What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. (Location 56)
What interested me was not that companies rose and fell or that the landscape continually shifted as technology changed but that the leaders of these companies seemed so focused on the competition that they never developed any deep introspection about other destructive forces that were at work. (Location 113)
good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they’re in. (Location 130)
my job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine (Location 135)
I believe, to my core, that everybody has the potential to be creative— whatever form that creativity takes— and that to encourage such development is a noble thing. More interesting to me, though, are the blocks that get in the way, often without us noticing, and hinder the creativity that resides within any thriving company. (Location 136)
I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know— not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. (Location 140)
When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. (Location 168)
Unhindered communication was key, no matter what your position. (Location 181)
Decisions are made, usually for good reasons, which in turn prompt other decisions. So when problems arise— and they always do— disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi- step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve— think of that as an oak tree— and then there are all the other problems— think of these as saplings— that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down. (Location 195)
This tension between the individual’s personal creative contribution and the leverage of the group is a dynamic that exists in all creative environments, (Location 294)
ARPA had been created in response to Sputnik, and one of its key organizing principles was that collaboration could lead to excellence. (Location 299)
The leaders of my department understood that to create a fertile laboratory, they had to assemble different kinds of thinkers and then encourage their autonomy. They had to offer feedback when needed but also had to be willing to stand back and give us room. (Location 391)
The lesson of ARPA had lodged in my brain: When faced with a challenge, get smarter. (Location 439)
Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening. (Location 446)
Alvy and I decided to do the opposite— to share our work with the outside world. My view was that we were all so far from achieving our goal that to hoard ideas only impeded our ability to get to the finish line. (Location 463)
On May 25, 1977, Star Wars opened in theaters across America. The film’s mastery of visual effects— and its record- shattering popularity at the box office— would change the industry forever. (Location 478)
my world- view, forged in academia, that any hard problem should have many good minds simultaneously trying to solve it. (Location 491)
At NYIT, I’d created a flat structure much like I’d seen at the U of U, giving my colleagues a lot of running room and little oversight, and I’d been relatively pleased with the results. But now I had to admit that our team there behaved a lot like a collection of grad students— independent thinkers with individual projects— rather than a team with a common goal. (Location 507)
At Lucasfilm, then, I decided to hire managers to run the graphics, video, and audio groups; they would then report to me. I knew I had to put some sort of hierarchy in place, but I also worried that hierarchy would lead to problems. (Location 510)
The resulting environment felt as protected as an academic institution— an idea that would stay with me and help shape what I would later try to build at Pixar. Experimentation was highly valued, but the urgency of a for- profit enterprise was definitely in the air. In other words, we felt like we were solving problems for a reason. (Location 530)
Alvy lobbied for “Pixer,” which he imagined to be a (fake) Spanish verb meaning “to make pictures.” Loren countered with “Radar,” which he thought sounded more high- tech. That’s when it hit them: Pixer + radar = Pixar! (Location 541)
it paled in comparison to the bigger, and eternal, impediment to our progress: the human resistance to change. (Location 548)
They couldn’t have been less interested in making changes that would slow them down in the short term. They took comfort in their familiar ways, and change meant being uncomfortable. So when it came time to test our work, the editors refused to participate. (Location 551)
If left up to the editors, no new tool would ever be designed and no improvements would be possible. They saw no advantage to change and couldn’t imagine how using a computer would make their work easier or better. But if we designed the new system in a vacuum, moving ahead without the editors’ input, we would end up with a tool that didn’t address their needs. Being confident about the value of our innovation was not enough. We needed buy- in from the community we were trying to serve. (Location 555)
wasn’t enough for managers to have good ideas— they had to be able to engender support for those ideas among the people who’d be charged with employing them. (Location 559)
During the Lucasfilm years, I definitely had my periods of feeling overwhelmed as a manager, periods when I wondered about my own abilities and asked myself if I should try to adopt a more forceful, alpha male management style. I’d put my version of hierarchy in place by delegating to other managers, but I was also part of a chain of command in the greater Lucasfilm empire. I remember going home at night, exhausted, feeling like I was balancing on the backs of a herd of horses— only some of the horses were thoroughbreds, some were completely wild, and some were ponies who were struggling to keep up. I found it hard enough to hold on, let alone steer. (Location 561)
For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right. (Location 648)
Watching him reminded me of a principle of engineering: Sending out a sharp impulse— like a dolphin uses echolocation to determine the location of a school of fish— can teach you crucial things about your environment. Steve used aggressive interplay as a kind of biological sonar. It was how he sized up the world. (Location 781)
simple answers like the “start high” pricing advice— so seductive in its rationality— had distracted me and kept me from asking more fundamental questions. (Location 798)
I’d associated manufacturing more with efficiency than with inspiration. But I soon discovered that the Japanese had found a way of making production a creative endeavor that engaged its workers— a (Location 802)
“just- in- time manufacturing” or “total quality control”— but the essence was this: The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee, from the most senior manager to the lowliest person on the production line. If anyone at any level spotted a problem in the manufacturing process, Deming believed, they should be encouraged (and expected) to stop the assembly line. (Location 822)
Deming’s approach— and Toyota’s, too— gave ownership of and responsibility for a product’s quality to the people who were most involved in its creation. Instead of merely repeating an action, workers could suggest changes, call out problems, and— this next element seemed particularly important to me— feel the pride that came when they helped fix what was broken. (Location 827)
the Japanese assembly line became a place where workers’ engagement strengthened the resulting product. (Location 831)
American business leaders had been unable to even conceive of the wisdom of his thinking. It wasn’t that they were rejecting Deming’s ideas as much as they were utterly blind to them. Their certainty about their existing systems had rendered them unable to see. They’d been on top for a while, after all. Why did they need to change their ways? (Location 833)
While Toyota was a hierarchical organization, to be sure, it was guided by a democratic central tenet: You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility. (Location 838)
Whatever these forces are that make people do dumb things, they are powerful, they are often invisible, and they lurk even in the best of environments. (Location 841)
Production managers are the people who keep track of the endless details that ensure that a movie is delivered on time and on budget. They monitor the overall progress of the crew; they keep track of the thousands of shots; they evaluate how resources are being used; they persuade and cajole and nudge and say no when necessary. In other words, they do something essential for a company whose success relies on hitting deadlines and staying on- budget: They manage people and safeguard the process. (Location 998)
When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what’s bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers. I also realized that this kind of thing, if left unaddressed, could fester and destroy Pixar. (Location 1016)
Communication would no longer have to go through hierarchical channels. The exchange of information was key to our business, of course, but I believed that it could— and frequently should— happen out of order, without people getting bent out of shape. People talking directly to one another, then letting the manager find out later, was more efficient than trying to make sure that everything happened in the “right” order and through the “proper” channels. (Location 1032)
We realized that our purpose was not merely to build a studio that made hit films but to foster a creative culture that would continually ask questions. Questions like: If we had done some things right to achieve success, how could we ensure that we understood what those things were? (Location 1039)
Talented storytellers had found a way to make viewers care, and the evolution of this storyline made it abundantly clear to me: If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. The takeaway here is worth repeating: Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. (Location 1180)
It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. A good team is made up of people who complement each other. (Location 1184)
Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea. (Location 1187)
Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas. (Location 1196)
too many of us think of ideas as being singular, as if they float in the ether, fully formed and independent of the people who wrestle with them. Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, (Location 1197)
it is the focus on people— their work habits, their talents, their values— that is absolutely central to any creative venture. (Location 1203)
the development department’s charter would be not to develop scripts but to hire good people, figure out what they needed, assign them to projects that matched their skills, and make sure they functioned well together. (Location 1207)
Though Pixar didn’t rely on a traditional assembly line— that is, with conveyor belts connecting each work station— the making of a film happened in order, with each team passing the product, or idea, off to the next, who pushed it further down the line. To ensure quality, I believed, any person on any team needed to be able to identify a problem and, in effect, pull the cord to stop the line. (Location 1210)
You needed to show your people that you meant it when you said that while efficiency was a goal, quality was the goal. More and more, I saw that by putting people first— not just saying that we did, but proving that we did by the actions we took— we were protecting that culture. (Location 1214)
the needs of a movie could never again outweigh the needs of our people. (Location 1217)
Toy Story 2 was a case study in how something that is usually considered a plus— a motivated, workaholic workforce pulling together to make a deadline— could destroy itself if left unchecked. (Location 1219)
It was management’s job to take the long view, to intervene and protect our people from their willingness to pursue excellence at all costs. Not to do so would be irresponsible. (Location 1222)
On any film, there are inevitable periods of extreme crunch and stress, some of which can be healthy if they don’t go on too long. But the ambitions of both managers and their teams can exacerbate each other and become unhealthy. It is a leader’s responsibility to see this, and guide it, not exploit it. (Location 1227)
when our younger employees— those without families— work longer hours than those who are parents, we must be mindful not to compare the output of these two groups without being mindful of the context. I’m not talking just about the health of our employees here; I’m talking about their long- term productivity and happiness. Investing in this stuff pays dividends down the line. (Location 1236)
We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool— a framework. (Location 1260)
To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent. (Location 1273)
some of my colleagues have insisted that I am wrong, that “Trust the Process” has meaning— they see it as code for “Keep on going, even when things look bleak.” When we trust the process, they argue, we can relax, let go, take a flyer on something radical. We can accept that any given idea may not work and yet minimize our fear of failure because we believe we will get there in the end. (Location 1280)
When we trust the process, we remember that we are resilient, that we’ve experienced discouragement before, only to come out the other side. When we trust the process— or perhaps more accurately, when we trust the people who use the process— we are optimistic but also realistic. (Location 1282)
