The Braintrust is valuable because it broadens your perspective, allowing you to peer—at least briefly—through others’ eyes. Brad
That they liked so much of what they were doing allowed them to put up with the parts of the job they came to resent. This was a revelation to me: The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized t...
So what if we oversimplify in order to get through our days? So what if we hold tight to familiar ideas that give us the answers we crave? What does it matter? In my view, it matters a lot. In creativ...
People who act without an approved plan should not be punished for going rogue. A culture that allows everyone, no matter their position, to stop the assembly line, both figuratively and literally, ma...
People want decisiveness, but they also want honesty about when you’ve effed up, as Andrew says. It’s a huge lesson: Include people in your problems, not just your solutions.
Once, after one of our special effects software guys resigned, he wrote me an email containing two complaints. First, he said, he didn’t like that his job involved cleaning up so many little problems...
Most people have heard of the Eastern teaching that it is important to exist in the moment. It can be hard to train yourself to observe what is right now (and not to bog down in thoughts of what was a...
Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don’t know can we ever hope to learn it.
Lo cual me trae a la memoria una carta escrita por uno de nuestros animadores, Austin Madison, que encontré particularmente reveladora. A quien pueda inspirar —escribió Austin en el encabezamiento—. Y...
Las reglas tal vez simplifiquen la vida a los ejecutivos, pero pueden ser degradantes para el 95 por ciento de los empleados que cumplen con su deber. No cree reglas para controlar al 5 por ciento res...
La siguiente (Fig. 2) representaba dónde podríamos llegar en tres meses más (y observarán que no se correspondía con los límites del plan a dos años de Ann). Lo más probable es que terminemos en algún...
Katherine Sarafian, a producer who’s been at Pixar since Toy Story, tells me she prefers to envision triggering the process over trusting it—observing it to see where it’s faltering, then slapping it...
It’s extremely difficult to create something out of nothing, especially when you consider that much of what you’re trying to realize is hidden, at least at first.
It’ll be a day in which you tell us how to make Pixar better, John said. We’ll do no work that day. No visitors will be allowed. Everyone must attend.
Instead of saying, ‘The writing in this scene isn’t good enough,’ you say, ‘Don’t you want people to walk out of the theater and be quoting those lines?’ It’s more of a challenge.
In an unhealthy culture, each group believes that if their objectives trump the goals of the other groups, the company will be better off. In a healthy culture, all constituencies recognize the import...
In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be de...
I remember his assertiveness. There was no small talk. Instead, there were questions. Lots of questions. What do you want? Steve asked. Where are you heading? What are your long-term goals?
I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by o...
How do we enable our people to solve problems? Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up?