PDF Summary:Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catmull

When Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, started his career, he had one goal: Create films using computer-generated animation. Despite a multitude of challenges, Catmull worked tirelessly to advance the technology of computer animation and, eventually, co-founded Pixar to marry his love of animation with his expertise in computer technology.

Through the journey of Pixar’s creation, Catmull developed leadership strategies that fostered creativity in the workplace while ensuring that the company remained profitable and successful. In Creativity, Inc., Catmull breaks down the most important factors in building and sustaining a creative culture. From removing fear from failure and protecting new ideas, Catmull explains the ways Pixar’s creative culture allowed it to grow into the animation behemoth it is today.

(continued)...

Protecting New Ideas

When searching for a new concept to work with, it's easy to look for flaws that can lead you to abandon or dismiss a project. While critique and feedback are essential to growth, the best way to find a new project is to look for what makes it exciting instead of what makes it problematic. It can be risky to endorse an unproven idea, but, often, those are the projects that produce the best results.

When these new concepts are introduced, they’re often messy and incomplete. In this state, it’s easy to pass judgment on them then toss them aside. However, as a leader in a creative organization, it's your job to protect and nurture these concepts until they grow into fully-fledged creations. New ideas are risky and messy because of their originality, but that’s what gives them the potential to become spectacular.

Finding Balance

In a creative company, you have to balance the need to innovate with the need to produce. There isn’t one clear-cut way to ensure balance in your organization. However, one rule-of-thumb may help: Don’t let one team or person get everything they want.

Each department in your organization wants different things. These “wants” sometimes conflict with one another but also help keep teams in check. If one team gets everything that they want, it throws the company out of balance. For example, if you're leading a film studio, giving the creative team everything they want may lead to a bloated and over-budget film that’s too niche to sell. On the other hand, giving the marketing team everything they want may lead to an unoriginal and predictable film that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Growing Through Change

Catmull’s and Pixar’s successes also depended on a willingness to implement change, accept randomness, and find your blind spots. Many creative organizations fall into the trap of holding onto systems that worked in the past without understanding why they worked. They try to force a process onto a problem or concept, even if that process isn’t the most effective for the project at hand.

Implementing Change and Adapting to Randomness

Change is necessary. The world is changing all of the time, and you have to adapt accordingly. Just because a process that you have has “worked before” doesn’t mean that it’s the best fit for new issues or projects. You have to introduce new ideas to meet the ever-changing needs of your organization.

However, people will fight back against change. They often want to stick with the things they’re comfortable with because it’s safe. However, stubbornness often doesn’t yield results and can even harm your company in the long run. Constantly look for ways to improve your systems to keep up with change.

Alleviating the Fear of Change

People are afraid that enacting change makes them look weak or incompetent. This is because change is often associated with a “broken” or “ineffective” process or product. The people who built said processes or products don’t want to look incompetent and will often try to lobby for their work, even if that work isn’t effective.

The following are a few tips to help you alleviate the fear of change:

• Discuss the importance of change. Assure your team that changes aren’t always made because someone failed. They’re often made to adapt to a changing world that’s outside of their control.
• Take off the blinders. When you and your team have mastered a particular process, it’s often easy to ignore glaring issues. Take the time to look at the process you currently have in place and point out issues to your team. This will make them understand the need for change and help them let go of the process.
• Embrace the learning curve. When new processes are introduced, it may take your team a bit of time to adjust. Accept that there may be some errors at the beginning and don’t punish your team members for mistakes. If you do, they’ll be averse to any other changes you may want to make.

Accepting Randomness

Often, success and failure are due to random events. They can’t be predicted and can come out of nowhere. This is not an easy concept to grapple with because our brains aren’t wired to accept randomness. We like to discover a cause and an effect, but random events don’t adhere to these patterns. For example, you could be the most well-prepared person in the world, but if your car breaks down while you’re on your way to an important meeting, things may go downhill by no fault of your own.

When dealing with random events, keep the following tips in mind:

• Don’t play the blame game. You can’t blame an individual or team for not predicting an issue if it’s truly random. Accusing people of not predicting a random event is absurd and unhelpful.
• Troubleshoot quickly. Immediately begin to diagnose the issue and adapt. The sooner you figure out a solution to the problem, the more likely you are to get back on track.
• Give your teams some autonomy. When it comes to navigating the needs and issues of different departments, it’s impossible to address every single problem as it arises. Employees need the power to solve problems on their own.
• Develop precautionary measures. When a random event happens that you and your team weren’t prepared for, it can require a lot of effort to get things back on track. After you’ve solved an issue, look for what went wrong and figure out if there are precautionary measures you can put into place to avoid them happening again.