“Quality is the best business plan.” What he meant was that quality is not a consequence of following some set of behaviors. Rather, it is a prerequisite and a mindset you must have before you decide what you are setting out to do. (Location 1296)
Mistakes are part of creativity. But when we did, we would strive to face them without defensiveness and with a willingness to change. (Location 1301)
When it comes to interacting with other people in a work environment, there are times when we choose not to say what we really think. (Location 1317)
Candor is forthrightness or frankness— not so different from honesty, really. And yet, in common usage, the word communicates not just truth- telling but a lack of reserve. (Location 1323)
You cannot address the obstacles to candor until people feel free to say that they exist (and using the word honesty only makes it harder to talk about those barriers). (Location 1327)
A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments. (Location 1332)
we will look into the workings of one of Pixar’s key mechanisms: the Braintrust, which we rely upon to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight talk. Its premise is simple: Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another. People who would feel obligated to be honest somehow feel freer when asked for their candor; they have a choice about whether to give it, and thus, when they do give it, it tends to be genuine. (Location 1335)
This part of our job is never done because, as it turns out, you can’t address or eliminate the blocks to candor once and for all. The fear of saying something stupid and looking bad, of offending someone or being intimidated, of retaliating or being retaliated against— they all have a way of reasserting themselves, even once you think they’ve been vanquished. And when they do, you must address them squarely. (Location 1348)
Each of the participants focused on the film at hand and not on some hidden personal agenda. They argued— sometimes heatedly— but always about the project. They were not motivated by the kinds of things— getting credit for an idea, pleasing their supervisors, winning a point just to say you did— that too often lurk beneath the surface of work- related interactions. The members saw each other as peers. The passion expressed in a Braintrust meeting was never taken personally because everyone knew it was directed at solving problems. And largely because of that trust and mutual respect, its problem- solving powers were immense. (Location 1359)
societal conditioning discourages telling the truth to those perceived to be in higher positions. Then there’s human nature. The more people there are in the room, the more pressure there is to perform well. Strong and confident people can intimidate their colleagues, subconsciously signaling that they aren’t interested in negative feedback or criticism that challenges their thinking. When the stakes are high and there is a sense that people in the room don’t understand a director’s project, it can feel to that director like everything they’ve worked so hard on is in jeopardy, under attack. Their brains go into overdrive, reading all of the subtexts and fighting off the perceived threats to what they’ve built. When so much is on the line, the barriers to truly candid discussions are formidable. (Location 1379)
candor could not be more crucial to our creative process. Why? Because early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. (Location 1385)
Then the Braintrust watches this version of the movie and discusses what’s not ringing true, what could be better, what’s not working at all. Notably, they do not prescribe how to fix the problems they diagnose. They test weak points, they make suggestions, but it is up to the director to settle on a path forward. (Location 1395)
People who take on complicated creative projects become lost at some point in the process. It is the nature of things— in order to create, you must internalize and almost become the project for a while, and that near- fusing with the project is an essential part of its emergence. But it is also confusing. Where once a movie’s writer/ director had perspective, he or she loses it. Where once he or she could see a forest, now there are only trees. The details converge to obscure the whole, and that makes it difficult to move forward substantially in any one direction. The experience can be overwhelming. (Location 1402)
All directors, no matter how talented, organized, or clear of vision, become lost somewhere along the way. That creates a problem for those who seek to give helpful feedback. How do you get a director to address a problem he or she cannot see? The answer depends, of course, on the situation. (Location 1406)
We give our filmmakers both freedom and responsibility. For example, we believe that the most promising stories are not assigned to filmmakers but emerge from within them. With few exceptions, our directors make movies that they have conceived of and are burning to make. Then, because we know that this passion will at some point blind them to their movie’s inevitable problems, we offer them the counsel of the Braintrust. (Location 1422)
the Braintrust is made up of people with a deep understanding of storytelling and, usually, people who have been through the process themselves. While the directors welcome critiques from many sources along the way (and in fact, when our films are screened in- house, all Pixar employees are asked to send notes), they particularly prize feedback from fellow directors and storytellers. (Location 1426)
The second difference is that the Braintrust has no authority. This is crucial: The director does not have to follow any of the specific suggestions given. After a Braintrust meeting, it is up to him or her to figure out how to address the feedback. Braintrust meetings are not top- down, do- this- or- else affairs. By removing from the Braintrust the power to mandate solutions, we affect the dynamics of the group in ways (Location 1429)
we don’t want the Braintrust to solve a director’s problem because we believe that, in all likelihood, our solution won’t be as good as the one the director and his or her creative team comes up with. We believe that ideas— and thus, films— only become great when they are challenged and tested. (Location 1438)
In academia, peer review is the process by which professors are evaluated by others in their field. I like to think of the Braintrust as Pixar’s version of peer review, a forum that ensures we raise our game— not by being prescriptive but by offering candor and deep analysis. (Location 1440)
every director would prefer to be told that his film is a masterpiece. But because of the way the Braintrust is structured, the pain of being told that flaws are apparent or revisions are needed is minimized. Rarely does a director get defensive, because no one is pulling rank or telling the filmmaker what to do. (Location 1442)
The film itself— not the filmmaker— is under the microscope. This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged. To set up a healthy feedback system, you must remove power dynamics from the equation— you must enable yourself, in other words, to focus on the problem, not the person. (Location 1444)
Somehow, and perhaps especially because they have less invested, a director who’s struggling with his own dilemmas can see another director’s struggles more clearly than his own. “It’s like I can put my crossword puzzle away and help you with your Rubik’s Cube a little bit,” is how he puts it. (Location 1460)
if Pixar is a hospital and the movies are the patients, then the Braintrust is made up of trusted doctors. In this analogy, it’s important to remember that the movie’s director and producer are doctors, too. It’s as if they’ve gathered a panel of consulting experts to help find an accurate diagnosis for an extremely confounding case. But ultimately, it’s the filmmakers, and no one else, who will make the final decisions about the wisest course of treatment. (Location 1466)
An important corollary to the assertion that the Braintrust must be candid is that filmmakers must be ready to hear the truth; candor is only valuable if the person on the receiving end is open to it and willing, if necessary, to let go of things that don’t work. (Location 1522)
Frank talk, spirited debate, laughter, and love. If I could distill a Braintrust meeting down to its most essential ingredients, those four things would surely be among them. But newcomers often notice something else first: the volume. Routinely, Braintrust attendees become so energized and excited that they talk over each other, and voices tend to rise. (Location 1531)
The key is to look at the viewpoints being offered, in any successful feedback group, as additive, not competitive. A competitive approach measures other ideas against your own, turning the discussion into a debate to be won or lost. An additive approach, on the other hand, starts with the understanding that each participant contributes something (even if it’s only an idea that fuels the discussion— and ultimately doesn’t work). The Braintrust is valuable because it broadens your perspective, allowing you to peer— at least briefly— through others’ eyes. (Location 1566)
A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn’t clear, what makes no sense. A good note is offered at a timely moment, not too late to fix the problem. A good note doesn’t make demands; it doesn’t even have to include a proposed fix. But if it does, that fix is offered only to illustrate a potential solution, not to prescribe an answer. Most of all, though, a good note is specific. “I’m writhing with boredom,” is not a good note. (Location 1590)
“There’s a difference between criticism and constructive criticism. With the latter, you’re constructing at the same time that you’re criticizing. You’re building as you’re breaking down, making new pieces to work with out of the stuff you’ve just ripped apart. (Location 1593)
always feel like whatever notes you’re giving should inspire the recipient— like, ‘How do I get that kid to want to redo his homework?’ So, you’ve got to act like a teacher. Sometimes you talk about the problems in fifty different ways until you find that one sentence that you can see makes their eyes pop, as if they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I want to do it.’ Instead of saying, ‘The writing in this scene isn’t good enough,’ you say, ‘Don’t you want people to walk out of the theater and be quoting those lines?’ It’s more of a challenge. ‘Isn’t this what you want? I want that too!’ (Location 1595)
Telling the truth is difficult, but inside a creative company, it is the only way to ensure excellence. It is the job of the manager to watch the dynamics in the room, although sometimes a director will come in after a meeting to say that some people were holding back. In these cases, the solution is often to convene a smaller group— a sort of mini- Braintrust— to encourage more direct communication by limiting the number of participants. (Location 1600)
Candor isn’t cruel. It does not destroy. On the contrary, any successful feedback system is built on empathy, on the idea that we are all in this together, that we understand your pain because we’ve experienced it ourselves. (Location 1604)
it takes a while for any group to develop the level of trust necessary to be truly candid, to express reservations and criticisms without fear of reprisal, and to learn the language of good notes. (Location 1609)
even the most experienced Braintrust can’t help people who don’t understand its philosophies, who refuse to hear criticism without getting defensive, or who don’t have the talent to digest feedback, reset, and start again. (Location 1611)
the Braintrust is something that evolves over time. Creating a Braintrust is not something you do once and then check off your to- do list. Even when populated with talented and generous people, there is plenty that can go wrong. Dynamics change— between people, between departments— and so the only way to ensure that your Braintrust is doing its job is to watch and protect it continually, making adaptations as needed. (Location 1612)
“You can and should make your own solution group,” Andrew Stanton says, adding that on each of his own films, he has made a point of doing this on a smaller scale, separate from the official Braintrust. “Here are the qualifications required: The people you choose must (a) make you think smarter and (b) put lots of solutions on the table in a short amount of time. I don’t care who it is, the janitor or the intern or one of your most trusted lieutenants: If they can help you do that, they should be at the table.” (Location 1617)
you don’t want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or matters of policy are being hashed out. (Location 1621)
I came to think of our meltdowns as a necessary part of doing our business, like investments in R& D, (Location 1650)
For most of us, failure comes with baggage— a lot of baggage— that I believe is traced directly back to our days in school. From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad; failure means you didn’t study or prepare; failure means you slacked off or— worse!— aren’t smart enough to begin with. Thus, failure is something to be ashamed of. (Location 1652)
That early experience of shame is too deep- seated to erase. All the time in my work, I see people resist and reject failure and try mightily to avoid it, because regardless of what we say, mistakes feel embarrassing. There is a visceral reaction to failure: It hurts. (Location 1657)
I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure (Location 1659)
