The WHY Gives Us Context

so a good example of what a why sounds
like I’ll tell you a story I did some
work with the Disney Imagineers these
are the people who build or the rides
design all the parades all the shows the
boats everything like that the ships
everything that’s not a movie or
merchandising basically the Imagineers
invent it build it design it and I was
giving a talk about with the Y in the
Golden Circle to the Imagineers and
somebody asked the same question which
is can you give us an example of what a
Y looks like or sounds like so I picked
a random person in the audience and I
asked him to give me a specific story
that helps me understand that really
captures what he loves about being an
Imagineer and he told the story you have
to appreciate that he told over the
course of seven minutes maybe basically
of how he was the lead engineer on a
ride and he went to I should preempt
I didn’t I should tell you this that he
didn’t know this and I found out later
that his nickname at the office was ice
chips because he was cold and everything
well he’s an engineer so everything was
exact and just sort of not the most
emotional guy so they called him ice
chips this was his nickname behind his
back anyway
so I called on ice chips by accident and
he told the story of how they would
design they it was a new ride that was
opening that he was a lead engineer and
he saw a guy in a wheelchair and his
daughter I’m heading towards the ride to
try it out for the first time and one of
the things that occurred to him was that
anywhere else in the world people see a
guy in a wheelchair with his daughter
only Disneyland the only thing people
see is a father and his daughter going
to Disney
and and he says that’s what it means to
him to work for this organization
that it’s about parents and children and
family and brothers and sisters and
boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands
and wives and every combination of
family that we can come up with and
that’s all there is
just those relationships and that’s why
everything was so exact to him and in an
instant we’re all crying and it was a
beautiful story but in an instant
everybody understood why he was always
so hard about everything because to him
those were the stakes but they had to
make things that made people feel that
they were just a father in the daughter
that nothing else mattered yeah it was
it was pretty amazing
it was pretty amazing and it gave
everybody context everybody fell in love
with him that day [Music]