Pixar Co-Founder Ed Catmull On The Art & Science Of Creativity, How To Do Your Best Work, Bring Out The Best In Others & Lead

32:26Yes. And the interesting thing about this was that when Steve was at Next, he had some, He'd made some deals which on the surface looked great for him, but in the end, they were bad deals. Essentially, he'd made some bad business decisions in the past, but he was smart and he learned from them. So he approached this one as saying, we need to be 50-50 partners. I'm not trying to rake them over the coals. I don't want us to get raked over. It's like we need to approach this as partners. So for me, this is the maturation that's coming out of the lessons he learned from the past. So he approached this of saying, we want to be partners with each other and think of it this way, which meant that we have to have the money to be able to say, yes, we're both investing equally in this.

33:25It's an unbelievable story of foresight. Steve was a person who wasn't rigorous about whatever the business plan was, but was always looking forward and anticipating where the business should go, which requires not just a level of maturity and perhaps some level of genius as well, but the ability to hold loosely and remain really strident about your values and your conviction about moving the company in the direction of the future. So that you don't get out innovated and you don't end up like Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics or Kodak. is Steve saw in the directors of our films what he believed was necessary for anybody that was going to do something new.

34:17And that was you commit to something with passion. And when you're wrong, you change. And that's hard for people to hold onto their head. Because you think if I'm committed, then I'm committed. I'm not going to listen to things that's going to change my course because I'm committed to the course. But if I'm not committed, than a changed course too easily. So what does it mean to both be committed and at the same time say, oh, I've just realized I'm wrong. We're going to change. That's very hard. And I'd say the best leaders and the best filmmakers, that's what they do. We're going to go down this path.

34:57Okay, it's not working. We're going to change. Yeah. So how do you do both at the same time? And it is possible. but that's when the I think that's when the best stuff happens yeah well the way that it's possible is through these many kind of systems and philosophies that you end up implementing at Pixar that creates this unbelievable run of extraordinary movies over the tenure of your leadership there after hosting more than 900 episodes of this podcast I have noticed a pattern and that pattern is that the highest performers don't buy into the latest trendy hacks. Instead, they obsess on what actually works, which is always the unassuming basics.

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40:35On this idea of the brain trust though, the overarching idea here is how do we get the most compelling, innovative, creative work out of this group of people? And what is the environment that we need to cultivate in order to facilitate that? The brain trust is just one of many things that I think you implemented during your tenure at Pixar. But before we move on to the others, like what, so what became the rules of this brain trust? Like how was it organized and deployed to its maximum effect? Well, there are a few basic principles that went into running it. One of them is that it really needed to be a room of filmmakers who knew about film.

41:31So it wasn't for gawkers or others who want to see, because a lot of people wanted to see what was going on in the room. But that's not what it was for. So it was peer talking to peer. The other one was that, which is important, is that that room and the people in the room could not override the director or the creative team. And that was very important. And we also didn't do anything significant. Like if we knew there was a serious problem, we didn't actually make any moves before or within two weeks, roughly, after the brain trust meeting, because we didn't want the meeting overloaded. Like if this doesn't go right, it's an utter disaster.

42:18We're just trying to make it so we can focus on the room and not be too worried about other things. The other rule is that you just have to be honest with each other. But I would say because people have done this for years and they know each other, that we've actually reached, they have a good state of being honest with each other. But part of that's a learned behavior. And as we bring in new people, they would observe it and they'd realize, oh, it's okay to say something which doesn't work. And every once in a while, magic would happen. And by magic, I mean that egos left the room. That is, I want to say egos left the room is people could say something, they weren't attached to their ideas.

43:08If they worked, great. If they didn't work, that's okay too. I'm not attached to it. And for me, that's the ideal state to be in. It's probably like flow, as you've heard in a light number of areas. But it's like when a room gets into that state, then it's pretty amazing to watch. Yeah, I would imagine. I think that creativity isn't something that you can just summon. It's not a product of a board meeting. There's a ethereal quality to it, right? And creating an environment that's conducive to the sparks and the flow and getting the best and brightest minds to collide with each other, to have something emerge that's greater than the sum of its parts is a real art.

