Creativity, Inc. tells the story of the well-known animated movie making company Pixar, from its inception to growth, struggles, successes and the journey to joining with Disney Animation. This book is a great study in creating company culture and for Pixar that culture needed to be one of sustainable creativity where ‘Story is King’.
While the book is full of many examples of great leadership, let me share four takeaways that stood out: -
1. Focus on People – at Pixar they believe in their people, that everybody has the potential to be creative. A culture is fostered where everyone continually asks questions and is given responsibility for identifying and solving problems, regardless of title or hierarchy. At Pixar the leadership believes that getting the team right is the precursor to getting the ideas right. Ed shares that “ideas come from people; therefore, people are more important than ideas.” They built a culture around finding and developing good people, which resulted in developing good ideas. Pixar leadership is intentional in their choice to put people first and Creativity Inc shares the many ways they do this in practical terms. Most organizations claim to put people first but this is a story where this value is lived out and results in significant success.
2. A Culture of Candour – Pixar leadership believes that the freedom to share ideas, opinions and criticisms is key to a creative culture and candour became the value which they embraced to do this well. Candour - forthrightness or frankness, fosters creative collaboration that is at the heart of their company success. The leadership embraced candour, they encouraged people to level with each other, to talk about mistakes and failures, to openly critique ideas, and to take time for post-mortems after the completion of every movie. All of their meetings and interactions are efforts to reinforce the idea that it is okay to express yourself and this in turn has built a foundation of trust. It is impressive how well Pixar embraced and embodied this value throughout all levels of the company.
3. Notes Day – as the company grew and merged with Disney Animation, Ed shares that they became aware that people were self-censoring and not feeling safe to offer differing ideas. They decided to shut the company for a day and have all employees involved in ‘notes day’. This was an entire day dedicated to telling the leadership how to make Pixar better. Weeks went into preparation - sharing about notes day with employees, soliciting ideas and discussion topics, training facilitators and preparing for the day. On the day all Pixar people chose to attend sessions according to their interest and each session came out with solid ideas to take forward. Ed describes this day as “resetting the table for creativity and breaking the logjam in the way of candour”. The thought and preparation that they put into the day and the resulting shift in energy and culture of their people is an inspiring case study for other organisations.
4. Mentoring Program – when Pixar was small and growing, the vision and wisdom was easily caught by those who worked closely alongside the founders. As the company grew it became apparent that this passing on of wisdom through osmosis was no longer happening. After recognising this problem, the leadership created a mentoring program that would intentionally pass on what those who had worked closely with the initial creators had learned. As a formal part of their job, every director became responsible to also be a teacher, so that the wisdom and insights of ‘how we do it in Pixar’ were not lost. This intentionality in developing leaders is noteworthy.
What makes Pixar special? These things and many more that Ed describes in the book, all formed a culture of creativity that ultimately led to Pixar’s enormous success. Creativity Inc is a great read and fascinating study in creating company culture. Do add it to your reading list!
(click on the blog title to comment - I would love to hear your thoughts on this book)
