A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.
This is why it is so frustrating that funding for arts programs in schools has been decimated. And those cuts stem from a fundamental misconception that art classes are about learning to draw. In fact...
When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight than their current skill level. What they will be capable of tomorrow is more important than what they can do today.
We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described t...
Many of the rules that people find onerous and bureaucratic were put in place to deal with real abuses, problems, or inconsistencies or as a way of managing complex environments. But while each rule m...
I’ve known many managers who hate to be surprised in meetings, for example, by which I mean they make it clear that they want to be briefed about any unexpected news in advance and in private. In many...
I’m particularly struck by Byron’s focus on speed—on zipping through complex problems of logic and storytelling—because it reminds me of what Andrew Stanton says about being a director. I’ve told you...
In graduate school, I’d quietly set a goal of making the first computer-animated feature film, and I’d worked tirelessly for twenty years to accomplish it.
Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think ab...
In the weeks after Notes Day, we implemented four good ideas, committed to five more, and earmarked still a dozen more for continued development. All of them stood to improve either our processes, our...