Finding Your Blind Spots

Everyone has blind spots, or problematic areas they’re unaware of. Discovering these issues isn’t an easy task because these trouble areas exist outside of your current perspective. For example, if you’re in upper management at a manufacturing facility, you may not know about issues on the production line if you're not seeing them for yourself.

These blind spots can be the destruction of an organization. They can lead to unexpected meltdowns or poor short-term decisions. To avoid potential disaster, raise your awareness and constantly search for the “hidden” problems in your organization.

Searching for Blind Spots as a Leader

When you’re in a position of power, people tend to tell you what you want to hear. This deferential treatment can skew your perspective in dangerous ways. Consider the following tips to help you find and navigate your blind spots:

• Don’t always believe the hype. While it may feel nice to have people defer to you, ensure that the information you’re receiving is as accurate as possible. Don’t allow yourself to get complacent because it boosts your ego.
• Encourage a vocal and candid workforce. When people feel comfortable speaking up, it’s more likely that you’re going to hear the truth about brewing issues.
• View differing opinions as complementary, not competitive. The best way to solve problems within a complex organization is to find methods of combining various viewpoints into solutions. People in departments that you don’t interact with on a daily basis will have a stronger sense of the issues and problems facing that department than you do. Valuing their perspective will help you ensure that you’re not overlooking crucial issues you may be unaware of.
• Accept that you’ll never know everything. It’s nearly impossible to know every facet of your company. Once you accept that you’ll never know everything, it’s easier to put your ego aside and listen to the perspectives of others.

Eight Tools to Sustain a Creative Workplace

People’s perspective on the world often distorts what’s right in front of them. In regards to creativity, this limited perspective often leads to inflexibility. People become convinced that their perspective is the correct perspective, and they ignore new information that contradicts their view. When you get together a team of dozens or hundreds of people, this inflexibility can stall a creative process.

To ensure that your team doesn’t fall into this inflexibility, create opportunities for them to expand their worldview and interact with people who have different perspectives. The following are eight tools you can use to help your team maintain their creative spark and challenge their own perspectives:

• Hold Frequent Feedback Meetings. These sessions allow your team members to get different perspectives on the work that they're doing. This prevents your employees from becoming overly committed to their work and allows them to solve problems collaboratively. Frequent feedback also allows your team to fix potential problems early on instead of after they’ve put dozens or hundreds of hours into a project.
• Promote Research. Research is essential to creation. Learning more about the subject of your creative project enables you to produce a more realistic product. For example, if you want to create a film about living with a dog, you would need to understand what it’s like to have a pet. If you haven’t researched the topic or had any experiences with a pet, your film probably won’t be accurate.
• Create Clear Boundaries. Though it may seem counterintuitive, creating boundaries for your teams can actually promote creativity in addition to efficiency. It forces them to approach challenges in a unique way and focus on the most important elements of the project. In fact, creative solutions can actually produce stronger results than the initial plan.
• Combine Art with Technology. Technology can inspire creativity. As technology continues to improve, artists can develop projects in a wholly original way. For example, Pixar used new computer technologies to create films unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.
• Create an Experimental Space. Experimental projects give you a space to take risks without the pressure of making a profit. They allow your organization to explore new ideas, find better ways of working, and give employees with potential more experience.
• Put Aside Your Preconceived Notions. The human brain likes to simplify our surroundings so that they’re easier to process. However, this simplification leads people to jump to conclusions that aren’t entirely accurate. For example, when an artist learns to pay attention to the details of an object, they have to let go of any preconceived notions they may have about the subject. Rather than just painting a lake blue, they become attuned to the small flecks of green, yellow, and white that reflect off of the top of a river. This attention to detail allows them to create a more fully realized version of their surroundings.
• Use Postmortems. Postmortems are meetings that occur after a project is completed in which you discuss the process as a whole. This allows you and your team to speak out about what’s working and what’s not. These postmortems should occur relatively quickly following the end of a project while the process is still fresh in everyone’s mind. They allow you to reflect on what you’ve learned and let you prepare for future projects.
• Build Learning Opportunities and Team-Bonding Experiences. Creating learning opportunities for your team members keeps them open to new experiences. They keep your team members in the mindset of a student as they tackle new subjects. Also, it helps members of your organization bond in a way that they can’t during a typical work day. Being a student puts everyone on the same playing field, regardless of hierarchical level.