Leadership Insights

The Honest Picture: Jim Fielding on Disney Store, Fox, and what really happens inside big companies

Episode notes

The conversation, captured

Date: July 7, 2026
Participants: Kristian Luoma Jim Fielding

The Coordination Tax is a podcast by In Parallel about what actually breaks down when teams stop sharing the same reality. In this episode, host Kristian Luoma sits down with Jim Fielding — the executive who took Disney Store back from a failed licensing deal and turned 340 stores into theatrical experiences, ran Claire's across 41 countries, and built the Fox Consumer Products division from zero. Jim is now an advisor and coach, and the author of All Pride, No Ego. The conversation covers how he aligned a global organisation through a financial crisis, why coordination is not a big-company privilege, and what he tells CEOs who say "my team can't execute."

Summary

In 2008, Disney took its stores back from a licensee after loyal guests revolted — and Jim Fielding was handed the turnaround. With backing from Steve Jobs and Bob Iger, he consolidated North America, Europe, and Japan into one global organisation and relaunched the store concept in May 2010, straight through the global financial crisis.
The relaunch hinged on a full-size prototype store built inside an airplane hangar in Burbank, California. Jim hosted roughly 350 tours and let visitors "shop" it for free — because the team had one shot at getting the new concept right.
His coordination playbook was strikingly low-tech: get on planes, run listening sessions with frontline staff, keep a small trusted leadership core, and act as a blocker so experts can do their best work. He argues the same principles work at 3 people or 300.
Disney Store ran on a "glocal" model — roughly 70–75% of products the same worldwide, 20–25% local. That local slice let markets express their own tastes, and local hits (like Japan's flat kawaii plush) were tested and scaled into global bestsellers.
At Fox, Jim built rather than fixed: he refused the job until he could hire five senior vice presidents on day one. Leadership team first, strategy immediately after — and a division that was half-empty was fully staffed within six months.
His core leadership thesis: the best leaders aren't the smartest people in the room — they build the room. And when execution stalls, the diagnosis starts at the top: "the fish stinks at the head."

What was discussed

The Disney Store turnaround: when your customers write letters, you listen

Story

Disney Store had been licensed to a third party for nearly four years, and guests noticed the decline — vocally, including handwritten letters to Disney corporate asking "what did you do to my Disney store?"
When the licensee walked away, Disney faced three options: close the stores, find another licensee, or run them in-house again. Jim led a three-month analysis for the board and concluded ownership was clearly right — along with merging the North America, Europe, and Japan operations into one global organisation built on each region's best practices.
Steve Jobs, then Disney's largest shareholder, championed the plan: "If Apple can do it, why can't Disney?" He opened the Apple Store team in Cupertino to Jim's team for study.
The timing was brutal — Jim became president in May 2008, months before the global financial meltdown sent business down 30–50%. Japan weathered the storm better and carried the business. Crucially, Disney leadership gave the team time instead of demanding a six-month miracle.

The airplane hangar prototype: one shot, so test everything

Highlight

Rather than rolling out an untested concept, the team built a full-size prototype store in an airplane hangar in Burbank — real product, real visuals, the works.
Jim personally hosted around 350 tours: corporate executives, product teams, even preschool and high school groups. Visitors could shop for free while the team watched how they reacted. Many design changes came directly from those sessions.
"We knew we had one shot… it's not like we could put it out in the world and then be like, oh, that didn't work. We really had to have confidence it was gonna work." — Jim Fielding

Is solving coordination only for companies like Disney?

Key insight

Kristian's challenge: Disney had Steve Jobs, board patience, and deep resources — can anyone else actually do this? Jim's answer: emphatically no, it's not a Disney-only game.
What actually created alignment was planning, communication, and collaboration: travelling to every market, listening sessions with frontline store staff ("the closest to the guest"), and a tight leadership core of five regional leaders plus the California home base.
His formula scales down to any size: hire the brightest people you can find and afford, set goals, create an environment where they can thrive, and act as their blocker — clearing obstacles instead of dictating solutions.
The constraint that kept it honest: existing stores had to keep hitting financial targets throughout the rebuild. Calculated risks only.

