Book Summary: Creativity Inc.

This a summary of the book, Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull.

Ed Catmull co-founded Pixar Animation and in this book, he describes his experience with trying to foster an environment that encourages creative thinking, problem-solving, and leadership.

Catmull’s goal as a manager was to actively pursue any steps necessary to protect the creative process.

I’ll try and summarize some of the best concepts from the book but I highly recommend reading it, the book contains useful lessons and stories that help better solidify the ‘why’ for a lot of these concepts.

The BrainTrust

Catmull realized early on that to have a successful business, people needed to have the ability to freely share their opinions and criticisms genuinely. But he also realized that there were times when honesty wasn’t always easy to say in some situations. This led people to, in an act of self-preservation, to hold back from speaking their minds. Sounds like a tough problem right? Here’s how Catmull approached it.

1. Honesty Vs. Candor

His solution was to use another word, candor. This communicates instead, a lack of reserve, which is not so different from honesty except in one important way.

You and I both want to be perceived as honest people right? Of course, we do, but what happens when we don’t want to speak our minds? Are we being dishonest or less than honest? No one wants to be perceived as anything less than honest or god forbid, no one wants to be seen as dishonest! But everyone understands that there are times to be candid and times not to be candid. By framing the solution in this way Catmull found a way to let his team know that Pixar values candor. In this way, people can feel free to speak freely and push their ideas across with none of the issues that come from honesty.

At Pixar, the idea of candor is practiced at the Brain Trust. The idea is simple:

“Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another.”

2. Feedback

Feedback is another important aspect of brain trust. Built on empathy, feedback is a tool used for growth and constructive criticism at Pixar. At Pixar, the term they used to describe how they give criticism is called “Good Notes”. A good note is a sort of document used by colleagues to provide feedback to other colleagues The template is open-ended but includes some essential parts:

• What is wrong?
• What is missing?
• What isn’t clear?
• What makes no sense?

And some key ideas:

• The good note shouldn’t demand anything.
• It should be given to the recipient in a timely manner (they should have time to fix the issue if possible).
• Doesn’t require a proposed fix. And if it does propose a fix, it’s only as a potential solution and not as an answer.
• Most importantly: The good note is specific.

Basically, as a recipient, you want to use it to gather information on what other people think of your ideas or work and what might be missing. As the critic, you want to help the other person improve their idea, be more clear or correct any issues.

“It’s not foolproof — sometimes its interactions only serve to highlight the difficulties of achieving candor — but when we get it right, the results are phenomenal. The Braintrust sets the tone for everything we do.”

Lessons:

• Promote the team and the company as a whole to be candid with one another. It promotes creative thinking and helps members communicate problems that they come across.
• Allow people to provide feedback that is thoughtful, specific, and actionable.

The Dream Team

1. People not ideas

Catmull found that the team was more important than the idea itself. Working on Toy Story 2, Catmull came to the realization that:

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

But saying you want talented people isn’t hard. Of course, we all want it. But how those individuals act together is the true measure of whether or not a team is talented. Focus on the team, not on the individuals. By having chemistry and the right people, the environment will allow ideas to grow organically.

2. Ideas are a puzzle piece, not the puzzle

Ideas aren’t singular objects. Rather ideas grow and evolve throughout the process and are parts of a greater whole. Catmull explains it like 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. In any given Pixar film, every line of dialogue, every beam of light or patch of shade, every sound effect is there because it contributes to the greater whole. In the end, if you do it right, people come out of the theater and say, “A movie about talking toys — what a clever idea!” But a movie is not one idea, it’s a multitude of them.”

Another important idea that I want to drive home is that an idea is not one single thing. An idea isn’t just like “Hey, I have an idea for a website where people can like and post pictures!”.

Its the design, the User Experience, the security features, the monetization model, the advertisement placement. Every little part of a grander idea is its own idea. And these sub-parts aren’t handled by any one person. They’re handled by a team of individuals. This is what Catmull is trying to explain. People generate ideas and work with other people to fit their ideas together. So focus on the people and the team, ideas will come on their own.

Lessons:

• Focus on the team and its chemistry, more than the idea
• Ideas aren’t singular, their puzzle pieces that fit into the whole.
• People create ideas so worry about the people first and the ideas will follow.

The Fear of Failure

1. Fail more!

There were many problems at Pixar animation, many failures, and many close calls. And while they were painful for Catmull and the team as a whole. Those failures made them stronger and better because it taught them lessons and to not make certain assumptions. Catmull explains how failure is something we’re taught to be ashamed of and even in adulthood when we learn it’s an important part of the learning process, we still tend to avoid it. Probably because failure hurts.

But the effects of not taking risks and not failing are a huge reason for mediocrity. In a fear-based failure culture, people will avoid risk and repeat what’s good enough. In essence, if you aren’t failing, you aren’t doing anything new and therefore you aren’t growing.

Failure shouldn’t be thought of as a necessary evil, Catmull says. In fact, they aren’t evil at all, failure is an inevitable consequence of doing something new and therefore should be seen as valuable. But despite this realization, Catmull acknowledges that failure is still painful and it’s important to recognize the reality of these truths.

2. Blameless Culture

When people view experimentation as a waste of time it reduces the willingness of people to take chances. In a culture not restrained by the fear of failure, people are more willing to explore new areas and explore uncharted territories. When experimentation is seen as productive and not a waste of time, they tend to engage in it more. They will see the upside to being decisive and they aren’t as worried about hitting dead ends. Cultivating this kind of culture is important. It allows an organization as a whole to differentiate from other companies and produce more unique experiences.

