Creativity Inc

I just finished Creativity Inc by by Ed Catmull and  Amy Wallace.  It was recommended to me by a colleague at work because he believes that our team can learn from other companies even if they are not in the same industry.  I work in the finance industry and I was skeptical that a book about managing a film studio would be useful or interesting.  I was very wrong on both assumptions.


Ed Catmull  uses the story of Pixar to make his points about managing and helping to create great films.  What I found fascinating is that Mr. Catmul used the failures at Pixar to illustrate where they went wrong and how they learned form them but never pointed a finger or placed blame.  An example of this is how a couple of films had the directors fired part way through development but did not mention who the people were that got fired..  Beyond the insightful and useful advice Mr. Catmul gives to mangers is the history and story of Pixar itself.  To read  how some of these entertaining movies got made and how these film changed over time is worth reading this book alone.

Some of the best moments in the book was finding out that the only 2 things that remained from the original pitch of "UP" was the name and the tall bird.  One fo the most interesting pieces of trivia about UP was the  problem of Charles F. Muntz being a grown man when Carl was a boy but they are the same age when they finally meet in the film.  The directors bad the choice to not fix this story issue believing the audience won't notice that Muntz should be over 100 years old. Until the age was pointed out I never noticed the issue because the film was so good.  

Another interesting story was when Disney bought Pixar, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter took over Disney Animation.  During this time Disney made the Princess and the Frog, Mr. Catmull was told that if the movie had Princess in the title people would think it was just for girls and loose 1/2 of the potential audience.  Mr. Catmull didn't follow his own advice and the advice of people that knew better about marketing, and released the film with title he wanted because he was caught up by memory of Walt Disney and believed that people would watch the film anyway. He was wrong.  The film did terribly at the box office.  But the lessons learned from this experience helped create Tangled which I am sure helped with Frozen too. Both are amazing films that I still watch with my family. 

The management lessons from the book was also full of really good insights about working with people and projects. The 2 that made the most impact on me was that married people with family produce differently than single people and they should not be compared.  And comparing the output from married people to single is like comparing apples to oranges.  The other big quote was that Quality should be THE goal not a goal.  Too often the THE goal is a deadline or the budget and quality is a goal.  Mr Catmul believes this view hurts the product the employees and the company as the pole working are not doing their best work,

Quotes by ED Catmull

• Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. If you get the team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right.
• Likewise, if someone disagrees with you, there is a reason. Our first job is to understand the reasoning behind their conclusions.• Careful “messaging” to downplay problems makes you appear to be lying, deluded, ignorant, or uncaring. Sharing problems is an act of inclusion that makes employees feel invested in the larger enterprise.
• There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.
• Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.
• Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up— it means you trust them even when they do screw up.
• Excellence, quality, and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves.

• Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on— but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal