Why One of the World's Biggest Investment Firms Sat Bob Iger Down Over Barbecue

When Sixth Street wanted its people to hear from one of the most consequential executives of the last quarter century, the firm did not book a hotel ballroom. It brought Bob Iger to Austin, sat him down at its annual offsite, and put a tray of Terry Black's barbecue between him and the room. The former chief executive of The Walt Disney Company spent the conversation on leadership and legacy. The setting said something too.

Sixth Street is a global investment firm, and its co-founder and chief executive, Alan Waxman, ran the talk himself. The pairing of serious capital and smoked brisket was not a gimmick. It is a reminder that the most important business conversations rarely happen where you expect them, and that barbecue, the most communal food Americans cook, is where a lot of trust gets built. The lessons Iger shared over that tray would sound familiar to any pitmaster who has spent a career honoring a recipe while refusing to let it calcify.

Respect the Past, Do Not Revere It

Iger started where every heritage business starts, with the founder. Walt Disney built the company in 1923 and died in 1966, when he was one of the most recognized people on the planet. That kind of founder does not simply run a company, he imprints it. Iger said the imprint was so strong that for ten years after Walt's death, staff kept asking the same thing, what Walt would have done. He called that instinct ridiculous, because anyone who studies Walt finds an innovator and a futurist, a man who understood the past as a set of values to carry forward, not a script to repeat.

When Iger became chief executive in 2005, four decades on, he found the company still bending to that reverence in ways he thought were unhealthy. His resolution became one of the sharpest lines of the night. The past should be respected but not revered, he said, and the gap between those two words is enormous. Revere something and you might as well seal it in a glass case. Respect it and you keep its values at the core of everything while you stay free to do new things.

Any barbecue family knows exactly where that line sits. The recipe is sacred, the wood and the rub and the hold time are handed down, and yet the cook still adjusts for a new brisket grade, a new pit, a new room of customers. The joints that treat the past as a museum tend to close. The ones that treat it as a foundation tend to last.

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

Waxman set up the next idea with his own operating philosophy, the Japanese practice of Kaizen, or continuous improvement. Iger answered with a word of his own: Shokunin, the relentless pursuit of perfection. The inspiration was a documentary about Jiro Ono, the Tokyo sushi master who earned three Michelin stars and, at 88, was still trying to get better. Iger was so struck by it that he played a clip for roughly 350 Disney executives at an offsite.

The lesson he drew from it is blunt and useful. If you have the time and the resources, never accept something that is only good. Work to make it great, and never stop trying to improve it. He found the same trait in Steve Jobs, a relentless perfectionist who demanded it from everyone around him. Barbecue may be the most literal expression of Shokunin in American food. A brisket asks for twelve to eighteen hours and a lifetime to learn the feel of when it is done. The best pitmasters are Jiro in an apron, chasing a perfect bite they will tell you they have not cooked yet.

The Deal That Started With Trust

The most instructive story of the conversation was about a relationship, not a transaction. By the time Iger took over, the partnership between Disney and Pixar had fractured, and he understood that fixing Disney animation was existential, because at Disney, as animation goes, so goes the company. So he called Steve Jobs, Pixar's leader, the day before his appointment as chief executive was announced, and asked for the chance to repair things.

He also brought an idea. Iger wanted to put Disney's television library onto an iTunes-style platform, a radical move against traditional distribution. Jobs came down, pulled a new video iPod from his pocket, and asked whether Disney would license its content for it. Iger said yes, and the two closed a deal in five days. That speed, and the willingness to disrupt Disney's own business, earned him credibility he did not realize he was banking. Months later, as chief executive, he told his board his top priority was Disney animation, and one path was to buy Pixar. The room went silent, certain it could never happen. Iger called Jobs again, flew to Apple, and the two sketched the pros and cons on a whiteboard before agreeing to a $7.3 billion acquisition. Jobs became Disney's largest shareholder and, in Iger's telling, a dear friend.

Iger's takeaway was that relationships are a strategic asset, earned before they are needed. Barbecue has always understood this. The sponsorship, the collaboration, the whole-hog partnership between two brands still tends to start the same way it did a hundred years ago, with one person handing another a rib and a napkin and talking until the trust is real.

Calm Energy and a Curious Mind

Waxman asked about what Sixth Street calls an energy signature, the energy a leader carries into a room, and whether Iger was born with his. The answer was personal. Iger's father, who he said likely lived with bipolar disorder, fought depression and a hard temper that the young Iger witnessed often. Somewhere in that, Iger committed to being different, to holding his own temper and leading with steadiness rather than volatility. He has worked people who fly off the handle and does not find it productive or attractive in a leader, and calm, he argued, is what lets you handle a real crisis.

Asked how he picks leaders out of a field of hundreds, Iger listed the traits he screens for: authenticity, accessibility, high standards, integrity, optimism, and above all curiosity, which he called one of the most powerful qualities a person can have. You do not innovate, try new things, or survive a disrupted world without it. It is the same short list you would use to pick the person to run the pit at three in the morning, when the fire drops and the crew reads the head cook's face before anything is said.

Why the Room Was a Barbecue Joint

Near the end, Iger turned to artificial intelligence, and his read was measured. The winners in media, he said, will be great distribution, quality brands, and connection to the audience, and AI will make that connection far more powerful while speeding up work and lifting creative teams. What it will not do, in his view, is replace the highest form of human creativity. He described sitting in a Pixar pitch for a film about the emotions inside the mind of an eleven-year-old girl, an idea a director drew from watching his own daughter, and argued that no program is going to originate that.

That belief is the thread back to the tray on the table. Some things stay human. Fire, smoke, feel, patience, and the room full of people gathered around them do not automate. It is why a firm that could have met anywhere, with anyone, chose a barbecue joint to host a conversation it cared about. Barbecue lowers guards and builds the relationships that every deal, every partnership, and every lasting company eventually rides on. That makes it one of the most undervalued platforms in business, and Bob Iger, over a plate of brisket, spent an evening proving the point without ever naming it.

Sources

BBQ & Big Ideas: Alan Waxman in Conversation with Bob Iger, Sixth Street.

Terry Black's Barbecue, Austin, Texas.

The Walt Disney Company, About.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011).