43:57Yes, and that's the job is to get that done right. I'm sure people ask you this all the time. They come to you, maybe they run a small business or a large organization, or they're a manager of a department at a company, and they say, Ed, how do I get the best out of my people? I just, everyone's operating suboptimally. I don't know how to motivate my people. The work that's coming out of my department just is stale. It's not creative. What is the advice that you give to that person who's looking to instill that creative flair and a permissive environment in which new ideas and the opportunity to fail and fail fast can be part of the environment to make something new and better and different.

44:49Well, there are two things that sort of popped my mind on that. One of them is I talked about failure in the book and the meaning of it. And then I realized, actually, we don't use the term failure very much inside of Pixar. Now, if we actually have something that fails, we say that it fails. We're not trying to avoid it. But the word's too loaded.

45:16Because, you know, starting at school, if you fail in a class, then that's a bad thing. Because it means you weren't smart enough or you didn't work hard enough. but also when you get out and bridges fail, relationships fail, companies fail, and in business and politics, failure is a bludgeon with which you beat opponents. So there's a real and palpable aura of danger around failure. While we also would say that we learn a lot from our failures, because we have, we all recognize that, is that meaning of failure is actually sort of overridden by the danger part of failure. And so, okay, it's just true.

46:06It doesn't matter what we say about it. We don't have the luxury of calling a failure educational until after it happens, not before it happens. If we recognize that and say, well, okay, there are a lot of times when we should be using a somewhat different terminology, which is that we're trying to make something work. Let's try this. The lead didn't work, let's try this. We don't need to overload it. So I try to be very careful about the words and how they're used. It's a terrible word. There should be a different neutral word that encourages people to extend themselves irrespective of whether it works out or not without fear of losing their job or the kind of internal shame or guilt system that happens when you quote unquote fail.

46:56It's so loaded. And I think it paralyzes people. Yeah, so if you say, okay, why do people get paralyzed? So our terminology does it sometimes. It's one of the reasons I try to use in general, not always, but I try to use candor instead of honesty because honesty is sort of like the opposite where you say, well, of course I'm an honest person when actually that isn't the right word because the opposite of honest is dishonest. But there are times when you may not be candid for a variety of reasons. The opposite of candid is not candid. It's not as loaded. So these words have these subtle effects on people and failure is one that has an effect on how people think.

47:45It's like, I think it should be used for things which are where you really do have a major problem. And the other one is people get stuck for different reasons. So in the case of making films, if you assign somebody, like you say, this person can be a director, then we came up with something which was very effective, which was, and it's just, all this was recognizing that when people are trying to solve a problem, that they get stuck. We all do this. you're trying to work on something, bang your head on the wall. And I remember this from just doing homework or making school, right? Yeah. Sometimes you're trying to do it.

48:29You got to do it. You got to schedule. I'm sorry. My brain is fried. I'm stuck. So the issue for us was how do we keep people from getting stuck? So the thing we tried, which was quite effective, was to have people pitch three ideas for movies. Now, there are a couple of people who don't work that way. They've got the idea and they're gonna make it. That's fine. We're just trying to help people keep from getting stuck. And when we asked somebody to come up with the ideas for a film, and we say three, then what that lets them do is bounce back and forth between them. And they do this over a period of a year.

49:15Because if we're going to do a film, we've got a director, typically a writer, and a couple of creative people supporting them. Like it's a really tiny team. And this rather amazing phenomenon happens. And that is every time somebody produces or pitches the film, they start off by saying, I love all three ideas equally. And now they don't. Yeah, that's a lack of candor. But it's also, you say, okay, that's what it means to be vulnerable, right? It's what if I'm wrong? What if they see something I don't see? So essentially you're signaling the other people. It's like, you won't hurt my feelings if you pick one of the other things.

50:05So you're like, that's a self-protection mechanism. but actually what we want to know is which is the one that they want to do and we know completely that that if they if we pick one of them it's going to change dramatically in any case so my favorite story was with uh liankridge on on uh coco the story an idea would be presented and there's artwork they'd picked up or drawn or or whatever to convey the idea. Very rough. We all know that. It's not a final movie idea. It's a pitch for a start of an idea. Discuss it. 20, 25 minutes is what we take on this. And then we'd switch to the other story.