"Glocal": a global backbone with local soul

Key insight

Disney Store's operating model smashed "global" and "local" together. About 70–75% of the assortment was identical worldwide, giving the economies of buying for 340 stores; the back office — supply chain, IT, finance — was fully global.
The remaining 20–25% was local, and that's where the magic lived. Character preferences differ sharply by market: Donald Duck is huge in Germany, while in Japan, Mickey and Minnie are treated "like royalty."
Local learnings became global breakouts. A controversial Japanese plush line — flat, pillow-like, maximally kawaii — was blowing out in Japan, got tested in top European and North American stores, and sold everywhere. City-specific product from Paris and London was selectively offered to fans and collectors who might never visit those stores.

Fox: building from zero, leadership team first

Story

Unlike Disney Store, Fox Consumer Products wasn't a broken machine to fix — it barely existed. Half the team had left: 48 open positions on a roughly 120-person team. Jim initially refused the operator role and wanted to consult instead.
His condition for saying yes became the defining move: approval to hire five senior vice presidents immediately, with candidates already named. Fox announced his role one week and the five SVPs the next.
The group of six wrote the strategic plan immediately, filled every open role within five to six months, and delivered 12–14 "magical" months of momentum — until Disney's bid to acquire Fox changed everything.
A lesson he highlights: leadership openly acknowledging "this is broken" makes the fixer's job easier. Denial is the harder starting position.

Ego, vulnerability, and building "the room"

Key insight

Kristian raised a deliberately controversial point: isn't ego part of coordination — the gravity that pulls people in the same direction? Jim agreed everyone has ego; the real work is tempering it, which is what All Pride, No Ego is actually about.
Early in his career, Jim was rewarded for being fast, decisive, and having all the answers. His warning: that path leads to burnout — and it turns bright hires into mere executors, which is not what they signed up for.
"The best leaders aren't the smartest people in the room. It's actually the room itself." — Jim Fielding
His practices: admit "I don't know" in front of any group; when someone brings a problem, ask "how would you handle this if I wasn't here?" and require one or two ideas before jumping in; override team decisions when necessary — but always explain the why.
On decision-making in the AI era: "fact-based decision making" — 35+ years of gut instinct blended with facts, never replacing them.

The two phrases that kill organisational learning

Key insight

Organisations, like people, must stay constantly curious. Jim names the two answers that kill curiosity dead: "we've always done it that way" and "we tried it differently before and it didn't work."
Every advisory client wants him to bring "the Disney Store formula." He's blunt with them: it was lightning in a bottle and it won't transfer. The honest work is brainstorming solutions that fit their brand and story.

"My team can't execute" — the diagnosis starts with the CEO

Key insight

When a CEO brings Jim that complaint, he doesn't start with the team — he starts with the CEO: a 360 review and leadership analysis. Quoting his former boss Mickey Drexler of Gap: "the fish stinks at the head."
Only then does he map the team with 360s and profile testing — introvert or extrovert, creative or data-driven — looking for balance, not talent.
His telling example: a president with eight direct reports, all nine profiled as highly creative, with not a single project manager among them. "No wonder you're not getting anything done." Nothing shipped until people with project-management skills were made project leads.

Advice for this week, not next quarter

Highlight

Closing question of every episode: your strategy is right, your people are great, but every initiative takes twice as long — what do you do this week?
Jim's answer: phone a friend. Be vulnerable, get outside your echo chamber, and seek perspective fast — from outside or inside the company.
Find your "truth tellers": they may already sit on your team, but have never been enabled to tell you the truth.
And in the spirit of the book: park the ego. If you think you've done everything right and it's still not working, start the investigation — and do it quickly.