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Steve had a remarkable knack for letting go of things that didn't work. If you were in an argument with him, and you convinced him that you were right, he would instantly change his mind. He didn't hold on to an idea because he had once believed it to be brilliant. His ego didn't attach to the suggestions he made, even as he threw his full weight behind them. When Steve saw Pixar's directors do the same, he recognized them as kindred spirit..
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Ed Catmull |
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There's something else that bears repeating here: 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.
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Ed Catmull |
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A trained artist who sees a chair, then, is able to capture what the eye perceives (shape, color) before their "recognizer" function tells them what it is supposed to be."
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Ed Catmull |
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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."
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Ed Catmull |
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If we can agree that it's hard, if not impossible, to get a complete picture of what is going on at any given time in any given company, it becomes even harder when you are successful. That's because success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.
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Ed Catmull |
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The key is to look at the viewpoints being offered, in any successful feedback group, as additive, not competitive.
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Ed Catmull |
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Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process--reworking, reworking, and reworking again,
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Ed Catmull |
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We believe that ideas--and thus, films--only become great when they are challenged and tested.
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Ed Catmull |
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It is one of life's cruel ironies that when it comes to feeding the Beast, success only creates more pressure to hurry up and succeed again. Which is why at too many companies, the schedule (that is, the need for product) drives the output, not the strength of the ideas at the front end.
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Ed Catmull |
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leadership is about making your best guess and hurrying up about it so if it's wrong, there's still time to change course.
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Ed Catmull |
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any successful feedback system is built on empathy, on the idea that we are all in this together,
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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That Takes You Inside the Mind), 94-99, 178 Internet,
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Ed Catmull |
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was so fundamental to creative work. Employees were spread out over four floors,
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Ed Catmull |
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This was a critical decision that was not obvious to most people. Most people assumed that Pixar would do 3D movies and Disney would do 2D. Or
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Ed Catmull |
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Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room for it to grow.
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Ed Catmull |
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So, when our two like-minded overlords demanded a list of names of people to lay off, Alvy and I gave them two: his and mine.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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The trust comes from knowing that we are safe, that our colleagues will not judge us for failures but will encourage us to keep pushing the boundaries. But to me, the key is not to let this trust, our faith, lull us into the abdication of personal responsibility. When that happens, we fall into dull repetition, producing empty versions of what was made before.
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Ed Catmull |
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Katherine Sarafian, a producer who's been at Pixar since Toy Story, tells me she prefers to envision triggering the process over trusting it--observing it to see where it's faltering, then slapping it around a bit to make sure it's awake.
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Ed Catmull |
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I feel like the only reason we're able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, 'discovery' means you don't know the answer when you start.
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Ed Catmull |
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At Pixar, Toy Story 2 taught us this lesson--that we must always be alert to shifting dynamics, because our future depends on it--once and for all. Begun as a direct-to-video sequel, the project proved not only that it was important to everyone that we weren't tolerating second-class films but also that everything we did--everything associated with our name--needed to be good. Thinking this way was not just about morale; it was a signal to ..
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Ed Catmull |
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In 1997, executives at Disney came to us with a request: Could we make Toy Story 2 as a direct-to-video release--that is, not release it in theaters? At the time, Disney's suggestion made a lot of sense. In its history, the studio had only released one animated sequel in theaters, 1990's The Rescuers Down Under, and it had been a flop. In the years since, the direct-to-video market had become extremely lucrative, so when Disney proposed Toy..
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Ed Catmull |
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Once, I was having lunch with the president of another movie studio, who told me that his biggest problem was not finding good people; it was finding good ideas. I remember being stunned when he said that--it seemed patently false to me, in part because I'd found the exact opposite to be true on Toy Story 2. I resolved to test whether what seemed a given to me was, in fact, a common belief. So for the next couple of years I made a habit, wh..
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Ed Catmull |
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This was a success in itself, but it came with an added and unexpected benefit: The act of thinking about the problem and responding to it was invigorating and rewarding. 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 t..
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Ed Catmull |
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Before I go on, I want to say something about the word protection. I worry that because it has such a positive connotation, by implication anything being protected seems, ipso facto, worth protecting.
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Ed Catmull |
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Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don't know can we ever hope to learn it.
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Ed Catmull |
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He told me that he thinks he and the other proven directors have a responsibility to be teachers--that this should be a central part of their jobs, even as they continue to make their own films.
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Ed Catmull |
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But as always, my focus was on the challenges ahead and on staying true to our goal of recognizing problems early and engaging them fully.
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Ed Catmull |
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That's because success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.
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Ed Catmull |