50:48And then with Leon Karech, after we did this, we went into the other room, open up the door, the table, the back wall, both walls, the ceilings are covered with Mexican artwork. So without a word being said, everybody knows which film we're going to make. Now, the thing about this is the film that was made in the end was actually radically different than what was pitched at that point. But we didn't care. What we knew is he wanted to make a movie in that front. In fact, originally he wanted to be a musical. And, you know, but a musical isn't in his DNA. So the very first song he had, which was Remember Me, then became a sort of a core theme that's built into the movie.

51:41It's sort of the nature of the change that happens. But it's an example of, we put something in place to help someone actually solve their problems because they could always switch and then come back to when they felt like they had. But the really important thing there was the excitement that this person had for that concept. Like that seemed to be one of the more kind of, you know, important aspects of all the pitches. Like this guy's onto something super motivated. He clearly, you know, wants to do this. And that's something that we as a company that supports people over ideas can get behind and marshal our resources to support.

52:26And over time, it will become something very different. But let's pay attention to what he's saying to us now, which is less about the pitch and more about the energy that he's gonna bring to what might be two years of working on something. Is that, am I putting originate? Energy is contagious. And then he knows that the people around him and we're going to bring something. And in this case, because it's about a Mexican holiday, then they visited Southern Mexico in the villages, which it really like. And they went several times. And they had advisors because they didn't want to operate off of their biases.

53:12We all know something about various things, just like we know something about cooking and so forth. But in the case of Ratatouille, you actually need to go into a high-end restaurant to see what it's really like. And with each one of those cases, as an audience, we don't really know. And the directors, when they start, they don't really know what it's like in these places. But if you get it right, if you actually bring something from the culture or from the place or what you're doing and you put it in the film, the audience senses that it's correct. Yeah. Even if they don't know it's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:54There's a sense that comes. They can feel that energy, right? And that attention to detail. Yes, and I think that's what it is with, it's like actually with any company or with any product that's out there. It's like, do people care about it? Are they paying attention to the detail? And are they just slapping it out? You want people to care, whatever field they're in. And so how do you do that? How do you get the people working within your organization to care on the level that's required for that to get transmitted into the product, whatever it is, and give the consumer or the customer that feeling?

54:39Well, for me, the big step is is that when you see that there's a problem, you have to ask why. And it isn't one of those things that you can force on them. You say, you need to do this. You need to fix it this way, which is a natural thing for people to do. I don't think it's the right thing to do, though. It's like, okay, this isn't going the way I would hope it's going. Why isn't it going this way? What's getting in their way? And what can I do to solve the thing that's getting in their way? Because they may not see it. And if they don't see it and I'm not paying attention, then we all miss it.

55:16And then it sits there and it festers and it affects people. But we can ask and figure out what actually happened. Why did it happen? And what can we do about it? Pixar's in the business of taking creative ideas and putting them into a story, crafting a story and sharing that story with the world. By its very definition, it is a creative business. But is there not an argument that every business is a creative business? Like how do you define creativity and what is the role that creativity plays in an organization or a business or an industry that people don't typically think of as being creative with quote marks around it?

56:04Well, it's clear that people would consider the arts and film and writings for it to be creative. So that's clear. I think most people would say if you're designing products, that's creative. Or if you're in the sciences or certain things, that's creative. But they kind of stop around there. And personally, I believe solving problems is creative. So if you've got problems in your family or in your neighborhood and you're able to work them out with people, that's a creative act and for me solving problems is a creative act and I think that creating an organization that is better for people and that brings the best out of them is a creative act also and I because I look at a lot of what I've done it's like trying to solve the problems and so I say oh that's you know that's actually the bigger contribution I've had because the original thing that I did, it's like, yeah, that was gonna happen anyway.

57:08But trying to create a culture, well, that applies everywhere. And because people are so incomprehensible, the problem of trying to create a culture that motivates people and creates a sustainable output of innovation and creative ideas that trickle into the products that it makes or whatever it is that it does is a creative act in and of itself. Like I think that creativity is at the core and is of the essence of anybody who's trying to do anything either individually or as a collective, as a group, call it a corporation, a school, whatever it is. And I think appreciating the power of the creative impulse and understanding how to initiate that and cultivate that and respect that in the people that you're working with and in yourself really feels to me like super important, if not the most important thing that you're trying to kind of instill in the people around you who have a collective goal that you're all kind of working towards.

