Ultimately, what we're after is authenticity. What feels daunting to the filmmakers when John sends them out on such [research] trips is that they don't yet know what they are looking for, so they're...
Tom’s team distilled the thousand ideas down to 293 discussion topics. That was still way too many for a single day’s agenda, so a group of senior managers then met and whittled those down to 120 topi...
To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines,...
To be honest, I was uneasy about Steve. He had a forceful personality, whereas I do not, and I felt threatened by him. For all of my talk about the importance of surrounding myself with people smarter...
To Whom it May Inspire, Austin wrote. I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the...
This was a success in itself, but it came with an added and unexpected benefit: The act of thinking about the problem and responding to it was invigorating and rewarding. We realized that our purpose...
There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.
The ideas that emerged on Notes Day, in other words, were not gathering dust in a drawer. They were changing Pixar—meaningfully and for the better. The
Pete has a few methods he uses to help manage people through the fears brought on by pre-production chaos. Sometimes in meetings, I sense people seizing up, not wanting to even talk about changes, he...
Pete Docter compares directing to running through a long tunnel having no idea how long it will last but trusting that he will eventually come out, intact, at the other end. There’s a really scary poi...
Once the whittling process was complete, Tom needed to find out roughly how many people were interested in each discussion topic so that he could plan the day accordingly. To that end, the Notes Day W...
My rule of thumb is that any time we impose limits or procedures, we should ask how they will aid in enabling people to respond creatively. If the answer is that they won’t, then the proposals are ill...
My belief is that good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they’re in.
Managers of creative companies must never forget to ask themselves: How do we tap the brainpower of our people?
In big organizations there are advantages to consistency, but I strongly believe that smaller groups within the larger whole should be allowed to differentiate themselves and operate according to thei...
In 1997, executives at Disney came to us with a request: Could we make Toy Story 2 as a direct-to-video release—that is, not release it in theaters? At the time, Disney’s suggestion made a lot of sens...
In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepar...
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. The take...
If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.
If we can agree that it’s hard, if not impossible, to get a complete picture of what is going on at any given time in any given company, it becomes even harder when you are successful. That’s because...