because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle (Location 1663)
failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy— trying to avoid failure by out- thinking it— dooms you to fail. (Location 1676)
Rejecting failure and avoiding mistakes seem like high- minded goals, but they are fundamentally misguided. (Location 1682)
There’s a quick way to determine if your company has embraced the negative definition of failure. Ask yourself what happens when an error is discovered. Do people shut down and turn inward, instead of coming together to untangle the causes of problems that might be avoided going forward? (Location 1693)
In a fear- based, failure- averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative. But if you can foster a positive understanding of failure, the opposite will happen. (Location 1696)
If we as leaders can talk about our mistakes and our part in them, then we make it safe for others. You don’t run from it or pretend it doesn’t exist. That is why I make a point of being open about our meltdowns inside Pixar, because I believe they teach us something important: Being open about problems is the first step toward learning from them. (Location 1699)
If you create a fearless culture (or as fearless as human nature will allow), people will be much less hesitant to explore new areas, identifying uncharted pathways and then charging down them. (Location 1704)
They will also begin to see the upside of decisiveness: The time they’ve saved by not gnashing their teeth about whether they’re on the right course comes in handy when they hit a dead end and need to reboot. (Location 1705)
isn’t enough to pick a path— you must go down it. By doing so, you see things you couldn’t possibly see when you started out; you may not like what you see, some of it may be confusing, but at least you will have, as we like to say, “explored the neighborhood.” The key point here is that even if you decide you’re in the wrong place, there is still time to head toward the right place. And all the thinking you’ve done that led you down that alley was not wasted. Even if most of what you’ve seen doesn’t fit your needs, you inevitably take away ideas that will prove useful. (Location 1707)
if there are parts of the neighborhood you like but that don’t seem helpful in the quest you’re on, you will remember those parts and possibly use them later. (Location 1711)
While the process was difficult and time consuming, Pete and his crew never believed that a failed approach meant that they had failed. Instead, they saw that each idea led them a bit closer to finding the better option. And that allowed them to come to work each day engaged and excited, even while in the midst of confusion. (Location 1734)
This is key: When experimentation is seen as necessary and productive, not as a frustrating waste of time, people will enjoy their work— even when it is confounding them. (Location 1736)
The principle I’m describing here— iterative trial and error— has long- recognized value in science. When scientists have a question, they construct hypotheses, test them, analyze them, and draw conclusions— and then they do it all over again. The reasoning behind this is simple: Experiments are fact- finding missions that, over time, inch scientists toward greater understanding. That means any outcome is a good outcome, because it yields new information. If your experiment proved your initial theory wrong, better to know it sooner rather than later. Armed with new facts, you can then reframe whatever question you’re asking. (Location 1737)
So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set- in- stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal. Moreover, you cannot plan your way out of problems. While planning is very important, and we do a lot of it, there is only so much you can control in a creative environment. (Location 1749)
The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud. It can be difficult to get free of it and head in a different direction. Which, more often than not, is exactly what you must do. (Location 1752)
just because “failure free” is crucial in some industries does not mean that it should be a goal in all of them. When it comes to creative endeavors, the concept of zero failures is worse than useless. It is counterproductive. (Location 1761)
While experimentation is scary to many, I would argue that we should be far more terrified of the opposite approach. Being too risk- averse causes many companies to stop innovating and to reject new ideas, which is the first step on the path to irrelevance. Probably more companies hit the skids for this reason than because they dared to push boundaries and take risks— and, yes, to fail. (Location 1808)
If it is true that all the movies suck at first, and if Pixar’s way is to give filmmakers— not the Braintrust— the ultimate authority to fix what’s broken, then how do you know when to step in? The criteria we use is that we step in if a director loses the confidence of his or her crew. (Location 1820)
But any failure at a creative company is a failure of many, not one. If you’re a leader of a company that has faltered, any misstep that occurs is yours as well. (Location 1834)
When failure occurs, how should you get the most out of it? When it came to our meltdowns, we were determined to look inward. We had picked talented, creative people to preside over these projects, so we clearly were doing something that was making it hard for them to succeed. (Location 1840)
It was obvious that they felt they owned the problem and the responsibility for its solution. Even though we had serious problems, the culture of the place— the willingness to roll up our pant legs and wade into the muck for the good of the company— felt more alive than ever. (Location 1855)
Instead of hoping that our director candidates would absorb our shared wisdom through osmosis, we resolved to create a formal mentoring program that would, in a sense, give to others what Pete and Andrew and Lee had experienced working so closely with John in the early days. (Location 1871)
Who better to teach than the most capable among us? And I’m not just talking about seminars or formal settings. Our actions and behaviors, for better or worse, teach those who admire and look up to us how to govern their own lives. (Location 1879)
Are we thoughtful about how people learn and grow? As leaders, we should think of ourselves as teachers and try to create companies in which teaching is seen as a valued way to contribute to the success of the whole. (Location 1881)
the message companies send to their managers is conflicting: Develop your people, help them grow into strong contributors and team members, and oh, by the way, make sure everything goes smoothly because there aren’t enough resources, and the success of our enterprise depends on your group doing its job on time and on budget. (Location 1888)
I’ve known many managers who hate to be surprised in meetings, for example, by which I mean they make it clear that they want to be briefed about any unexpected news in advance and in private. In many workplaces, it is a sign of disrespect if someone surprises a manager with new information in front of other people. (Location 1896)
Getting middle managers to tolerate (and not feel threatened by) problems and surprises is one of our most important jobs; they already feel the weight of believing that if they screw up, there will be hell to pay. (Location 1900)
they think about the process and the risks? The antidote to fear is trust, and we all have a desire to find something to trust in an uncertain world. Fear and trust are powerful forces, and while they are not opposites, exactly, trust is the best tool for driving out fear. (Location 1902)
There will always be plenty to be afraid of, especially when you are doing something new. Trusting others doesn’t mean that they won’t make mistakes. It means that if they do (or if you do), you trust they will act to help solve it. (Location 1904)
Fear can be created quickly; trust can’t. Leaders must demonstrate their trustworthiness, over time, through their actions— and the best way to do that is by responding well to failure. (Location 1906)
When I mention authenticity, I am referring to the way that managers level with their people. In many organizations, managers tend to err on the side of secrecy, of keeping things hidden from employees. I believe this is the wrong instinct. A manager’s default mode should not be secrecy. What is needed is a thoughtful consideration of the cost of secrecy weighed against the risks. (Location 1909)
When you instantly resort to secrecy, you are telling people they can’t be trusted. When you are candid, you are telling people that you trust them and that there is nothing to fear. To confide in employees is to give them a sense of ownership over the information. The result— and I’ve seen this again and again— is that they are less likely to leak whatever it is that you’ve confided. (Location 1911)
Your employees are smart; that’s why you hired them. So treat them that way. They know when you deliver a message that has been heavily massaged. When managers explain what their plan is without giving the reasons for it, people wonder what the “real” agenda is. There may be no hidden agenda, but you’ve succeeded in implying that there is one. Discussing the thought processes behind solutions aims the focus on the solutions, not on second- guessing. When we are honest, people know it. (Location 1918)
mentoring program that pairs new managers with experienced ones. A key facet of this program is that mentors and mentees work together for an extended period of time— eight months. They meet about all aspects of leadership, from career development and confidence building to managing personnel challenges and building healthy team environments. The purposes are to cultivate deep connections and to have a place to share fears and challenges, exploring the skills of managing others by wrestling together with real problems, whether they be external (a volatile supervisor) or internal (an overly active inner critic). In other words, to develop a sense of trust. (Location 1922)
But the job is never what we think it is. The trick is to forget our models about what we “should” be. A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well. (Location 1937)
by “Beast” I mean any large group that needs to be fed an uninterrupted diet of new material and resources in order to function. (Location 1972)
the success of each new Disney film also did something else: It created a hunger for more. As the infrastructure of the studio grew to service, market, and promote each successful film, the need for more product in the pipeline only expanded. The stakes were simply too high to let all those employees at all those desks in all those buildings sit idle. (Location 1978)
Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on— but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal. (Location 2047)
When efficiency or consistency of workflow are not balanced by other equally strong countervailing forces, the result is that new ideas— our ugly babies— aren’t afforded the attention and protection they need to shine and mature. They are abandoned or never conceived of in the first place. Emphasis is placed on doing safer projects that mimic proven money- makers just to keep something— anything!— moving through the pipeline (Location 2051)
Any company’s profit margin depends in large part on how effectively it uses its people: (Location 2069)
If inefficiencies result in anyone waiting for too long, if the majority of your people aren’t engaged in the work that drives your revenue most of the time, you risk being devoured from the inside out. (Location 2073)
In an unhealthy culture, each group believes that if their objectives trump the goals of the other groups, the company will be better off. In a healthy culture, all constituencies recognize the importance of balancing competing desires— they want to be heard, but they don’t have to win. Their interaction with one another— the push and pull that occurs naturally when talented people are given clear goals— yields the balance we seek. But that only happens if they understand that achieving balance is a central goal of the company. (Location 2098)
It is management’s job to figure out how to help others see conflict as healthy— as a route to balance, which benefits us all in the long run. I’m here to say that it can be done— but it is an unending job. A good manager must always be on the lookout for areas in which balance has been lost. (Location 2114)
place and then feeling your way. I often say that managers of creative enterprises must hold lightly to goals and firmly to intentions. What does that mean? It means that we must be open to having our goals change as we learn new information or are surprised by things we thought we knew but didn’t. As long as our intentions— our values— remain constant, our goals can shift as needed. (Location 2130)
Managers do not need to work hard to protect established ideas or ways of doing business. The system is tilted to favor the incumbent. The challenger needs support to find its footing. And protection of the new— of the future, not the past— must be a conscious effort. (Location 2186)
These were the normal adjustments that have to be made when a business expands and evolves. It’s folly to think you can avoid change, no matter how much you might want to. But also, to my mind, you shouldn’t want to. There is no growth or success without change. (Location 2212)
