Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

The Previews:

When I freelanced for Disney, they still required creatives to punch a time clock. Women with tight-fitting hair nets roamed the halls with coffee and doughnuts.  And the circular dining hall was festooned with pictures of Walt and Roy and executives like Card Walker.  

Chances are somewhere in that  group of diners was John Lasseter.  John was an animator who  left Disney to become part of the computer division of Lucasfilm.  Steve Jobs bought the fledging company and renamed it Pixar, a fake Spanish word meaning "to make pictures or pixels."

Jobs, Lasseter and Dr. Ed Catmull overcame a roller-coaster of financial challenges and turned Pixar into a dream company. Ed Catmull  isn't a name most people don't know outside of the animation world.  At Pixar, he not only co-founded the company, he was the key developer of the RenderMan rendering system used in such films as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.  

Recently, Catmull wrote a terrific article for the Harvard Business Review called "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity." His insights into developing a culture of collaboration and sustaining that culture are an important lesson for other creative organizations.

The Feature:

"Pixar is a community in the truest sense of the word," says Catmull.  "We think that lasting relationships matter and we share some basic beliefs: Talent is rare. Management's job is not to prevent risk, but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture."

Equally tough is getting talented people to work effectively with one another. That takes trust and respect, which we managers can't mandate; they most be earned over time.  What we can do is construct an environment that nurture's trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone's creativity."  

Catmull talks about a key moment when Pixar was experiencing a crisis during the co-development of Toy Story 2 and Bug's Life.  Disney wanted to make TS2 as a "direct to video" movie which meant that the cost and quality would be lower. It also meant that the team that created the original Toy Story would be working on A Bug’s Life and a less experienced team would be at the helm of TS2.

“We realized early on that having two standards of quality in the same studio would was bad for our souls.”   Eventually, the team of Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joe Ranft and Lee Unkrick were able to take over the creative leadership.

It took Pixar’s “A” team to add the critical elements to make the story work.   “It taught us an important lesson in the primacy of people over ideas: If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up; but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works.”

Catmull says that insight changed the mission of the development department.   Instead of coming up with new ideas for movies (Like most studios), the department’s job is to assemble small incubation teams to help directors refine their ideas. “During production, we leave the operating decisions to the film’s leaders, and we don’t second-guess or micromanage them.”

Pixar’s Operating Principles can be distilled down to 3 principles.  

1.   Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone.

2.   It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.

3.   We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.

The Wrap:

Eventually, Pixar created Brain Trust consisting of John and eight experienced directors.   When a director and a producer feel in need of assistance, they convene the group.   They show the work in progress and there is a lively discussion – which is all about making the movie better.

“There’s no ego.   Nobody pulls any punches to be polite.   This works because all the participants have come to trust and respect one another… they always knew that the passion was about the story and wasn’t personal. ”

I believe that creative companies should place this article in their mission statements.   Don’t punish passion.   Be critical about the idea, not the creator.   And  If you have to consistently micro-manage then you’re hired the wrong talent or haven't invested in mentoring them.

Check out the whole story at http://tinyurl.com/6nbbp2 

Thanks to the Harvard Business Review for permission to quote material.