How Pixar Nurtures Creativity — Ed Catmull on Honesty’s Baggage and Beautiful Accidents

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How Pixar Cultivates Creativity and Beautiful Accidents — Ed Catmull

Dying stars at Silicon Valley

Most of us are familiar with the classic startup parable. Somebody somewhere gets an interesting idea. With charm and confidence, they attract talent and funding. A few quick wins then generates a lot of buzz, which attracts even more talent, customers, and financing in turn. Then somewhere along the way, they lose themselves. Like a dying star, the company expands violently before an inevitable implosion.

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull has seen this story repeat itself over and over again throughout his career in art and technology. These companies are so obsessed with competition and growth “that they never develop any deep introspection about other destructive forces”, he says. Fearing the same fate for Pixar, Catmull has long sought to understand the dangers that destroy companies from the inside out.

Forests, trees, and blinders

Indeed, even the most brilliant and creative minds can lose their bearings. While it is easy to blame hubris, hubris is more of a symptom than a cause. Something hidden inside the company blinds leadership to the problems that confront them. “Where once he or she could see a forest, now there are only trees”, Catmull writes.

Catmull experienced this firsthand as a team leader at Lucasfilm and Pixar. “As my position changed, people became more careful [with] how they spoke and acted in my presence”, he notes. As grapevine grumblings fell out of view, internal issues and external threats grew obscure. We might parallel this to a brain that is unable to receive and respond to signals from its sensory systems.

The bugbear in A Bug’s Life

Catmull recalls his shock, for example, when production staffers were hesitant to work on Pixar’s second film A Bug’s Life. Hidden in the success of their debut film Toy Story was an “ongoing rift between [Pixar’s] creative and production departments.” Production teams were “disrespected and marginalized”—much of which went unseen by the leadership team.

What’s troubling, Catmull writes, is that “not a single production manager had dropped by to express frustration… in the five years [Pixar] worked on Toy Story.” As he learned, employees were fearful that complaining might compromise their chances of further work. And because they relished the history-making opportunity to work on Toy Story, they stayed silent. 

This story is a reminder that the good can hide the bad. And “when downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what’s bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers”, Catmull reminds. But such behaviors are unsustainable. So Pixar’s culture had to grow alongside its filmmaking prowess if it wanted to move from strength to strength.

Self-preservation, honesty, and creativity

Culture change, in the first instance, requires us to understand the human condition. Much of it, Catmull says, revolves around our desire for self-preservation. Many children experience this early in life when they feel pressured into a self-image to appease their friends or family.

The same effect can manifest in the workplace when people hold back on their ideas or worries in fear of conflict, rejection, or overwork. When this happens at scale, information flows deteriorate. And the effect builds up the more layers and hierarchies we add to the system.

Without a free-flowing exchange of ideas and feedback, people will develop distorted worldviews and draw incorrect conclusions. The problem worsens if people “begin, subconsciously, to equate their own value and that of others with where they fall in the pecking order.” They will channel their energy and attention towards corporate politics and upward management.

These effects together result in inertia and dysfunction. The company limps along as employees work around and over each other.

That’s not to say, however, that the company should do away with hierarchies and processes. That road alone will lead to anarchy. Rather, to foster a creative, collaborative, and resilient culture, the company must find some way, Catmull notes, to “free [itself] of honesty’s baggage.” 

The Last Supper

So it goes without saying that “unhindered communication [is] key.” But bold aspirations are not enough, you have to pay attention to the microdetails.

For one, Catmull got rid of the ultra long and skinny table in Pixar’s meeting room. It looked like the table from Leonardo da Vinci’s mural painting of The Last Supper, and became an unintended blocker to honesty and collaboration. People who sat at either end found it uncomfortable to participate when conversations dominated in the center. When it comes to culture, little details like seating arrangements matter. Here, we can probably learn a thing or two from the way school classrooms arrange their seats and promote inclusivity.

“If there are people in your organization who feel they are not free to suggest ideas, you lose. Do not discount ideas from unexpected sources. Inspiration can, and does, come from anywhere… As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute.”

Ed Catmull. (2014). Creativity, Inc.

Braintrust, dailies, and postmortems

Another pillar of Pixar’s cultural model is the Braintrust. Like a peer review system in academia, the Braintrust provides candid feedback throughout the filmmaking process (noting that around 120,000 storyboard drawings are made for a 90-minute reel, much of which are redraws and iterations). 

The Braintrust is characterized by “frank talk, spirited debate, laughter, and love.” That is also “why [Pixar’s co-founder] Steve Jobs didn’t come to Braintrust meetings”, Catmull writes. He felt that Steve’s “bigger-than-life presence would make it harder to be candid… That’s how much candor matters at Pixar: It overrides hierarchy.”

Relatedly is Pixar’s practice of Dailies. Every Pixar employee must “check their egos at the door… [and] show incomplete work” to the team for feedback. This is scary at first. Self-preservation abhors presenting half-formed ideas and incomplete drawings. But the fear of judgment goes away when everybody is sharing together. This in turn translates into greater honesty and collaboration.

Pixar also runs postmortem analyses after every film to see what went well and what can be improved. As Catmull explains, postmortems help the company to: “force reflection”, “consolidate what’s been learned”, and to “teach others who weren’t there”. It also provides another opportunity for staff to voice their ideas, worries and displeasure.

Debating with Steve Jobs

Moreover, companies must remember that employees express themselves in different ways. So it is vital to provide different channels for communications. Catmull remembers, for example, how difficult it was to deliberate with Steve Jobs, at least initially. Because Jobs “could think much faster than [he] could, [Jobs] would often shoot down [his] arguments”.

