that’s totally applicable to anyone in product. You know, obviously this podcast is more geared for UX designers or you know, getting their career up and running. And I think that including for curiosity is something that can’t be understated. You know, those who are naturally curious and not necessarily driven by the finish line, but driven by the journey I think, end up having a lot of success. The last question I wanted to ask you is, now we flash forward to today’s 2020. There are still Imagineers, the fact that I believe that there’s quite a few titles at Disney now that are all Imagineering x titles. But if we looked outside the Disney, do you see anyone in this world today that personify some of those characteristics of Walt? Do we have a modern day Walt?
Adam Landefeld (00:45:07):
There’s somebody that these nine and ten year olds are looking up to as a Walt. You know, that’s a great question, because it’s actually hard for me to spot them. I think they are out there. They’re just not maybe doing the type of thing that you might equate with what he did. So I look at somebody like Elon Musk and I’m like, yeah, that’s a modern day wall. Completely different set of things he’s focused on. But the things that drive him you know, when you see the smile on his face when he’s out there watching a rocket launch, like you know, that you’re dealing with a guy that is just like insanely curious about all the things that he could do in the world, and I do think they’re rare. I do think they’re not everywhere. But I do think they are out there.
Dillon Winspear (00:45:51):
Yeah. Did you see the meme, it said something like; ladies find a man that looks at you the way Elon Musk looks at his rockets, because there is the future of the most recent launch that they had. And he’s just got tears coming.
Adam Landefeld (00:46:05):
Oh, yes face. Well, you know, the same was always said about Walt. Walt built Disneyland so he would have the toy he wanted. Elon Musk built a rocket so he could have the toy he wants. Like I think there’s a really strong correlation-.
Dillon Winspear (00:46:20):
And I love because Elon is a person that I would have said, obviously, they do business very differently. They’ve got very different personalities. Just from what I’ve obviously been able to pick up don’t know him, obviously, but from what I’ve been able to pick up on, they’ve got different personalities. But you’re right. I do think they’ve got that curiosity trait and just love what they do. I mean, when you look at Elon Musk doing things from tunnels, to spaceships, to cars, to the wall, to why-. Okay, everything in between flame throwers, right? What was the purpose of that? Curious.
Adam Landefeld (00:46:52):
Want to know how they worked?
Dillon Winspear (00:46:53):
Yeah, and I go, it’s a cool trait to have and I think it’s fun that you call that that one. Rather time, but this has been an incredibly fascinating conversation. I’ve just been grinning ear to ear the entire conversation. I know there are obviously people gonna be listening to this and they want to know how can I reach out to Adam? How can I connect with him? What’s the best way for them to do that?
Adam Landefeld (00:47:15):
I’m on LinkedIn. Adam Landefeld. I definitely tried to do a lot better about responding. LinkedIn has never been a preferred communication platform for me, but I’ve realized the world has used it a lot. And so, I’m starting to do better there. Yeah, I’m there.
Dillon Winspear (00:47:32):
Okay. And we did not share this. And this has to get edited out in the in post. We can do that. But the whole reason you’ve been with these Imagineers and the whole reason you’ve been studying about you’ve also been documenting this, haven’t you?
Adam Landefeld (00:47:44):
Yeah.
Dillon Winspear (00:47:44):
And what’s the plan with what you’ve been documenting?
Adam Landefeld (00:47:47):
Yeah, so I’ve been so fascinated with what resulted in what I believe to be one of the most creative endeavors that has ever been undertaken, which is the Disneyland Park and I have been taking all of this knowledge but it just kind of been stewing in my head. And there’s sort of there’s the application aspect of it, where I’m trying to use it to become a better product leader. Trying to take a poll learnings out and become a better product leader. But the other part is, I’m taking all that knowledge and trying to create historical fiction novels. And I have a series that I’m working on and further through the first three installments of that first one is that is in editing right now. And I have no idea if I’ll ever get to publish it or anything else like that. But it’s really fun to kind of pull all that knowledge together into then something I can output, something I can do that like represents my, almost like a memorial to it. So that’s kind of, that’s a little, the journey I’m on right now.
Dillon Winspear (00:48:49):
Absolutely. So it’s in editing, the first series or the first novel is in editing right now. What’s the chances that it sees the light of day?
Adam Landefeld (00:48:58):
So it really depends on whether I’m just okay getting it out there, or whether I think I could make any money off it, because I could self-publish it. And I’ve talked to some publishers about those passing like. Oh, no, no, no, don’t self-publish if it’s any good. Like you will just kill yourself when you self-publish it.
Dillon Winspear (00:49:15):
Well, how many people have done the work to interview as many of the Imagineers? I mean, is there a lot of people that have done that work?
Adam Landefeld (00:49:22):
Yeah. A lot of people, I’m not unique in that and there are a lot of people where I’m completely unique, I think, is in my, what I’m trying to do with the all the knowledge is create new stories where they are documentary. So I think it’s fun to take people on a journey to kind of shine a light in a different way.
Dillon Winspear (00:49:41):
Cool. Well, I appreciate it again, everything that you’ve shared, this has been an awesome episode. I don’t have any final words. Thanks everyone for listens in another episode of Design today. I’ll see you next time.