People want to hang on to things that work— stories that work, methods that work, strategies that work. You figure something out, it works, so you keep doing it— this is what an organization that is committed to learning does. And as we become successful, our approaches are reinforced, and we become even more resistant to change. (Location 2233)
it is precisely because of the inevitability of change that people fight to hold on to what they know. Unfortunately, we often have little ability to distinguish between what works and is worth hanging on to and what is holding us back and worth discarding. (Location 2236)
Fear makes people reach for certainty and stability, neither of which guarantee the safety they imply. (Location 2247)
To this day, he says, “I tend to flood and freeze up if I’m feeling overwhelmed. When this happens, it’s usually because I feel like the world is crashing down and all is lost. One trick I’ve learned is to force myself to make a list of what’s actually wrong. Usually, soon into making the list, I find I can group most of the issues into two or three larger all- encompassing problems. So it’s really not all that bad. Having a finite list of problems is much better than having an illogical feeling that everything is wrong.” (Location 2282)
by definition, ‘discovery’ means you don’t know the answer when you start. (Location 2292)
Pete has a few methods he uses to help manage people through the fears brought on by pre- production chaos. “Sometimes in meetings, I sense people seizing up, not wanting to even talk about changes,” he says. “So I try to trick them. I’ll say, ‘This would be a big change if we were really going to do it, but just as a thought exercise, what if…’ Or, ‘I’m not actually suggesting this, but go with me for a minute…’ If people anticipate the production pressures, they’ll close the door to new ideas— so you have to pretend you’re not actually going to do anything, we’re just talking, just playing around. Then if you hit upon some new idea that clearly works, people are excited about it and are happier to act on the change.” (Location 2295)
“Some of the best ideas come out of joking around, which only comes when you (or the boss) give yourself permission to do it,” Pete says. “It can feel like a waste of time to watch YouTube videos or to tell stories of what happened last weekend, but it can actually be very productive in the long run. I’ve heard some people describe creativity as ‘unexpected connections between unrelated concepts or ideas.’ (Location 2301)
This idea— that change is our friend because only from struggle does clarity emerge— makes many people uncomfortable, and I understand why. Whether you’re coming up with a fashion line or an ad campaign or a car design, the creative process is an expensive undertaking, and blind alleys and unforeseen snafus inevitably drive up your costs. The stakes are so high, and the crises that pop up can be so unpredictable, that we try to exert control. (Location 2306)
The potential cost of failure appears far more damaging than that of micromanaging. But if we shun such necessary investment— tightening up controls because we fear the risk of being exposed for having made a bad bet— we become the kind of rigid thinkers and managers who impede creativity. (Location 2309)
What is it, exactly, that people are really afraid of when they say they don’t like change? There is the discomfort of being confused or the extra work or stress the change may require. For many people, changing course is also a sign of weakness, tantamount to admitting that you don’t know what you are doing. This strikes me as particularly bizarre— personally, I think the person who can’t change his or her mind is dangerous. (Location 2311)
Self- interest guides opposition to change, but lack of self- awareness fuels it even more. Once you master any system, you typically become blind to its flaws; even if you can see them, they appear far too complex and intertwined to consider changing. But to remain blind is to risk becoming the music industry, in which self- interest (trying to protect short- term gains) trumped self- awareness (few people realized that the old system was about to be overtaken altogether). (Location 2327)
When people who run bureaucracies balk at change, they are usually acting in the service of what they think is right. Many of the rules that people find onerous and bureaucratic were put in place to deal with real abuses, problems, or inconsistencies or as a way of managing complex environments. But while each rule may have been instituted for good reason, after a while a thicket of rules develops that may not make sense in the aggregate. The danger is that your company becomes overwhelmed by well- intended rules that only accomplish (Location 2334)
We can store patterns and conclusions in our heads, but we cannot store randomness itself. Randomness is a concept that defies categorization; by definition, it comes out of nowhere and can’t be anticipated. While we intellectually accept that it exists, our brains can’t completely grasp it, so it has less impact on our consciousness than things we can see, measure, and categorize. (Location 2351)
predictions accordingly. This is the puzzle of trying to understand randomness: Real patterns are mixed in with random events, so it is extraordinarily difficult for us to differentiate between chance and skill. (Location 2358)
In general, we seek what we think are simple explanations for events in our lives because we believe the simpler something is, the more fundamental— the more true— it is. But when it comes to randomness, our desire for simplicity can mislead us. Not everything is simple, and to try to force it to be is to misrepresent reality. (Location 2382)
I believe that the inappropriate application of simple rules and models onto complex mechanisms causes damage— to whatever project is at hand and even to the company as a whole. The simple explanation is so desirable that it is often embraced even when it’s completely inappropriate. (Location 2384)
In creative endeavors, we must face the unknown. But if we do so with blinders on— if we shut out reality in the interest of keeping things simple— we will not excel. (Location 2388)
When we put setbacks into two buckets— the “business as usual” bucket and the “holy cow” bucket— and use a different mindset for each, we are signing up for trouble. We become so caught up in our big problems that we ignore the little ones, failing to realize that some of our small problems will have long- term consequences— and are, therefore, big problems in the making. (Location 2426)
What’s needed, in my view, is to approach big and small problems with the same set of values and emotions, because they are, in fact, self- similar. In other words, it is important that we don’t freak out or start blaming people when some threshold— the “holy cow” bucket I referred to earlier— is reached. We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. (Location 2429)
A culture that allows everyone, no matter their position, to stop the assembly line, both figuratively and literally, maximizes the creative engagement of people who want to help. In other words, we must meet unexpected problems with unexpected responses. (Location 2474)
We tend to think there is delineation— a bright line— between minor, expected problems and massive, unforeseen meltdowns. That encourages us to believe, wrongly, that we should approach these two phenomena— these two buckets, as I referred to them earlier— differently. But there isn’t a bright line. Big and small problems are, in key ways, the same. (Location 2477)
believe there is another approach: If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario, it causes no panic, because the threat of failure has been defanged. The individual or the organization responds with its best thinking, because the organization is not frozen, fearful, waiting for approval. Mistakes will still be made, but in my experience, they are fewer and farther between and are caught at an earlier stage. (Location 2482)
The difficulty is that we prioritize problems by size and importance, frequently ignoring small problems because of their abundance. But if you push the ownership of problems down into the ranks of an organization, then everyone feels free (and motivated) to attempt to solve whatever problem they face, big or small. I can’t predict everything that our employees will do or how they will respond to problems, and that is a good thing. The key is to create a response structure that matches the problem structure. (Location 2488)
No one— not Walt, not Steve, not the people of Pixar— ever achieved creative success by simply clinging to what used to work. (Location 2507)
We must acknowledge the random events that went our way, because acknowledging our good fortune— and not telling ourselves that everything we did was some stroke of genius— lets us make more realistic assessments and decisions. The existence of luck also reminds us that our activities are less repeatable. (Location 2514)
believe the deeper issue is that the leaders of these companies were not attuned to the fact that there were problems they could not see. And because they weren’t aware of these blind spots, they assumed that the problems didn’t exist. (Location 2548)
If you don’t try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. (Location 2550)
Gradually, snarky behavior, grousing, and rudeness disappeared from view— from my view, anyway. I rarely saw bad behavior because people wouldn’t exhibit it in front of me. I was out of a certain loop, and it was essential that I never lose sight of that fact. If I wasn’t careful to be vigilant and self- aware, I might well draw the wrong conclusions. (Location 2574)
many new leaders assume, wrongly, that their access to information is unchanged. But that is just one example of how hidden- ness affects a manager’s ability to lead. (Location 2581)
Here’s what turns a successful hierarchy into one that impedes progress: when too many people begin, subconsciously, to equate their own value and that of others with where they fall in the pecking order. Thus, they focus their energies on managing upward while treating people beneath them on the organizational chart poorly. (Location 2587)
This problem is not caused by hierarchy itself but by individual or cultural delusions associated with hierarchy, chiefly those that assign personal worth based on rank. By not thinking about how and why we value people, we can fall into this trap almost by default. (Location 2590)
So my colleagues know more than I do about what’s going on in any given department at any given moment. On the other hand, I know more about issues that people working in production do not: schedule requirements, resource conflicts, market problems, or personnel issues that may be difficult or inappropriate to share with everyone. Each of us, then, draws conclusions based on incomplete pictures. It would be wrong for me to assume that my limited view is necessarily better. (Location 2609)
When faced with complexity, it is reassuring to tell ourselves that we can uncover and understand every facet of every problem if we just try hard enough. But that’s a fallacy. The better approach, I believe, is to accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse. In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity. (Location 2615)
we don’t acknowledge how much is hidden, we hurt ourselves in the long run. Acknowledging what you can’t see— getting comfortable with the fact that there are a large number of two- inch events occurring right now, out of our sight, that will affect us for better or worse, in myriad ways— helps promote flexibility. You might say I’m an advocate for humility in leaders. But to be truly humble, those leaders must first understand how many of the factors that shape their lives and businesses are— and will always be— out of sight. (Location 2663)
Hindsight is not 20- 20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. (Location 2670)
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it— and stop there,” as Mark Twain once said, “lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove- lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove- lid again— and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” The cat’s hindsight, in other words, distorts her view. The past should be our teacher, not our master. (Location 2673)
We know that in plotting our next move, we are selecting paths into the future, analyzing the best available information and deciding on a route forward. But we are usually not aware that when we look back in time, our penchant for pattern- making leads us to be selective about which memories have meaning. And we do not always make the right selections. We build our story— our model of the past— as best we can. We may seek out other people’s memories and examine our own limited records to come up with a better model. Even then, it is still only a model— not reality. (Location 2677)
We aren’t aware that the majority of what we think we see is actually our brain filling in the gaps. The illusion that we have a complete picture is extraordinarily persuasive. However, the magician doesn’t create the illusion— we do. We firmly believe that we are perceiving reality in its totality rather than a sliver of it. In other words, we are aware of the results of our brain’s processing but not the processing itself. (Location 2708)
