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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| f2ffd40 | If you aren't experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: | Ed Catmull | ||
| 50fc540 | A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. | Ed Catmull | ||
| e9f0256 | 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. 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 wh.. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 0471b77 | DISCUSSING FAILURE AND all its ripple effects is not merely an academic exercise. We face it because by seeking better understanding, we remove barriers to full creative engagement. One of the biggest barriers is fear, and while failure comes with the territory, fear shouldn't have to. The goal, then, is to uncouple fear and failure--to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn't strike terror into your employees' hearts. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 51a2afe | Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can't be avoided, and "vision" is often an illusion." | Ed Catmull | ||
| b29c777 | Athletes and musicians often refer to being in "the zone"--that mystical place where their inner critic is silenced and they completely inhabit the moment, where the thinking is clear and the motions are precise. Often, mental models help get them there. Just as George Lucas liked to imagine his company as a wagon train headed west--its passengers full of purpose, part of a team, unwavering in their pursuit of their destination--the coping .. | Ed Catmull | ||
| f8843a4 | 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| ed64ed1 | one of the pioneers of interactive computer graphics, Ivan Sutherland. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 5e4197c | The Sword of Damocles, after the Greek myth, | Ed Catmull | ||
| 5cd7812 | This tension between the individual's personal creative contribution and the leverage of the group is a dynamic that exists in all creative environments, but this would be my first taste of it. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 41cd1a0 | taking a risk necessitated a willingness to deal with the mess created by the risk. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 160837e | Our mental models aren't reality. They are tools, like the models weather forecasters use to predict the weather. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 40c642e | To view lack of conflict as optimum is like saying a sunny day is optimum. A sunny day is when the sun wins out over the rain. There's no conflict. You have a clear winner. But if every day is sunny and it doesn't rain, things don't grow. And if it's sunny all the time--if, in fact, we don't ever even have night--all kinds of things don't happen and the planet dries up. The key is to view conflict as essential, because that's how we know th.. | Ed Catmull | ||
| ec2f705 | 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 balan.. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 5ce2c59 | The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 87e443d | 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| eb186bc | 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 477dfd9 | Which meant that the people working on Up had to be able to roll with that evolution without panicking, shutting down, or growing discouraged. | Ed Catmull | ||
| a209904 | 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 | Ed Catmull | ||
| 042fc54 | 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.' | Ed Catmull | ||
| 3338c85 | Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren't exceptional. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 7c5c35f | When I advocate for protecting the new, then, I am using the word somewhat differently. I am saying that when someone hatches an original idea, it may be ungainly and poorly defined, but it is also the opposite of established and entrenched--and that is precisely what is most exciting about it. If, while in this vulnerable state, it is exposed to naysayers who fail to see its potential or lack the patience to let it evolve, it could be dest.. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 6097661 | Did you arrive early to work because you left on time, planned ahead, and drove carefully? Or were you just in the right place at the right time? Most people would choose the former answer without a second thought--without even acknowledging the latter was an option. | Ed Catmull | ||
| c3bd77b | 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 "prop.. | Ed Catmull | ||
| eba7e58 | Believe me, 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 530b546 | Since making movies is such a messy process, we need to be able to talk candidly, among ourselves, about the mess without having it shared outside the company. By sharing problems and sensitive issues with employees, we make them partners and partowners in our culture, and they do not want to let each other down. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 8471446 | ARPA had been created in response to Sputnik, and one of its key organizing principles was that collaboration could lead to excellence. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 7132d88 | personally supervised by Walt himself to ensure that as many rooms as possible had windows to let in natural light. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 863164f | A Subdivision Algorithm for Computer Display of Curved Surfaces, | Ed Catmull | ||
| 4f0c7c0 | The Z-buffer accomplished that by assigning a depth to every object in three-dimensional space, then telling the computer to match each of the screen's pixels to whatever object was the closest. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 3c27e28 | Alex Schure | Ed Catmull | ||
| c35d887 | prescient | Ed Catmull | ||
| 37e11af | The lesson of ARPA had lodged in my brain: When faced with a challenge, get smarter. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 8a0c56c | I've made a policy of trying to hire people who are smarter than I am. | Ed Catmull | ||
| b1177da | After talking about it, however, 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| 1374597 | In the intervening years, George has said that he hired me because of my honesty, my "clarity of vision," and my steadfast belief in what computers could do. Not long after we met, he offered me the job." | Ed Catmull | ||
| 7bcb8e6 | Clearly, it 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| c8c3346 | The Art of Animation | Ed Catmull | ||
| 83151de | 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. | Ed Catmull | ||
| b36402a | I remember his assertiveness. There was no small talk. Instead, there were questions. Lots of questions. What do you want? Steve asked. Where are you heading? What are your long-term goals? | Ed Catmull | ||
| e1454ce | a conversation with him took you places you didn't expect. It forced you not just to defend but also to engage. And that in itself, I came to believe, had value. | Ed Catmull | ||
| af72754 | When you instantly resort to secrecy, you are telling people they can't be trusted. | Ed Catmull | ||
| e2daa2d | Dick Levin's Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early, and Pay Late: The Manager's Guide to Financial Survival, | Ed Catmull | ||
| 1d993a9 | 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. | Ed Catmull |