Don’t tell me your great idea, help me build an environment where I too can come up with one: Lessons from Pixar

Lessons from Ed Catmull’s Creativity Inc.

Welcome to another book review.

I’m thrilled to continue sharing thoughts on the books that I read so that just like I did, you too can feel inspired to pick one up, devour it, and then spit some of that wisdom back to the community.

As a product manager, I find myself at a point in life where, in an effort to learn how to navigate my own professional challenges, I’m studying the lives of legendary business managers who have experienced the most complex situations and came out triumphant.

Today we’re talking about Edwin Catmull’s auto bibliographic narration of how he went to pursue a childhood dream of becoming an animator, and along the way built one of the most renowned and influential animation studios in the world.

Without further ado, welcome to Creativity Inc.

I was born in 1987. Only a year after Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from George Lucas.

(I know right? this story has the guys behind Star Wars AND the iPhone!)

Roughly 8 years later, in 1995, the world saw Toy Story, the first completely 3D animated feature film. And as audiences all around the world partnered up emotionally with Woody as he ventured into Sid’s house to save Buzz, there was an absurd amount of hard work and amazing life lessons happening behind the scenes, at the headquarters of company that also gave us Finding Nemo, Up, Wall-E, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc, and the list goes on.

I remember walking out of each one of these with a feeling that somewhere inside, I’d been touched. Every time the story got me so involved that my mind would just forget the woefully masterpiece of art + technology that I was witnessing. I even remember weeping to the first 5 minutes of Up as a twenty something year old, when watching it for the first time.

At the time it didn’t seem like much of a difference form 2D animation, as I was just oblivious to the enormous efforts that went into creating the shapes displayed on the screen. And that only shows how good these people are at what they do. They tell stories so emotional that we tend to forget that we’re watching completely computer generated graphics, and so that is why it is remarkable to learn about the people who had the determination and grit to make that a reality.

By 1995, Catmull was already 20+ years in on his 3D animation journey

I won’t lay down all the details from Catmull’s life here because he does it much better himself in the book, but I will mention that his journey is a long one. Before going onto start Pixar, he held two critical roles managing teams around the same technology of 3D animation, one of them being George Lucas. This, only to give you an idea of the high standard for quality that we’re talking about here. And also, to mention that the Pixar we know about today and the one we connect to emotionally, was born only after long years of effort and relentless thriving forward by Catmull and the founding members. So that, on itself, is also a valuable lesson for us to pick up on, because more than being the smartest, it does seem to pay to be the grittiest.

This book is filled with lessons for managers on how to create an environment where the free flow of ideas gives birth to new ways of thinking and doing things. Now, we have to keep in mind that Pixar is an inherently creative powerhouse where artistry and filmmaking are their main monetization mechanism, and that because of that we should observe their remarkable ways with prudence, but we should also pick up the best management attitudes for our own industries, that I will argue are not less creative than animation and filmmaking.

Ed Catmull and the co-founders of Pixar animation have mastered the art of managing a company where creativity is a the very core of everything they make. And it is therefore tempting to think that the many lessons they have picked up along the way are not relevant to our “less creative” industries where every employee wears a necktie, we sell financial products or each one of our employees spends most of their time submerged on an Excel sheet.

I’d argue that over and over again, innovative companies have proven this conception to be wrong. Plus, relegating the lessons from an animation studio by arguing that they only apply in an artistic environment would totally miss the point:

It is all about the ability of the management to create an environment that puts a global mission front and center, and then wrap it with an organization that values people over anything else.

This book has so many valuable insights that I will simply suggest you read it to fully grasp the nature of the culture that breathes inside of Pixar, but if I had to summarize what I considered the most valuable lessons, the following would come out:

Value people over ideas, because it is people who have ideas.

Therefore, value and nurture people so that they can have and develop ideas. Create mechanisms for your teams to trust each other, to collaborate, to mingle outside the scope of their daily tasks, and more importantly, allow them to contribute even outside of their own domains. A quite interesting method used in Pixar is called Brainstrust, which is a meeting with some very specific rules of participation and performance metrics. I will let Catmull further explain.

Promote an environment where communication flows freely, regardless of hierarchy or seniority

Doing this will combine the expertise of your most experienced staff with the ingenuous, out-of-the-box thinking of your less experienced (and biased) team members.

Communication structure NOT THE SAME AS organizational structure.

Whenever possible, advocate for problem solving over error prevention

It is much more empowering and less expensive to prepare an employee to deal with the difficulties for when they face a problem, than to try to focus solely on prevention and prepare ex-ante for every possible thing that could go wrong.

Thank you for reading and if you found this interesting, don’t hesitate to comment or reach out. I’ve found that a healthy discussion about a topic of our interest is the best way to digest the content.

I’m a Product Manager with a proclivity for web design and programming. I live in Japan and currently help a number of tech startups in AgTech and EdTech get off the ground. Happy to connect on LinkedIn or Instagram. And while you’re at it, here’s my website and YouTube channel as well.