Therefore, An important job of management shouldn’t be to prevents risks and failures. Instead, it should be to build a system that can recover from failures. An environment, that focuses primarily on learning and not blaming others for failure is how people take risks.

Leaders should talk about their mistakes often and their part in them. This makes it easier for others to do the same. As a leader, we need to respond well to failure by asking questions like, “How do we get the most out of it?” or “What lessons can we learn?”. By asking these types of questions, individuals and teams know that their efforts, weren’t wasted and that they can pursue different projects down the line.

Lessons:

• Failure is a by-product of doing new things, embrace it.
• Experimentation is NOT a waste of time.
• Don’t prevent failures, create systems to recover from failures.
• Create a culture that doesn’t blame people for failures. The successes are successes of the organization and so should be the failures. Learn and grow from them, because they’re valuable.

The Hungry Beast and The Ugly Baby

1. Managing a team

Catmull suggests that one of management’s responsibilities is to help others see conflict as healthy. Conflict is usually a good indicator of an imbalance. It’s a way to re-establish balance and it benefits the organization in the long run. It’s also important to note that it’s an unending job that requires managers to always be on the lookout for when the balance is lost.

An example of this at Pixar was when they decided to expand their animation staff. This had the obvious side effect of being able to produce more, quality work. But there was also a negative to this as well. Meeting sizes are much larger and less intimate. Participants now have less ownership (and in a sense are less valued). The response to this problem was to create smaller subgroups and encourage employees to be more active. These corrections, however, require management to stay diligent and attentive. Otherwise, it can lead to an organization’s overall performance to be sub-optimal.

A good manager has to also stay open to changing circumstances. As the situation changes and new information is brought in, managers need to be open to the idea of changing goals and letting go of assumptions that were previously made.

2. Managing a creative organization

Catmull gives the example of The Hungry Beast and The Ugly baby as an example of how managers need to juggle the two dichotomies. The Hungry Beast is business as usual. It requires an uninterrupted diet of new resources and information to function. In simpler, terms its the work done day in and day out to progress a project. The Ugly Baby is the version one of a project, its unformed, vulnerable, and incomplete. It needs protection and time to grow. Its the division working on something that might be a little out there. Ugly Babies have a hard time being with the Beast. It needs protection from quick decisions from other people that don’t understand the idea. If an idea (especially one that is poorly defined), doesn’t have time to evolve, it could be destroyed. A lot of times, we’ll see managers, look at side projects, and think that it isn’t worth the time or resources despite them not entirely understanding the project.

One of the goals is to give projects adequate time to develop. In many cases, the impact that this project may have isn’t known until its given time to develop. It’s important to have both these aspects work in balance with each other, to allow for an organization’s growth and stability.

Lessons

• Management has the responsibility to be aware of changes to the organization and make an assessment of how dynamics may change. Always trying to maintain a balance.
• Be open to changing goals as new information comes in.
• Protect new ideas and give them time to form

The Importance of Work-Life Balance

The needs of the organization or project or prototype should never outweigh the needs of your people. The idea here is simple but very important. People create ideas, so by supporting people and making sure that they’re healthy and value you provide the ideal environment for creativity and efficiency.

“You needed to show your people that you meant it when you said that while efficiency was a goal, quality was the goal. More and more, I saw that by putting people first — not just saying that we did, but proving that we did by the actions we took — we were protecting that culture.”

Strategies need to be put into place to avoid and prevent workers from being overly stressed and to prevent work from harming people. This means going beyond the yoga classes or volleyball courts. While these amenities are great and show that an organization cares about activities outside work, they aren’t always enough. Supporting parents to take time off work, to be with their newborn children, and allowing them the flexibility on their work hours are some of the ways to show the team that they’re valued.

Additionally, being mindful to not compare the productivity output of, for example, young workers to older workers without taking into consideration context is important for management.

“I’m not talking just about the health of our employees here; I’m talking about their long-term productivity and happiness. Investing in this stuff pays dividends down the line.”

Lessons:

• By providing people with a work-life balance you keep talented people working effectively over a long period of time.
• Let your employees know that they’re valued and that things like maternity or paternity leave won’t affect their future
• Be mindful of comparing groups of people, a lot of the times they’re operating under different circumstances.

Some extra tips by Catmull

Pixar used “dallies”, exercises where colleagues solve problems together and show incomplete work to get constructive feedback from others. This was used as a way to spark creativity and introduce more apply some of the methods Pixar would teach their employees to think more expansively. It was a way to help people be more open to judging other people’s work and promote creative thinking.

Research trips were another method employed by Pixar to help people gain a new perspective. Especially, if these trips are done outside the comfort zone of your team, help challenge preconceived notions, and help fuel inspiration.

Postmortems are away teams can look back at a recently completed project and see what worked and what didn’t. By doing this your team can avoid making the same mistakes in the future and also learn what new techniques worked surprisingly well. They can also be used as a tool to teach other people that weren’t involved in what happened during the project.

Thank you for reading this summary, I hope you enjoyed it, and I do recommend checking out the actual book. It’s full of a lot more information and Ed Catmull’s experience at Pixar Animation was interesting to read.