people imagine consciousness to be something that is achieved inside our brains. Alva Noe, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley who focuses on theories of perception, has suggested another way of thinking about consciousness— as something we do, or enact, or perform in our dynamic involvement with the world around us. Consciousness, in other words, happens within a context. “We spend all our lives embodied, environmentally situated, with others,” he writes. “We are not merely recipients of external influences but are creatures built to receive influences that we ourselves enact; we are dynamically coupled with the world, not separate from it.” (Location 2712)
These constructs— call them personal models— shape what we perceive. But they are each unique to us— no one can see relationships quite the way we do. If only we could remember that! Most of us walk around thinking that our view is best— probably because it is the only one we really know. You’d think the fact that we all have major misunderstandings with people at times— squabbles over what was said or what was meant— would clue us in to the reality that so incredibly much is hidden from us. But, no. We have to learn, over and over again, that the perceptions and experiences of others are vastly different than our own. In a creative environment, those differences can be assets. But when we don’t acknowledge and honor them, they can erode, rather than enrich, our creative work. (Location 2721)
This sounds simple enough— honor the viewpoints of others!— but it can be enormously difficult to put into practice throughout your company. That’s because when humans see things that challenge our mental models, we tend not just to resist them but to ignore them. This has been scientifically proven. The concept of “confirmation bias”— the (Location 2726)
We’ve all experienced times when other people see the same event we see but remember it differently. (Typically, we think our view is the correct one.) The differences arise because of the ways our separate mental models shape what we see. I’ll say it again: Our mental models aren’t reality. They (Location 2750)
I am urging you to attempt a similar balancing act when navigating between the known and the unknown. While the allure of safety and predictability is strong, achieving true balance means engaging in activities whose outcomes and payoffs are not yet apparent. The most creative people are willing to work in the shadow of uncertainty. (Location 2762)
The goal is to place one foot on either side of the door— one grounded in what we know, what we are confident about, our areas of expertise, the people and processes we can count on— and the other in the unknown, where things are murky, unseen, or uncreated. (Location 2768)
The Hidden— and our acknowledgement of it— is an absolutely essential part of rooting out what impedes our progress: clinging to what works, fearing change, and deluding ourselves about our roles in our own success. (Location 2786)
our models of the world so distort what we perceive that they can make it hard to see what is right in front of us. (Location 2815)
we don’t typically see the boundary between new information coming in from the outside and our old, established mental models— (Location 2817)
when we unknowingly get caught up in our own interpretations, we become inflexible, less able to deal with the problems at hand. (Location 2818)
The intertwining of many views is an unavoidable part of any culture, and unless you are careful, the conflicts that arise can keep groups of people locked into their restrictive viewpoints even if, as is often the case, each member of the group is ordinarily open to better ideas. (Location 2825)
As more people are added to any group, there is an inexorable drift toward inflexibility. While we can agree in principle that an organization needs to be flexible in order to solve problems, living up to that principle can be extraordinarily difficult. (Location 2827)
Dailies, or Solving Problems Together 2. Research Trips 3. The Power of Limits 4. Integrating Technology and Art 5. Short Experiments 6. Learning to See 7. Postmortems 8. Continuing to Learn (Location 2834)
first step is to teach them that everyone at Pixar shows incomplete work, and everyone is free to make suggestions. When they realize this, the embarrassment goes away— and when the embarrassment goes away, people become more creative. By making the struggles to solve the problems safe to discuss, then everyone learns from— and inspires— one another. (Location 2878)
When filmmakers, industrial designers, software designers, or people in any other creative profession merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it gives the illusion of creativity, but it is craft without art. Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft. (Location 2897)
Even though copying what’s come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe— to succeed with minimal risk— can infect not just individuals but also entire companies. If we sense that our structures are rigid, inflexible, or bureaucratic, we must bust them open— without destroying ourselves in the process. The question of how to do this must continually be addressed— there is no single answer— because conditions and people are constantly in flux. (Location 2900)
“the beautifully shaded penny.” It refers to the fact that artists who work on our films care so much about every detail that they will sometimes spend days or weeks crafting what Katherine Sarafian, a Pixar producer, calls “the equivalent of a penny on a nightstand that you’ll never see.” (Location 2937)
Another area where limits are invaluable is what we call “appetite control.” In Pixar’s case, when we are making a movie the demand for resources is literally bottomless. Unless you impose limits, people will always justify spending more time and more money by saying, “We’re just trying to make a better movie.” This occurs not because people are greedy or wasteful but because they care about their particular part of the film and don’t necessarily have a clear view of how it fits into the whole. They believe that investing more is the only way to succeed. (Location 2959)
At some point, though, you realize it is impossible to do everything on the list. So you set a deadline, which then forces a priority- based reordering of the list, followed by the difficult discussion of what, on this list, is absolutely necessary— or if the project is even feasible at all. You don’t want to have this discussion too soon, because at the outset, you don’t know what you are doing. If you wait too long, however, you run out of time or resources. (Location 2964)
frequently, neither the film’s leaders nor its team members know the true cost of the items on the list. The director may have only the fuzziest sense, for example, of how much extra work a particular tweak to the story will require. Likewise, an artist or technical director may think that the thing they are working on is essential and may pour his or her heart into it while having no sense of its actual value to the film. (Location 2967)
It could never have come from the people in the oversight group, because that would have required them to recognize and admit that their group’s existence was unnecessary. They were not in a position to challenge the preconception that their group was based on. In addition, the solution could never have been suggested by the leadership we replaced, either, because they believed that the oversight group was performing an important function by creating more transparency and imposing discipline on the process. But here was the irony: Creating this layer to enforce the limits actually made the limits less clear, diminishing their effectiveness. (Location 2999)
The oversight group had been put in place without anyone asking a fundamental question: How do we enable our people to solve problems? Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up? That approach never encourages a creative response. My rule of thumb is that any time we impose limits or procedures, we should ask how they will aid in enabling people to respond creatively. If the answer is that they won’t, then the proposals are ill suited to the task at hand. (Location 3004)
One of the advantages we had at Pixar, from the beginning, was that technology, art, and business were integrated into the leadership, with each of the company’s leaders— me, John, and Steve— paying a fair amount of attention to the areas where we weren’t considered expert. (Location 3018)
In most companies, you have to justify so much of what you do— to prepare for quarterly earnings statements if the company is publicly traded or, if it is not, to build support for your decisions. I believe, however, that you should not be required to justify everything. We must always leave the door open for the unexpected. Scientific research operates in this way— when you embark on an experiment, you don’t know if you will achieve a breakthrough. Chances are, you won’t. But nevertheless, you may stumble on a piece of the puzzle along the way— a glimpse, if you will, into the unknown. (Location 3055)
While we’d used R& D to justify the program initially, we soon realized that our feature films were the major drivers of technological innovation— not our shorts. (Location 3081)
the shorts accomplished other things for Pixar. People who work on them, for example, get a broader range of experience than they would on a feature, where the sheer scale and complexity of the project demands more specialization among the crew. Because shorts are staffed with fewer people, each employee has to do more things, developing a variety of skills that come in handy down the line. Moreover, working in small groups forges deeper relationships that can carry forward and, in the long term, benefit the company’s future projects. (Location 3087)
Our shorts also create a deeper value in two key areas. Externally, they help us forge a bond with moviegoers, who have come to regard them as a kind of bonus— something added solely for their enjoyment. Internally, because everyone knows the shorts have no commercial value, the fact that we continue to make them sends a message that we care about artistry at Pixar; it reinforces and affirms our values. And that creates a feeling of goodwill that we draw on, consciously and unconsciously, all the time. (Location 3091)
we have learned that shorts are a relatively inexpensive way to screw up. (And since I believe that mistakes are not just unavoidable but valuable, this is something to be welcomed.) (Location 3095)
“Better to have train wrecks with miniature trains than with real ones.” (Location 3103)
to train new artists. They place an object upside down, for example, so that each student can look at it as a pure shape and not as a familiar, recognizable thing (a shoe, say). The brain does not distort this upside- down object because it doesn’t automatically impose its model of a shoe upon it. Another trick is to ask students to focus on negative spaces— the areas of space around an object that are not the object itself. (Location 3125)
(This is why it is so frustrating that funding for arts programs in schools has been decimated. And those cuts stem from a fundamental misconception that art classes are about learning to draw. In fact, they are about learning to see.) (Location 3142)
It is a fact of life, though a confounding one, that focusing on something can make it more difficult to see. The goal is to learn to suspend, if only temporarily, the habits and impulses that obscure your vision. (Location 3146)
Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional. Postmortems are one route into that understanding. (Location 3161)
Given that we all agree, in principle, that postmortems are good for us, I’m always struck by how much people dread them. Most feel that they’ve learned what they could during the execution of the project, so they’d just as soon move on. Problems that arose are frequently personal, so most are eager to avoid revisiting them. Who looks forward to a forum for being second- guessed? People, in general, would rather talk about what went right than what went wrong, using the occasion to give additional kudos to their most deserving team members. Left to our own devices, we avoid unpleasantness. (Location 3174)
In general, people are resistant to self- assessment. Companies are bad at it, too. Looking inward, to them, often boils down to this: “We are successful, so what we are doing must be correct.” Or the converse: “We failed, so what we did was wrong.” This is shallow. Do not be cowed into missing this opportunity. (Location 3179)
Consolidate What’s Been Learned While it is true that you learn the most in the midst of a project, the lessons are not generally coherent. Any individual can have a great insight but may not have the time to pass it on. A process might be flawed, but you don’t have time to fix it under the current schedule. Sitting down afterward is a way of consolidating all that you’ve learned— before you forget it. (Location 3182)
Teach Others Who Weren’t There Even if everyone involved in a production understands what it taught them, the postmortem is a great way of passing on the positive and negative lessons to other people who were not on the project. So much of what we do is not obvious— the result of hard- won experience. Then again, some of what we do doesn’t really make sense. The postmortem provides a forum for others to learn or challenge the logic behind certain decisions. (Location 3186)
Don’t Let Resentments Fester Many things that go wrong are caused by misunderstandings or screw- ups. These lead to resentments that, if left unaddressed, can fester for years. But if people are given a forum in which to express their frustrations about the screw- ups in a respectful manner, then they are better able to let them go and move on. (Location 3190)