58:22Is that overstating it to you? No, no, that seems like that's really the kind of heart and soul of what your book is about and what you were trying to do at Pixar. It is, it's how those people do it together. And what's our responsibility in enabling it, making it safe? How do we send messages to people? In a room where things are sort of rushed, is it safe for the least powerful person in the room to talk is like a message. In fact, there's one example that took place. It's one I loved at Pixar because usually we've got these really tight schedules and so you get a group of people who are working on it and they're very good at what they do, but they never have enough time.

59:15So when they have their meetings, they're under a lot of pressure. So we had one of the leaders in one of these groups where they're really smart and high-powered people. But this leader said he wanted to make sure that every person in the room could talk. But in the room, they're production assistants. So these are people that are hired because of high potential, but actually they don't have any experience and they don't know anything about the particular problem in any case. So he told them, he told the people, this is the way he wanted to work. And the other people were objected only on the ground so they didn't have enough time.

59:58They didn't have anything against the person. The others were good people, they had high potential. All those things they had to agree on is we literally don't have the time. So he said, no, this is the way we're going to work. Now, the interesting thing was by the end of the film, everybody thought it was the right thing to do because when he did that... they knew they were sending a message to the person who was the production assistant that they were valued. but for the people who were supposed to be in the discussion it was a message to them that we value everybody and they ended up feeling a lot better about it also oh that's interesting it's one of those things where he was trying to do one thing but he actually got two because it's basically giving a signal about a value there's a quote uh that's super interesting to me in which you said, if you don't try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill-prepared to lead.

1:01:01And your story reminds me of this quote, but I thought I'd give you an opportunity to explain what you mean by that. I do feel like there are so many things that we can't see in the world or we don't know what's going to happen. It's just the nature of reality. And we tend to hold on to things that we can see or grab onto the experiences that we've got because they're solid. They may be good experiences, but they think that's, you know, if we just repeat that. I don't know what the right terminology for it is. I mean, I've used the term the unknown. I don't, the thing was, I haven't found a word that works well because it's unknown.

1:01:45It's, you know, you can't see what it is. It's obscure. It's, for some people conceptually, it's like a two-by-two chart. It's like you fall into one of these categories. The problem is it doesn't give any notion of the size of each of them. So the stuff that we know we know, like that's one piece. But we also acknowledge, I think clearly, that there are physicians or physicists or experts in these fields. And the total amount of stuff that we don't know, that we kind of have a sense like. So that's a bigger thing. We can kind of get our head around it. But the stuff that we don't know that we don't know, it's like, that's gigantic.

1:02:27It's huge. So how do you actually operate in a world in which there's so many possibilities of things? And in this case, you're actually working off of the way you think about change or opportunity or your value system. Because you don't know what's going to happen, you know, positive or negative coming in your life. I've just accepted okay I don't know a lot that's why I can't be right a lot and if I can accept the fact that I really don't know then I think it opens us up to say I really do need help for anybody at any level so if they come in and say there's a problem then I damn well better listen because they are seeing things that I can't see And it would be actually very foolish of me to assume that I know more than I do.

1:03:25And you know in a lot of companies there's this notion of there's a prep meeting before the meeting. Because if the leader in a lot of places, if the manager or the leader gets surprised in the meeting, they're not happy they got surprised. Basically, it's disrespectful. It's the way it's treated. what's the purpose of the meeting if you have to know ahead of time what it is right well there's a you know people are complicated and there's politics and there's ego i mean essentially what i'm getting from what you're sharing is is a sense of humility and a almost beginner's mind of of curiosity to lead not from a place of i know all the answers and i'm going to tell you what to do, but an appreciation that you don't have all the answers and to, you know, kind of come to a meeting with a spirit of tell me more about what I don't know that then percolates down and gives everyone else permission beneath that leader to have that same kind of vibe about themselves.

