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Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas. Why are we confused about this? Because 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, often made by dozens of people.
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Ed Catmull |
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You suffer through it as you struggle to solve it, but by the end you've developed a sort of fondness for it, and you miss it when it is gone.
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Ed Catmull |
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Creativity involves missteps and imperfections.
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Ed Catmull |
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candor could not be more crucial to our creative process.
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Ed Catmull |
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the process of coming to clarity takes patience and candor. In
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Ed Catmull |
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There are two parts to any failure: There is the event itself, with all its attendant disappointment, confusion, and shame, and then there is our reaction to it. It is this second part that we control. Do we become introspective, or do we bury our heads in the sand? Do we make it safe for others to acknowledge and learn from problems, or do we shut down discussion by looking for people to blame? We must remember that failure gives us chance..
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Ed Catmull |
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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. Simply
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Ed Catmull |
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The most productive creative sessions allow for the exploration of myriad trains of thought.
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Ed Catmull |
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Before we get to the forces that shape that discussion, let's take a moment to look at things from the filmmakers' point of view. To a one, they regard these sessions as essential.
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Ed Catmull |
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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. 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.
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Ed Catmull |
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The Braintrust is valuable because it broadens your perspective, allowing you to peer--at least briefly--through others' eyes. Brad
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Ed Catmull |
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People join us with a set of expectations about what they think is important. They want to please, impress, and show their worth. They really don't want to embarrass themselves by showing incomplete work or ill-conceived ideas, and they don't want to say something dumb in front of the director. The 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 ..
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Ed Catmull |
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Our short films are Pixar's way of experimenting, and we produce them in the hopes of getting exactly these kinds of glimpses. Over the years, Pixar has become known for including short films at the beginning of our feature films. These three- to six-minute films, each of which might cost as much as two million dollars to make, certainly don't yield any profits for the company; in the immediate term, then, they're hard to justify. What sust..
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Ed Catmull |
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Una de las tradiciones anuales de la empresa es la Pixarpalooza, un macrofestival en el que nuestras propias bandas de rock luchan por la primacia dejandose el alma en los escenarios que erigimos en el jardin.
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Ed Catmull |
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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
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Ed Catmull |
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My belief is that good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they're in.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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When it comes to creative endeavors, the concept of zero failures is worse than useless. It is counterproductive. To
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Ed Catmull |
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The story of Cassandra is traditionally taken as a parable about what happens when valid warnings are ignored. But for me, it raises different issues. Why, I always wonder, do we think of Cassandra as the one who's cursed? The real curse, it seems to me, afflicts everyone else--all of those who are unable to perceive the truth she speaks. I
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Ed Catmull |
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That's the place you're looking for: when the movie starts to tell you what it wants to be.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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When filmmakers, industrial designers, software designers, or people in any other creative profession merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it givers 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.
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Ed Catmull |
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Las reglas tal vez simplifiquen la vida a los ejecutivos, pero pueden ser degradantes para el 95 por ciento de los empleados que cumplen con su deber. No cree reglas para controlar al 5 por ciento restante.
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Ed Catmull |
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Ultimately, what we're after is authenticity. What feels daunting to the filmmakers when John sends them out on such [research] trips is that they don't yet know what they are looking for, so they're not sure what they will gain. You'll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar. In my experience, when people go out on research trips, they always come back changed.
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Ed Catmull |
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In any business, it's important to do your homework, but the point I'm making goes beyond merely getting the facts straight. Research trips challenge our preconceived notions and keep cliches at bay. They fuel inspiration. They are, I believe, what keeps us creating rather than copying.
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Ed Catmull |
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When failure occurs, how should you get the most out of it?
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Ed Catmull |
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I could see something that Bill couldn't: Steve had responded to Bill's passion about the issue. The fact that Bill was willing to stand up so forcefully and articulately for what he believed showed Steve that Bill's ideas were worthy of respect. Steve never raised the format issue with us again.
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Ed Catmull |
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Managers of creative companies must never forget to ask themselves: "How do we tap the brainpower of our people?"
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Ed Catmull |
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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. But what does this mean in practice? It means that there are pre-meetings before meetings, and the meetings begin to take on a..
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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the founding of Pixar University and Elyse Klaidman's mind-expanding drawing classes in particular. Those first classes were such a success--of the 120 people who worked at Pixar then, 100 enrolled--that we gradually began expanding P.U.'s curriculum. Sculpting, painting, acting, meditation, belly dancing, live-action filmmaking, computer programming, design and color theory, ballet--over the years, we have offered free classes in all of th..
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Ed Catmull |
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those of you in management positions, be aware that some of this is going to feel like it's directed at you personally. I'm not kidding. It's going to happen. But put your tough skin on, and for the sake of Pixar, speak up, and don't stop the honesty.
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Ed Catmull |
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Most people have heard of the Eastern teaching that it is important to exist in the moment. It can be hard to train yourself to observe what is right now (and not to bog down in thoughts of what was and what will be), but the philosophical teaching that underlies that idea--the reason that staying in the moment is so vital--is equally important: Everything is changing. All the time. And you can't stop it. And your attempts to stop it actual..
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Ed Catmull |
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it seemed like every issue, big or small, that arose around this time was chalked up to the merger: "You said things wouldn't change! You're breaking your word! We don't want to lose the old Pixar!" I should say that this outcry came despite the fact that the measures we had put in place to protect Pixar's culture were working--and, in my view, were a model for how to maintain cultural integrity after a merger."
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Ed Catmull |
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From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment.
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Ed Catmull |
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I began to see my role as a leader more clearly. I would devote myself to learning how to build not just a successful company but a sustainable creative culture.
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Ed Catmull |
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There is another, different meaning of reality distortion for me. It stems from my belief that our decisions and actions have consequences and that those consequences shape our future. Our actions change our reality. Our intentions matter. Most people believe that their actions have consequences but don't think through the implications of that belief. But Steve did. He believed, as I do, that it is precisely by acting on our intentions and ..
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Ed Catmull |
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The animators who work here are free to--no, encouraged to--decorate their work spaces in whatever style they wish. They spend their days inside pink dollhouses whose ceilings are hung with miniature chandeliers, tiki huts made of real bamboo, and castles whose meticulously painted, fifteen-foot-high styrofoam turrets appear to be carved from stone.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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We tend to think of emotion and logic as two distinct, mutually exclusive domains. Not Steve. From the beginning, when making decisions, passion was a key part of his calculus.
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Ed Catmull |
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If we can constantly change and improve our models by using technology in the pursuit of art, we keep ourselves fresh.
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Ed Catmull |
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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.
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Ed Catmull |
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I believe that we all have the potential to solve problems and express ourselves creatively. What stands in our way are these hidden barriers--the misconceptions and assumptions that impede us without our knowing it. The issue of what is hidden, then, is not just an abstraction to be bandied about as an intellectual exercise. The Hidden--and our acknowledgement of it--is an absolutely essential part of rooting out what impedes our progress:..
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Ed Catmull |
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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. T..
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Ed Catmull |