Use the Schedule to Force Reflection I favor principles that lead you to think. Postmortems— but also other activities such as Braintrust meetings and dailies— are all about getting people to think and evaluate. The time we spend getting ready for a postmortem meeting is as valuable as the meeting itself. In other words, the scheduling of a postmortem forces self- reflection. If a postmortem is a chance to struggle openly with our problems, the “pre- postmortem” sets the stage for a successful struggle. (Location 3194)
Pay It Forward In a postmortem, you can raise questions that should be asked on the next project. A good postmortem arms people with the right questions to ask going forward. We shouldn’t expect to find the right answers, but if we can get people to frame the right questions, then we’ll be ahead of the game. While I think the reasons for postmortems are compelling, I know that most people still resist them. (Location 3199)
First of all, vary the way you conduct them. By definition, postmortems are supposed to be about lessons learned, so if you repeat the same format, you tend to uncover the same lessons, which isn’t much help to anyone. Even if you come up with a format that works well in one instance, people will know what to expect the next time, and they will game the process. I’ve noticed what might be called a “law of subverting successful approaches,” by which I mean once you’ve hit on something that works, don’t expect it to work again, because attendees will know how to manipulate it the second time around. (Location 3203)
Finally, make use of data. Because we’re a creative organization, people tend to assume that much of what we do can’t be measured or analyzed. That’s wrong. Many of our processes involve activities and deliverables that can be quantified. We keep track of the rates at which things happen, how often something has to be reworked, how long something actually took versus how long we estimated it would take, whether a piece of work was completely finished or not when it was sent to another department, and so on. (Location 3214)
that data can be nothing less than soothing. “It was such a relief for me, when I began in this job, to be able to look at historical data and see the patterns,” she says. “It took what felt like a very nebulous process and allowed me to break it down and start to put a loose structure on it.” (Location 3220)
There are limits to data, however, and some people rely on it too heavily. Analyzing it correctly is difficult, and it is dangerous to assume that you always know what it means. It is very easy to find false patterns in data. Instead, I prefer to think of data as one way of seeing, one of many tools we can use to look for what’s hidden. If we think data alone provides answers, then we have misapplied the tool. It is important to get this right. Some people swing to the extremes of either having no interest in the data or believing that the facts of measurement alone should drive our management. Either extreme can lead to false conclusions. (Location 3226)
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a maxim that is taught and believed by many in both the business and education sectors. But in fact, the phrase is ridiculous— something said by people who are unaware of how much is hidden. A large portion of what we manage can’t be measured, and not realizing this has unintended consequences. (Location 3230)
Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing. (Location 3234)
In the classroom setting, people interacted in a way they didn’t in the workplace. They felt free to be goofy, relaxed, open, vulnerable. Hierarchy did not apply, and as a result, communication thrived. Simply by providing an excuse for us all to toil side by side, humbled by the challenge of sketching a self- portrait or writing computer code or taming a lump of clay, P.U. changed the culture for the better. It taught everyone at Pixar, no matter their title, to respect the work that their colleagues did. And it made us all beginners again. Creativity involves missteps and imperfections. I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea— that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge. (Location 3244)
We begin life, as children, being open to the ideas of others because we need to be open to learn. Most of what children encounter, after all, are things they’ve never seen before. The child has no choice but to embrace the new. If this openness is so wonderful, however, why do we lose it as we grow up? Where, along the way, do we turn from the wide- eyed child into the adult who fears surprises and has all the answers and seeks to control all outcomes? (Location 3254)
In Korean Zen, the belief that it is good to branch out beyond what we already know is expressed in a phrase that means, literally, “not know mind.” To have a “not know mind” is a goal of creative people. It means you are open to the new, just as children are. Similarly, in Japanese Zen, that idea of not being constrained by what we already know is called “beginner’s mind.” And people practice for years to recapture and keep ahold of it. (Location 3263)
By resisting the beginner’s mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely. (Location 3270)
Paying attention to the present moment without letting your thoughts and ideas about the past and the future get in the way is essential. Why? Because it makes room for the views of others. It allows us to begin to trust them— and, more important, to hear them. It makes us willing to experiment, and it makes it safe to try something that may fail. It encourages us to work on our awareness, trying to set up our own feedback loop in which paying attention improves our ability to pay attention. It requires us to understand that to advance creatively, we must let go of something. (Location 3272)
creative people discover and realize their visions over time and through dedicated, protracted struggle. In that way, creativity is more like a marathon than a sprint. You have to pace yourself. (Location 3283)
My old friend from the University of Utah, Alan Kay— Apple’s chief scientist and the man who introduced me to Steve Jobs— expressed it well when he said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Location 3288)
Brad has told me that he thinks of directing the way he thinks about skiing. In either pursuit, he says, if he tightens up or thinks too much, he crashes. There are moments, as a director, where there is so much work to do and so little time to do it that he can’t help but feel fear. But he also knows that if he lingers too long in that frightened place, he will freak out. “So I tell myself that I have time, even when I don’t. As in, ‘Okay, I’m going to proceed as if I have time— I’m going to sit back and muse rather than looking at the clock— because if I sit back and muse, I’m more likely to solve the problem.’ (Location 3318)
“If you think, you stink.” The idea resonated with him— and it informs his work as a director to this day. “The goal is to get so comfortable and relaxed with your instrument, or process, that you can just get Zen with it and let the music flow without thinking,” he told me. (Location 3334)
Andrew Stanton says about being a director. I’ve told you about Andrew’s belief that we will all be happier and more productive if we hurry up and fail. For him, moving quickly is a plus because it prevents him from getting stuck worrying about whether his chosen course of action is the wrong one. Instead, he favors being decisive, then forgiving yourself if your initial decision proves misguided. (Location 3339)
The director’s job is to say, “Land is that way.” Maybe land actually is that way and maybe it isn’t, but Andrew says that if you don’t have somebody choosing a course— pointing their finger toward that spot there, on the horizon— then the ship goes nowhere. It’s not a tragedy if the leader changes her mind later and says, “Okay, it’s actually not that way, it’s this way. I was wrong.” As long as you commit to a destination and drive toward it with all your might, people will accept when you correct course. (Location 3343)
“People want decisiveness, but they also want honesty about when you’ve effed up,” as Andrew says. “It’s a huge lesson: Include people in your problems, not just your solutions.” (Location 3347)
The director, or leader, can never lose the confidence of his or her crew. As long as you have been candid and had good reasons for making your (now- flawed- in- retrospect) decisions, your crew will keep rowing. But if you find that the ship is just spinning around— and if you assert that such meaningless activity is, in fact, forward motion— then the crew will balk. They know better than anyone when they are working hard but not going anywhere. (Location 3349)
People want their leaders to be confident. Andrew doesn’t advise being confident merely for confident’s sake. He believes that leadership is about making your best guess and hurrying up about it so if it’s wrong, there’s still time to change course. (Location 3352)
If you’re going to undertake a creative project that requires working closely with other people, you must accept that collaboration brings complications. Other people have so much to recommend them: They will help you see outside yourself; they will rally when you are flagging; they will offer ideas that push you to be better. But they will also require constant interaction and communication. Other people are your allies, in other words, but that alliance takes sustained effort to build. And you should be prepared for that, not irritated by it. (Location 3354)
“You have to embrace that sailing means that you can’t control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that, whatever comes, you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side. You will not be able to control exactly how you get across. That’s the game you’ve decided to be in. If your goal is to make it easier and simpler, then don’t get in the boat.” (Location 3359)
picture— the idea that as you progress, your project is revealing itself to you. “You’re digging away, and you don’t know what dinosaur you’re digging for,” Bob says. “Then, you reveal a little bit of it. And you may be digging in two different places at once and you think what you have is one thing, but as you go farther and farther, blindly digging, it starts revealing itself. Once you start getting a glimpse of it, you know how better to dig.” (Location 3382)
during your excavation, not every bone you unearth will necessarily belong to the skeleton you are trying to assemble. (There may be the bones of several different dinosaurs— or stories— mixed up in your dig site.) The temptation to use everything you find, even if it doesn’t fit, is strong. After all, you probably worked hard to dig each element up. (Location 3391)
It seems to me to contradict one of my central beliefs: that the future is unmade, and we must create it. If writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain blindfolded, that implies that the goal is to see an existing mountain— while I believe it should be the goal of creative people to build their own mountain from scratch. (Location 3403)
“I’m a firm believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic. If we put too much structure on it, we will kill it. So there’s a fine balance between providing some structure and safety— financial and emotional— but also letting it get messy and stay messy for a while. To do that, you need to assess each situation to see what’s called for. And then you need to become what’s called for.” (Location 3424)
When mediating between two groups who aren’t communicating well, for example, Lindsey feigns confusion. “You say, ‘You know, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t understand. I’m sorry I’m slowing you down here with all my silly questions, but could you just explain to me one more time what that means? Just break it down for me like I’m a two- year- old.’ (Location 3429)
Good producers— and good managers— don’t dictate from on high. They reach out, they listen, they wrangle, coax, and cajole. And their mental models of their jobs reflect that. (Location 3431)
Katherine Sarafian, another Pixar producer, credits the clinical psychologist Taibi Kahler with giving her a helpful way of visualizing her role. “One of Kahler’s big teachings is about meeting people where they are,” Katherine says, referring to what Kahler calls the Process Communication Model, which compares being a manager to taking the elevator from floor to floor in a big building. “It makes sense to look at every personality as a condominium,” Katherine says. “People live on different floors and enjoy different views.” Those on the upper floors may sit out on their balconies; those on the ground floor may lounge on their patios. Regardless, to communicate effectively with them all, you must meet them where they live. (Location 3433)
each of these models contains so many of the themes we’ve talked about so far: the need to keep fear in its place, the need for balance, the need to make decisions (but also to admit fallibility), and the need to (Location 3450)
intrigued, for example, by the way that many people use the analogy of a train to describe their companies. Massive and powerful, the train moves inexorably down the track, over mountains and across vast plains, through the densest fog and darkest night. When things go wrong, we talk of getting “derailed” and of experiencing a “train wreck.” And I’ve heard people refer to Pixar’s production group as a finely tuned locomotive that they would love the chance to drive. What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position— that driving the train is the way to shape their companies’ futures. The truth is, it’s not. Driving the train doesn’t set its course. The real job is laying the track. (Location 3453)