1:04:36yes there are times when I've made serious mistakes and people have come to me afterwards to tell me that I made a serious mistake and I'm grateful I felt like they could do it and for me that's one of the most important things, like if I make a mistake and somebody tells me I screwed up that they could come without fear doing that and it's like for me I feel good about that. It makes me actually feel better. Even if I feel bad about the mistake I made. But there's probably a lot of leaders or bosses out there who will tell the people beneath them, like, I want you to tell me the truth. I want you to come to me if I'm getting it wrong.

1:05:18But something about their energy or some other aspect of how they're leading creates a situation in which that underling still doesn't feel comfortable doing that. Yeah, what are the consequences to them if they say something that you don't like. Right. The leader says they want that, but do they really want that? Usually when you have something like that, something happened to which you don't want and it's a nature of things like, oh, you know, it's a bad thing, but okay, what does it mean to the person who told you this? Whether it's something you did personally or even something you disagree with.

1:05:58Often people have disagreements about things and they're valid disagreements. Somewhere you have to make a choice. It's not like everything is done by committee. It's not. And the person who's on the losing end of that argument has to still feel respected. Yes, they need to feel like they were listened to. In fact, for me, it's clear that it's more important for people to feel they're listened to than it is for them to believe that they were correct or that they want some argument or whatever is they need the respect of being listened to. I own a bunch of spectacles and I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-Roka pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors.

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1:08:12When I think about all of these principles that you instilled at Pixar and the way it's laid out in the book, which on some level, on a surface level, I think, you know, reads like a management book, like this is how to run a creative business, whether it's the brain trust or reframing failure or the rigorous testing that Pixar would do. And this understanding that every project at the beginning was terrible and it was only made better through, you know, this process of, you know, bringing that brain trust to all the big creative decisions to make it better. Is it too bold to suggest that these ideas that you're proposing to get the best out of people and to promote a culture of creativity has a

1:09:04broader universality beyond business and an applicability as to how to kind of comport yourself in the world as to how to live. It's almost like a primer for how you can interact with people and engage with people and get together with people to create things. These are, in many ways, not necessarily just principles for business, but they are principles for life. I think the principles of treating people well and learning from them and growing and helping them, you know they're i think they're unified it's always messy it's always hard and it keeps changing and you don't actually reach reach the point where everything is static and it's going to stay that way forever uh so it it is a statement of life i do think like i've seen this See, we get lost in their goals to be in charge or to make a lot of money.

1:10:06Those things do happen. They get in the way. But I don't think it's the way we should be living as people, as humans with each other is to let those other aspirations get in the way of how we treat people. Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking we can tease out any one of these ideas or principles, like take the brain trust. Like everybody should have their version of a brain trust in their life. We think about friends who give us feedback or seeing a therapist or finding a mentor. But what you're suggesting is a committee of trusted people who contribute to the betterment of a project or in the case of my example, the individual.

1:10:54Like everybody should sort of go out into their community and find people who can give them that kind of trusted feedback and create a structure around that as a vehicle for, you know, improving your decisions and, you know, basically living your life at a higher level of quality. But it doesn't seem like we think that way. It should be a continual searching process for us. and you know because for some people i think they're looking for what is the right thing to do you know give me the answer it's like and maybe they'll call one guy or and that guy will say do this or don't do that or maybe they'll just decide themselves without any kind of feedback or they'll call their therapist yes how do what if there were 12 people that were weighing in on that each with their own unique set of life experiences who you know you could weigh their input and then, you know, make a decision based on that.

1:11:54I mean, I have this in my life. I have different groups that I go to for various reasons that really have been invaluable in my life. And I just, I want everyone to have their version of that. And it's obviously something that we're trying to instill in our, you know, in our office here with our little media company as students of, of, you know, what you advocate. And we've been, you know, with great effect, been able to kind of put that into practice. And I just think there's so much value in doing that, not just as professionals, but as individuals for the quality of one's life. Yeah. So then the interesting part is okay how do you then think about it to to get there like it becomes part of the search so it's it isn't just having the group that does that but it's okay if it's not working how do i get it to work what's what's not working why doesn't it work and uh which meets part of the discovery the continual discovery because it's not stable whatever it's not stable but there's still there's there's that underlying value that we have.