But Catmull learned to return serve in his own way. He’d take a week to “marshall [his] thoughts” before trying again. The point is not about being right or wrong. It is about the avenues for constructive dialogue. Some people do their best thinking on the fly, while others need time and quiet to deliberate. Enduring companies find ways to accommodate diverse types.

Pixar approaches this in many ways. For one, there is an online suggestion box for people to share feedback. Many teams run their own blogs and wiki-pages to discuss ideas and issues. Then there is Notes Day—a dedicated time for staff to come together to find solutions for Pixar’s processes.

A lot of these “changes will sound mundane”, Catmull admits. (One problem, for example, looked for ways to deliver film cuts to directors more quickly and securely.) But every detail in the process and culture counts. They add up. “Real improvement comes from consistent rigor and participation.”

Notes Day and related initiatives succeed because they are “led from within” the company. Problem solving is hard work. While it is tempting to outsource these jobs to consultancies, inside solutions are superior when done well. They get the details right. And the “commitment [is] contagious”.

The Pixar way

But as any enterprise or government can appreciate, there are just too many problems to contend with at any given moment. Fighting every fire at once spreads the organization too thin. Most of them learn to prioritize. They look for the quick-wins and pressing problems that deserve their attention and resources.

Catmull believes, however, that there is another way. “If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed.” Mistakes are inevitable, of course. But giving hard-working, well-meaning people the autonomy to act can alleviate these pressures. 

Here again we find a parallel to the human body. For one, our respiratory, immune, circulatory and digestive systems do not wait for the brain’s permission to breathe, fight diseases, transport nutrients, process food, and excrete waste. The conscious mind in turn is dedicated to higher-order activity. Can you imagine just what might be if this wasn’t the case?

Toyota production system

These ideas aren’t new, of course. Catmull was inspired by post-Second World War Japanese manufacturing. Toyota’s production system, for example, gave every employee, from junior operators to senior managers, the responsibility to solve problems themselves. Management encouraged them to halt the entire assembly line without approval to identify and eliminate errors. 

While initially time-consuming and expensive, these practices led to superior quality and productivity. It pushed Toyota and other Japanese automakers past their American counterparts. And towards the 1980s, technology companies like Hewlett Packard and Apple began to embed similar principles into their processes as well.

“We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and fix them… Until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur.”

Ed Catmull. (2014). Creativity, Inc. 

Beautiful accidents

In the end, some things will go right, while others go wrong. Whether in creativity or management, we must not forget the ever present role of accidents and uncertainty.

The production of Pixar’s tenth film Up was, for example, “a case study in change and randomness”, Catmull writes. Pixar fans might be surprised to hear that the original script was about “a castle floating in the sky… [and] two sons, who were each vying to inherit [their father’s] kingdom.” But through repeated iterations and step-changes, Up found its heart in the story of a 78-year-old balloon salesman and widower named Carl—who leaves for Paradise Falls in South America to fulfill his wife’s dream. Adventure ensues when an 8-year-old boy scout stumbles aboard.

Quite the transformation, don’t you think? While Pixar retained the structure of a skyward bastion, the narrative evolved into something more personal, heartfelt, and unexpected. As Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Doctor explains, “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.” Beautiful accidents, you see, want change and uncertainty. (And Up, by the way, went on to win Best Picture, and a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, at the 82nd Academy Awards.)

Erasing Toy Story 2

Of course, no matter how careful you are, accidents may derail the creative process. Catmull recalls one harrowing experience during the making of Toy Story 2 when “two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds” by an accident with the computer drives.

Not to worry, they thought. The team would restore their systems overnight and return to work the next day. But to their horror, the backup system too had failed. Panic set in until a technical director remembered that she had made extra backups to work-from-home following the birth of her second child.

So as the story goes, the birth of a child had pulled Toy Story 2 and Pixar from the brink of demise. To Catmull, it was a vivid reminder of the role that chance plays. Events compound in surprising, nonlinear ways. Pixar was indeed lucky that the crisis was followed by a final stroke of good fortune.

Self-similar problems

Catmull has since learned to appreciate the phenomena of self-similarity in nature and life. Much like the fronds on a fern, the distribution of earthquakes, or the movements in stock prices, “big and little problems”, Catmull suggests, “are structured similarly”—the patterns “look the same when viewed at different degrees of magnification.” 

That is to say that accidents, whether good or bad, or big or small, are statistically inevitable. “We hurt ourselves in the long run”, Catmull warns, when “we don’t acknowledge how much is hidden.” This also means that no amount of planning or precaution will suffice. To sustain creativity, we have to embrace the uncertainty of discovery, and build in shock absorbers to withstand the cost of unforeseen failures.

“No matter how intensely we desire certainty, we should understand that whether because of our limits or randomness or future unknowable confluences of events, something will inevitably come, unbidden, through that door.”

Ed Catmull. (2014). Creativity, Inc.

Sustaining creativity

So why do startups collapse like dying stars? Perhaps it is not so much about vision or foresight. Indeed, Catmull finds it strange when executives see themselves as “train drivers”. “The real job”, he says, “is laying the tracks”. Without foundations, the right drivers and the right ideas cannot go forth.

Creativity in a large enterprise is rarely a product of a sole genius. From character design to cinematography, “a movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas”, Catmull reminds. The leader’s task is not to envision everything by him or herself, but to “sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole.” This ultimately requires an ear for honesty and the hidden. 

Sources and further reading

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