If you are mindful, you are able to focus on the problem at hand without getting caught up in plans or processes. Mindfulness helps us accept the fleeting and subjective nature of our thoughts, to make peace with what we cannot control. (Location 3481)
Most important, it allows us to remain open to new ideas and to deal with our problems squarely. Some people make the mistake of thinking that they are being mindful because they are focusing diligently on problems. But if they are doing so while subconsciously bound up with their worries and expectations, with no awareness that they can’t see clearly or that others may know more, they aren’t open at all. (Location 3483)
This model of paying attention to what is in front of you, not hanging on too tightly to the past or the future, has proved immensely useful to me as I have tried to sort out organizational issues and to dissuade my colleagues from clinging to processes or plans that have outlived their usefulness. Likewise, the notion of acknowledging problems (rather than putting in place rules that seek to suppress them) has meaning to me. (Location 3510)
With Iger’s blessing, then, we set about drafting a document that came to be known as “The Five Year Social Compact.” This seven- page, single- spaced list was an enumeration of all the things that had to remain the same at Pixar, should the merger go through. The document’s fifty- nine bullet points addressed many topics you might expect: compensation, HR policies, vacation, and benefits. (Item number 1 ensured that Pixar’s executive team could still reward employees with bonuses, as Pixar has always done, once a film’s box- office receipts reached a certain benchmark.) (Location 3602)
We needed to create a version of the Braintrust and teach the studio’s people how to work within it. While the directors liked each other, each movie at Disney had been set up to compete for resources, so they were not bonded as a group. In order to create a healthy feedback loop, we’d have to change that. (Location 3692)
To show her what I wanted, I drew a pyramid on a piece of paper. “What you have done in this report is to assert that in two years we will be here,” I said, putting my pencil lead at the top of the pyramid. “Once you assert that, though, it’s human nature that you will focus only on making it come true. You will stop thinking about other possibilities. You will narrow your thinking and defend this plan because your name will be on it and you will feel responsible.” Then I started drawing lines on the pyramid to show how I’d prefer she approach it. The first line I drew (Fig. 1, above) represented where we would aim to go in three months. The next one (Fig. 2) represented where we might be in three more (and you’ll note that it didn’t stay within the boundaries of Ann’s two- year plan). Chances are, I said, we would end up somewhere other than the top of the pyramid she’d imagined. And that (Fig. 3) was as it should be. Instead of setting forth a “perfect” route to achieving future goals (and sticking to it unwaveringly), I wanted Ann to be open to readjusting along the way, to remaining flexible, to accepting that we would be making it up as we go. Not only did she intuitively grasp what I was talking about, she also soon undertook a painful reorganization of her own group to align it with the new way of thinking. (Location 3723)
“The crew wanted to succeed, but they were afraid of pouring their hearts into something that wasn’t going to succeed. You could feel that fear. And in notes meetings, everyone was so afraid of hurting someone’s feelings that they held back. We had to learn that we weren’t attacking the person, we were attacking the project. (Location 3766)
Earning trust takes time; there’s no shortcut to understanding that we really do rise and fall together. Without vigilant coaching— pulling people aside who didn’t speak their minds in a particular meeting, say, or encouraging those who seem eternally hesitant to jump into the fray— our progress could have easily stalled. (Location 3769)
we now moved to eliminate contracts for everyone. At first, many people thought the move was an attempt to wrest power away from the employees and give them less security. In fact, my feeling about employment contracts is that they hurt the employee and the employer. The contracts in question were one- sided in favor of the studio, resulting in unexpected negative consequences. First and foremost, there was no longer any effective feedback between bosses and employees. If someone had a problem with the company, there wasn’t much point in complaining because they were under contract. If someone didn’t perform well, on the other hand, there was no point in confronting them about it; their contract simply wouldn’t be renewed, which might be the first time they heard about their need to improve. The whole system discouraged and devalued day- to- day communication and was culturally dysfunctional. But since everybody was used to it, they were blind to the problem. (Location 3774)
If we made it easy for one studio to borrow people or resources from the other to help solve a problem, the upshot would be that we’d mask the problem. Not allowing such borrowing was a conscious choice on our part to force problems to the surface where we could face them head on. (Location 3788)
Our decreased presence in the office was a chance for Pixar’s people to see what I already knew: that other leaders at the company had answers, too. (Location 3862)
In big organizations there are advantages to consistency, but I strongly believe that smaller groups within the larger whole should be allowed to differentiate themselves and operate according to their own rules, so long as those rules work. This fosters a sense of personal ownership and pride in the company that, to my mind, benefits the larger enterprise. (Location 3871)
Pixar had the kind of diverse problems that any successful company has. But chief among them, to my mind, was that more and more people had begun to feel that it was either not safe or not welcome to offer differing ideas. This hesitancy was difficult to see at first, but when we paid attention, we saw many clues that people were holding back. (Location 4012)
Managers of creative companies must never forget to ask themselves: “How do we tap the brainpower of our people?” (Location 4021)
Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can’t be avoided, and “vision” is often an illusion. But they must also feel safe— always— to speak their minds. Notes Day was a reminder that collaboration, determination, and candor never fail to lift us up. (Location 4023)
When we have a problem, the leaders of the company don’t say, “What the hell are you guys going to do about it?” Instead there is talk of “our” problem and of what “we” can do to solve it together. My colleagues see themselves as part owners of the company and of the culture, because they are. They are very protective of Pixar. (Location 4027)
Cheaper films are made with smaller crews, and everyone agrees that the smaller the crew, the better the working experience. It’s not just that a leaner crew is closer and more collegial; it’s that on a smaller production it’s easier for people to feel that they’ve made an impact. (Location 4045)
making a Pixar film required, on average, about 22,000 person- weeks, the unit of measurement we commonly use in our budget. We needed to reduce that number by about 10 percent. (Location 4048)
Nobody wanted to have worked on the first movie that didn’t open at number one. And the result was a growing temptation to pour too much visual detail into each film— to make it “perfect.” That honorable- sounding desire— we call it “plussing”— was accompanied by a kind of paralyzing anxiety. (Location 4051)
How, we all wondered, could we maintain Pixar’s sense of intensity and playfulness, beating back the creeping conservatism that often accompanies success while also getting leaner and more nimble? (Location 4064)
His challenge on that front is real: His department develops technology, but Pixar doesn’t sell technology. It sells stories enabled by technology. Which means that when a Pixar engineer develops a piece of software, it is deemed successful only insomuch as it helps our movies get made. I’ve talked about the problem at Pixar of people questioning how much of each movie’s success can be attributed to them personally. For engineers, that uncertainty can be particularly acute. (Location 4066)
Guido knows that if he’s not careful, that disconnect can lead to low morale. So to retain the best engineers, he works extra hard to make sure they enjoy their jobs. (Location 4070)
“personal project days.” Two days a month, he allowed his engineers to work on anything they wanted, using Pixar’s resources to engage with whatever problem or question they found interesting. It didn’t have to be directly applicable to any particular film or address any of production’s needs. (Location 4072)
“You just give people the time, and they come up with the ideas,” Guido told us. “That’s the beauty of it: It comes from them.” (Location 4077)
At one point, he’d suggested shutting down Pixar for a week at the end of a movie’s production cycle to talk about what went right, what went wrong, and how to reboot for the next project— a sort of super- postmortem. The idea wasn’t practical, in the end, but it was thought- provoking. Now, as we contemplated how to achieve our goal of cutting costs by 10 percent, Guido had a simple suggestion. (Location 4079)
We wanted to explore issues big and small— to give candid notes to ourselves about the workings of the company, much like we would give notes on a movie in a Braintrust meeting. (Location 4089)
The exercise would be fruitless without the buy- in of our people, so we scheduled three town hall– style meetings to explain the idea to more than 300 employees at a time. Tom Porter presented an abbreviated version of his off- site talk to set up the problem, and then John and I laid out the plan. “It’ll be a day in which you tell us how to make Pixar better,” John said. “We’ll do no work that day. No visitors will be allowed. Everyone must attend.” (Location 4092)
“We have a problem,” I said, “and we believe the only people who know what to do about it are you.” (Location 4095)
“This is not a call for working faster or doing more overtime or making do with fewer people,” he said in one town hall forum. “This is about making three films every two years with roughly the same number of people we’ve got today. We hope to rely on improvements in technology. We hope that productions can share resources and avoid reinventing the wheel each time. We hope that artists can benefit from greater clarity from the directors.” But to make good on these hopes— and to realize other areas in which we could improve— Pixar’s leaders needed everyone to speak up. (Location 4097)
The suggestion box, in turn, prompted something that none of us had expected. Many departments, without any prodding, created their own wiki pages and blogs to hash out what they believed the core issues at Pixar really were. Weeks before Notes Day, people were talking among themselves in ways they hadn’t before about how, specifically, to improve workflow and enact positive change. (Location 4105)
It’s all well and good to gather people to discuss workplace challenges, but it was extremely important that we find a way to turn all that talk into something tangible, usable, valuable. (Location 4138)
Tom and his team decided early on that people would determine their own schedules, signing up for only the sessions that interested them. (Location 4140)
Each of the Notes Day discussion groups would be led by a facilitator recruited from among the company’s production managers. The week before Notes Day, all facilitators attended a training session to help them keep each meeting on track and make sure that everyone— the outgoing, the laid- back, and everyone in between— was heard from. (Location 4141)
to make sure something concrete emerged, the Working Group designed a set of “exit forms” to be filled out by each session’s participants. (Location 4143)
Red forms were for proposals, blue forms were for brainstorms, and yellow forms were for something we called “best practices”— ideas that were not action items per se but principles about how we should behave as a company. (Location 4144)
The forms were simple and specific: Each session got its own set, tailored specifically to the topic at hand, that asked a specific question. For example, the session called “Returning to a ‘Good Ideas Come from Anywhere’ Culture,” had blue exit forms topped with this header: Imagine it’s 2017. We’ve broken down barriers so that people feel safe to speak up. Senior employees are open to new processes. What did we do to achieve this success? Underneath that question were boxes in which attendees could pencil in three answers. Then, after they wrote a general description of each idea, they were asked to go a few steps further. What “Benefits to Pixar” would these ideas bring? And what should be the “Next Steps” to make them a reality? Finally, there was space provided to specify “Who is the best audience for this idea?” and “Who should pitch this idea?” (Location 4146)
A best practices session called “Lessons from the Outside” had a yellow exit form that posed the question, “What can we learn from best practices at other companies?” Underneath, it had space for three lessons, each with the same “Benefits to Pixar/ Next Steps” follow- up. (Location 4153)