1:13:12And if we build on that value, which is really a trust in people, assume that everybody's well-meaning is assume they've got it. They might do something to lose it, but they don't have to earn it. Yeah. How can you be open? How can you hold your ideas loosely? How can you be a champion for your colleagues and the best idea? How can you be a better, more active listener? And also, how can you ask better questions? Like if you want better solutions, you have to learn how to ask better questions. And I know this is something you've thought about and have written about. How does one figure out how to ask better questions?

1:14:01It's a good question. How do you figure this out? But for me, it was always you pay attention and if it's not working, then you say, why is it not working? For me, that's the question. It's like, why isn't something going the way I want? So if you essentially start with a question, you don't want to start with an answer because if you start with the answer, then you've already figured it out. Well, that's not a start. That's an ending point. And it's one of the reasons why I have some problem with mission statements. I mean I recognize in some cases the mission statement actually helps people get some alignment so it's not that I'm black and white about it but the problem with a lot of mission statements is that it actually is starting with an answer and that doesn't generate new discussion so we never had anything like our goal is to make the best films or anything like that our mission statement is to make the best films I'd rather be in a position where people say, well, what are we doing here?

1:15:07What is our goal? What are we trying to do? Because every time they ask that question, then they're thinking about it. And it's fluid. It's fluid. It should always be fluid because the world is fluid. If the world's fluid, then we should be able to respond fluidly. And one of the reasons they added to the book was some people thought that somehow after doing all this, we had sort of reached the point where we'd solved the problem of how we run a creative environment. That isn't actually what I meant. What I meant was we have a way of thinking about it so we can continue to adapt and change and ask questions and figure things out because the problems keep changing.

1:15:59Is that one of the reasons while you decided to update the book? Yes. There were things that I had learned in the intervening years because that was eight, nine years ago that I wrote it. Well, there were events that took place after that. And the other one was like rethinking certain things. I felt I needed to be a little clearer about the brain trust and its development rather than like there's just a brain trust. It's like this is something that was a special purpose adaptation of the way we were doing things. And if you're in a different environment or in any company, it's like, okay, how do you think about adapting it or building something for yourself?

1:16:45What's your mechanism for getting really good feedback, but also good camaraderie with people for helping each other? But that's really the point of it. So that was one of the things. The other one was the realization that the failure thing was actually, I don't think I fully was explaining well the notion that there's a human psychology coming behind failure, which is actually getting in the way. I know what's meant by it. People say, you learn from it, so just do it and get it over with. And we've said the same thing too. but it's not actually what we're doing. What we're trying to do is to make it possible for us to learn things, try things quickly.

1:17:35And then if they don't work, we move on to something else. So trying to explain this concept of holding onto something and having a core of what you're holding onto, but at the same time, change what you do. Each person's different in the way they do that. I mean, the way Steve does that was very different the way I did it. And I never, ever thought that I wanted to be like him and he didn't want to be like me either. It's like, why would you do that? I'm not him. You said that you want people to fail the elevator pitch test. What does that mean? What I really said was, is a certain percentage of what we're doing should fail the elevator test.

1:18:18Not everything does. It's like, I'm not trying to make another rule. is that if you have a certain percentage of films that fail the elevator test, then this is something about your ability to take risks and do something that's risky. So the concept of the elevator pitch is that you have an idea and you want to pitch the idea to somebody who's got the authority to make it happen, an executive or whoever it is. and you can convey the idea so succinctly and clearly that in a short period of time, hence the elevator test, in a short period of time, you can do something which gets their interest so that they would want to do it.

1:19:08Now, the problem with it is that the way to always pass that elevator test is to do something that's derivative. Right, because if you can explain it quickly, you're essentially using examples of things that they get. They pretty much understand. And so all you do that is you end up actually becoming a fairly derivative company. Now, that being said, sometimes you have a great idea, and when you hear it, it's like, oh, yes, we want to do that. So there are examples of that. Pete Docter, you know, saying I want to do this, although he would typically do the three pitch test too but in the case of one film we had where he said since we're starting over I've got an idea that takes place inside the head of a little girl and deals with their emotions and we all thought oh that's a great idea so boom we're done right but actually playing like to actually explain what that movie's about is there's no way you're going to be able to do that no yeah Yeah, so, but the notion was, okay, what piques your interest that that's worth doing?

