Succession: How Disney Got It Wrong Then Right

“He succeeded at everything except succession" – Wharton Professor Henning Piezunka

Disney ran the same experiment twice and got opposite results. In February 2020, Bob Iger handed the chief executive's position to Bob Chapek, a 27-year company veteran who had run the theme parks. Chapek lasted 34 months. The board fired him in November 2022 and begged Iger to come back. This March, Disney tried again. Iger handed the position to Josh D'Amaro, a 28-year company veteran who had run the theme parks. D'Amaro just passed his first hundred days, and the trade press has reached a verdict that would have sounded absurd four years ago: this is the smoothest succession Disney has managed in more than thirty years. Not one senior executive has walked out. Nothing has broken.

Same company. Nearly identical successor: long-tenured insider, parks operator, not a content visionary. Opposite outcome. Which means the 2020 failure was never a selection error. It was a transfer error. And the transfer instructions were written down 3,300 years ago, in this week's parsha.

The Diagnosis

In 2020, Iger picked his successor himself, announced him by surprise, and then stayed on as executive chairman with direct control over Disney's creative decisions. Chapek received the title. Iger kept the authority. Kevin Mayer, the passed-over executive who had just launched Disney+, left within months. Chapek spent nearly three years occupying the office of CEO when the true power sat in the office next door. When the pandemic and a string of missteps hit, he had no legitimacy to draw on. Henning Piezunka, a Wharton professor who studies corporate succession, summed up Iger's career in one line: he "succeeded at everything except succession."

Now look at what Disney changed in 2026. The board, led by chairman James Gorman, ran the process instead of the incumbent, screening more than one hundred candidates over two years. The hand-off took effect not in a press release but at the annual shareholder meeting on March 18, in front of the entire assembly, eight months before Iger's contract required it. Dana Walden, the runner-up, was named president and chief creative officer, reporting to D'Amaro, and stayed. And Iger himself remains only as a senior advisor and board member, with a hard sunset of December 31. Power transferred now, publicly and completely. Influence retained temporarily, with an expiration date.

Every one of those design choices appears in Numbers 27.

Moshe’s Succession

The parsha's succession story begins with a request G-d refuses. Moshe, told he will die before entering the land, has just watched G-d clarify the inheritance laws for the daughters of Tzelophchad. The Midrash Tanchuma, cited by Rashi (Numbers 27:16), records his reasoning: "When Moshe heard G-d say, 'Give Tzelophchad's inheritance to his daughters,' he said, 'The time has come for me to claim my own need, that my sons should inherit my position.' G-d replied, 'That is not My intent. Yehoshua deserves reward for his service, for he never departed from the tent.'" The Midrash seals the ruling with a verse: "He who guards the fig tree shall eat its fruit" (Proverbs 27:18).

Notice what the Torah does here. Moshe raises the question of succession, and that is to his eternal credit; his first thought upon hearing of his death is the people, "so that the congregation of G-d will not be like sheep without a shepherd" (27:17). But Moshe does not choose. G-d chooses. The incumbent who selects his own successor tends to do one of two things: pick a mirror, or retain control through the pick. Bob Iger did both in 2020. The Torah removes the choice from the incumbent entirely.

The Passed Over Candidate

Notice, too, who the parsha passes over. Not only Moshe's sons. The obvious candidate is Pinchas himself, the hero whose decisive act just stopped a plague and gave the parsha its name. The Kotzker Rebbe asked why Pinchas was not appointed, and answered that a zealot cannot lead, because leadership demands patience, forbearance, and respect for process. The Torah rejects the heir and the hero, the two candidates every board instinctively reaches for, and chooses the attendant who never left the tent. Its one stated qualification is strange: "a man in whom there is spirit" (27:18). Rashi explains: one who can meet the spirit of each and every person. Not brilliance. Not boldness. The capacity to carry different people differently. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted that the crown of Torah, unlike the crowns of priesthood and kingship, never passes from father to son, and added dryly: "Charisma rarely does."

Creating Legitimacy

Then come the transfer instructions themselves, and they are precise. Moshe is commanded to lay his hand on Yehoshua, to stand him "before Elazar the priest and before the entire congregation," and to "place some of your authority upon him, so that the whole congregation of Israel will obey" (27:18-20). Read that last clause carefully. The obedience of the congregation is not assumed to follow from the appointment. It is engineered by the visibility of the transfer. A successor anointed in private inherits a title. A successor invested in front of the entire assembly inherits legitimacy. That is the difference between a press release in February 2020 and a shareholder meeting in March 2026.

And note the word "some." Rabbi Sacks distinguished the two things Moshe transferred: power, which empties from one vessel into another, and influence, which passes like flame between candles and diminishes nothing. Moshe gave away the power while he still lived, in daylight, and kept only the influence. Iger's 2020 arrangement inverted this. He kept the power and lent Chapek the flame. The 2026 arrangement of Iger’s advisor status with a December 31 end date is transfer of authority done properly.

My Authority Is Not My Property

There is one more layer, and it is the sharpest. The same chapter that denies Moshe's sons the position grants Tzelophchad's daughters the estate, and G-d Himself argues their case: "The daughters of Tzelophchad speak rightly" (27:7). Heaven clarifies the inheritance code to keep property inside a family, then refuses, verses later, to let leadership travel the same route. Property preserves the past; the daughters argued about their father's name, and the Torah protected it. Authority serves the future, and it belongs to whoever guarded the fig tree. John Ward's foundational research at Kellogg found that only about 30 percent of family businesses survive into the second generation. The usual explanation is poor planning. The Torah's explanation is a category error: founders treat the position as one more item in the estate, beside the house and the shares. The children can have the equity. The flock goes to the Yehoshua.

A caution is owed. One hundred days is a small sample, and D'Amaro has yet to face his crisis. The honest claim is not that he has succeeded but that the transfer was designed correctly, and design is what failed last time. The hundred-day scorecard itself makes the point: no drama, no departures, no bold strokes. We grade new leaders on boldness. The Torah grades successions on quiet. By that measure, the most interesting thing about Disney in 2026 is that, for the first time in a generation, nothing interesting happened. Somebody finally read the instructions.