The red exit form for a proposals session called “Helping Directors Understand Costs in Story” gave the session’s attendees a jumping- off point: Introduce the concept of cost early in the story process. Build in scope discussions in the idea- generation phase. Story plays a role in the budget process when building reels. Then, in a space marked “Revised Proposal?” this form encouraged participants to improve on the stated approach. “How does this benefit the studio?” the form asked, and “What are the drawbacks?” At the bottom was another question, “Is This Idea Worth Pursuing?” with two boxes underneath: “YES! & Next Steps” or “NO, because… ” The yes option asked: “Who’s the best audience for this proposal? (Be specific).” And again there was this: “Who should pitch this proposal?” (Location 4155)
“We didn’t just want to make lists of cool things we could do. The goal was to identify passionate people who would take ideas forward. We wanted to put people with clever insights in front of Pixar’s executive team.” (Location 4162)
These departmental meetings, we felt, would serve as a sort of warm- up for the day; it’s always easier to be candid with people you know than with strangers. But as John had urged, Pixar’s people needed to put their thickest skins and bravest faces on. Because beginning at 10: 45 A.M., when everybody headed to their first session, chances were good that for the rest of the day, no Pixar employee was going to find him- or herself sitting next to any of the people they knew best. Why? Because the sessions weren’t organized by job or by department. They were organized by individual interest. (Location 4190)
“I wish more people knew about the whole production pipeline— by which I mean, that they appreciated and understood what other people do,” said another. “We need to heighten people’s awareness of what they do not know.” (Location 4211)
Among the ideas this group put on their exit forms: fostering more empathy between departments through a job- swapping program, establishing a lunch lottery that would match people at random to encourage new connections and friendships, and holding cross- departmental mixers designed to let far- flung colleagues get to know each other over a few beers. (Location 4213)
We’d made a decision to separate out Pixar’s executives, directors, and producers from the Notes Day sessions. Partly this was because it was vital that people speak freely, and we weren’t sure they would if we were there. Partly, too, we peeled off because there were particular topics that we needed to consider among ourselves: creative oversight (Location 4222)
“Notes Day is the proof that Pixar cares about people as much as about finances.” (Location 4234)
the exit forms filled out by Notes Day participants weren’t shy about asking, “Who should pitch this proposal?” That was by design— we wanted the best ideas to be pushed forward, not to languish. So in the weeks after Notes Day, all those who’d volunteered to be “idea advocates” were called in to work with Tom and his team to hone their pitches. Then, they began making them to me, John, and our general manager, Jim Morris— and together, we immediately began moving to implement the ones that made sense. (Location 4244)
I believe the biggest payoff of Notes Day was that we made it safer for people to say what they thought. Notes Day made it okay to disagree. That and the feeling our people had that they were part of the solution were its biggest contributions. (Location 4255)
What made Notes Day work? To me, it boils down to three factors. First, there was a clear and focused goal. This wasn’t a free- for- all but a wide- ranging discussion (organized around topics suggested not by Human Resources or by Pixar’s executives, but by the company’s employees) aimed at addressing a specific reality: the need to cut our costs by 10 percent. While the discussion topics were allowed— even encouraged— to stray into areas that might seem only vaguely related to this goal, the fact that it was there was key. It provided a framework— and it kept us from falling into confusion. (Location 4257)
this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company. Had the enormous task of making Notes Day a reality been shunted off on someone who didn’t have the clout to throw muscle behind it— and not entrusted to Tom, who in turn recruited the most organized people in the company to help him— it would have been an entirely different experience. Employees wouldn’t have bought into the idea because they’d sense that management hadn’t, either. And that would have rendered Notes Day moot. (Location 4261)
Notes Day was led from within. Many companies hire outside consulting firms to organize their all- staff retreats, and I understand why: Doing them well is a monumental, enormously time- consuming undertaking. But that our own people made Notes Day happen was, I believe, key to its success. Not only did they drive the discussion in meaningful ways, but their involvement also paid its own dividends. (Location 4265)
Notes Day wasn’t an end point but a beginning— a way of making room for our employees to step forward and think about their role in our company’s future. I said before that problems are easy to identify, but finding the source of those problems is extraordinarily difficult. Notes brought problems to the surface— but we still had the hard work in front of us. Notes Day didn’t solve anything all by itself. But it shifted our culture— repaired it, even— in ways that will make us better as we go forward. (Location 4269)
Things change, constantly, as they should. And with change comes the need for adaptation, for fresh thinking, and, sometimes, for even a total reboot— of your project, your department, your division, or your company as a whole. In times of change, we need support— from our families and from our colleagues. (Location 4273)
The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems. In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision… (Location 4280)
To keep a creative culture vibrant, we must not be afraid of constant uncertainty. We must accept it, just as we accept the weather. Uncertainty and change are life’s constants. And that’s the fun part. (Location 4286)
as challenges emerge, mistakes will always be made, and our work is never done. We will always have problems, many of which are hidden from our view; we must work to uncover them and assess our own role in them, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; when we then come across a problem, we must marshal all our energies to solve it. (Location 4287)
Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear. Doing all these things won’t necessarily make the job of managing a creative culture easier. But ease isn’t the goal; excellence is. (Location 4290)
It wasn’t that passion trumped logic in Steve’s mind. He was well aware that decisions must never be based on emotions alone. But he also saw that creativity wasn’t linear, that art was not commerce, and that to insist upon applying dollars- and- cents logic was to risk disrupting the thing that set us apart. Steve put a premium on both sides of this equation, logic and emotion, and the way he maintained that balance was key to understanding him. (Location 4348)
In a creative company, separating your people into distinct silos— Project A over here, Project B over there— can be counterproductive. (Location 4372)
Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas— pretty far- out ideas— into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn’t play well, he would move on. This is, in effect, a form of storytelling— searching for the best way to frame and communicate an idea. (Location 4413)
Steve aspired to create utilitarian things that also brought joy; it was his way of making the world a better place. That was part of why Pixar made him so proud— because he felt the world was better for the films we made. He used to say regularly that as brilliant as Apple products were, eventually they all ended up in landfills. Pixar movies, on the other hand, would live forever. (Location 4457)
Steve understood the value of science and law, but he also understood that complex systems respond in nonlinear, unpredictable ways. And that creativity, at its best, surprises us all. (Location 4498)
Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. If you get the team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right. (Location 4569)
When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight than their current skill level. What they will be capable of tomorrow is more important than what they can do today. (Location 4572)
Always try to hire people who are smarter than you. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems like a potential threat. (Location 4573)
If there are people in your organization who feel they are not free to suggest ideas, you lose. Do not discount ideas from unexpected sources. Inspiration can, and does, come from anywhere. (Location 4575)
It isn’t enough merely to be open to ideas from others. Engaging the collective brainpower of the people you work with is an active, ongoing process. As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute. (Location 4576)
There are many valid reasons why people aren’t candid with one another in a work environment. Your job is to search for those reasons and then address them. (Location 4578)
Likewise, if someone disagrees with you, there is a reason. Our first job is to understand the reasoning behind their conclusions. (Location 4580)
Further, if there is fear in an organization, there is a reason for it— our job is (a) to find what’s causing it, (b) to understand it, and (c) to try to root it out. (Location 4581)
There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right. (Location 4583)
In general, people are hesitant to say things that might rock the boat. Braintrust meetings, dailies, postmortems, and Notes Day are all efforts to reinforce the idea that it is okay to express yourself. All are mechanisms of self- assessment that seek to uncover what’s real. (Location 4584)
If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem. (Location 4586)
Many managers feel that if they are not notified about problems before others are or if they are surprised in a meeting, then that is a sign of disrespect. Get over it. (Location 4587)
Careful “messaging” to downplay problems makes you appear to be lying, deluded, ignorant, or uncaring. Sharing problems is an act of inclusion that makes employees feel invested in the larger enterprise. (Location 4589)
The first conclusions we draw from our successes and failures are typically wrong. Measuring the outcome without evaluating the process is deceiving. (Location 4591)
Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won’t have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. (Location 4592)
Our job is not to resist them but to build the capability to recover when unexpected events occur. If you don’t always try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. (Location 4594)
Similarly, it is not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them. (Location 4596)
Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new. (Location 4597)
Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up— it means you trust them even when they do screw up. (Location 4598)
The people ultimately responsible for implementing a plan must be empowered to make decisions when things go wrong, even before getting approval. Finding and fixing problems is everybody’s job. Anyone should be able to stop the production line. (Location 4599)
The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal— it leads to measuring people by the mistakes they make rather than by their ability to solve problems. (Location 4601)
Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way. And that’s as it should (Location 4603)
A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. (Location 4605)
Be wary of making too many rules. Rules can simplify life for managers, but they can be demeaning to the 95 percent who behave well. Don’t create rules to rein in the other 5 percent— address abuses of common sense individually. This is more work but ultimately healthier. (Location 4606)
Imposing limits can encourage a creative response. Excellent work can emerge from uncomfortable or seemingly untenable circumstances. (Location 4608)
Engaging with exceptionally hard problems forces us to think differently. (Location 4610)
An organization, as a whole, is more conservative and resistant to change than the individuals who comprise it. Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change— it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board. (Location 4611)
The healthiest organizations are made up of departments whose agendas differ but whose goals are interdependent. If one agenda wins, we all lose. (Location 4613)
Our job as managers in creative environments is to protect new ideas from those who don’t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not- so- greatness. Protect the future, not the past. (Location 4614)
New crises are not always lamentable— they test and demonstrate a company’s values. The process of problem- solving often bonds people together and keeps the culture in the present. (Location 4616)
Excellence, quality, and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. (Location 4618)
Do not accidentally make stability a goal. Balance is more important than stability. (Location 4619)
Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on— but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal. (Location 4620)
