Tom Murphy and Dan Burke

The two-person leadership team behind Capital Cities Communications, treated in The Ride of a Lifetime as formative mentors to Bob Iger (alongside Roone Arledge). In the book, Warren Buffett calls Murphy and Burke “the greatest two-person combination in management the world has ever seen” — the framing Iger uses to introduce the management lessons he absorbed from them.

The most-quoted of those lessons is Dan Burke’s “trombone oil” note. Burke handed Iger a note reading: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!” Iger reads it as a warning against pouring company resources into projects that don’t give much back, and says he still keeps the slip of paper in his desk, pulling it out when advising Disney executives on where to put their energy. The wiki ties this directly to Essentialism’s focus discipline.

Context: Tom Murphy and Dan Burke ran Capital Cities Communications, the broadcaster that in 1985 made the much larger acquisition of ABC (becoming Capital Cities/ABC). Murphy was CEO and Burke his longtime operating partner; the company’s decentralized, cost-disciplined culture made it a frequent management case study, and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was a major shareholder. Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC in 1996.

Where this appears

• The Ride of a Lifetime — cited as Iger’s mentors and as the Buffett “greatest two-person combination” pair; source of Burke’s “trombone oil” note on avoiding low-return projects.