1:20:20So some things you actually, you get it. Okay, let's go off and try that. It's still nothing more than just like this really rough idea. And it goes through just as long as any other film and just working out even what that means. But it's all we had was, you know, inside they have a little girl. And then there are some films like Up and Ratatouille where, okay, you say a movie, I want to make a movie about a rat that cooks. Well, you know, you can't explain why that's a good idea in one minute. You can't explain why it's a good idea in a week. You can't explain why it's a good idea in three months.

1:21:04Right? It actually sounds like a bad idea. Right.

1:21:10Well, it's all about the execution. Yes, and the thing is, when you do something that's really hard, and some of these ideas are really hard ideas, that once you've said, I'm going to solve it, you have to become more creative. You have to do something which is unexpected to make it work. Ratatouille was probably one of the more extreme ones. but Up was okay. You know, what does that even mean? You know, it's sort of an odd idea. I want to tell a story about this old, this man that is with his, starting off with his girlfriend and then they get married and then they learn they can have children and so they want to go on a trip around the world but then she dies and he's depressed.

1:22:04He floats away in the stowaway. That doesn't sound like a good idea. But you know, when you take something like that and you're willing to change it and you have the group that's working really well together, then as long as the group is working well together and you say, okay, they'll figure something out. They'll do it. How do you know when you've got it? You've got an idea. You're iterating on the idea. You want it to be innovative. You want it to be at the highest level of your creative capacities. You're stress testing it. You're failing. You're improving upon it. On some level, at some point, you have to say, this is the script or this is what the character looks like.

1:22:48Or we've all signed on that this is the way that it's going to be. And I would assume some of those decisions are more democratic than others. but there has to be a sense of this is it. And that's another kind of ephemeral mystical thing. Like how do you know when you've chosen the right path, decided on the right project, you know, approved of this or approved of that. Like there's a billion decisions that go into a movie getting made or a product ending up on a shelf. And you have to have some conviction as a leader to say, this is what we're doing. And on other occasions to say, it's not quite there yet.

1:23:33There are two parts to that. One of them is just in supporting people and trying to solve the problem or supporting them as they try to solve the problem is that we support them along the way, but there's one thing that the creative leader can't do. and that is they can't lose the confidence of their crew. And at that point, we will stop it or we'll pull the plug or we'll replace it and we have done that. And these are good people. They're put in position because they're talented. We like them. But if they've lost the confidence of their crew, then we have to make a big change. And Ratatouille was one of those, to be honest, where we started with an idea that was an unlikely idea.

1:24:23The truth is the final movie was actually, if you looked at it, that it was the fruition of that original pitch. More than some - You just had to go all the way around the planet to come back to the same place. Well, no, not that. In the case of Up, for instance, just kind of wandered around in different places and ended up in an unpredictable place from where it was. But in the case of Ratatouille, the concept of what it was actually was there all along. But it had a couple of serious, difficult problems, and they kept trying to solve it. And it went through a variety of things, but they couldn't actually lick the problem, and it wasn't working.

1:25:12And so when it wasn't working, we lost the conscience of the crew. then at that point we brought in Brad Bird to take it over and Brad resonated with the idea of the film. Now the difference is as a filmmaker he was able to solve the problem because it was essentially a storytelling problem and figuring out what was getting in the way. So some of the things that were in there were actually blocking the film. I'll give an example. And that is in the first version, there was this chef, Gusteau. And in that first version, Chef Gusteau was alive. And then there was Remy the Rat who had these aspirations to be a great chef.

1:26:08So part of the problem was, whose story is this? Is it a redemption story for Gusteau or is it an aspirational story for Remy? Back and forth. And there were complications as a result of that. And so we go on. It's like, okay, we like the idea of this artistic aspiration, but it isn't working. So we brought in Brad Bird. He talked with a friend of his who was a writer. just part of his group of people that he trusts and came back and said, we're going to kill the chef. The chef is dead. So now all of a sudden, boom, things clicked. And then the question was also, how do you actually capture the essence of what takes place inside of a kitchen?

1:27:07So Brad, being a great filmmaker, came in and put in those pieces with this, the woman chef who essentially was, you know, talking about the right ways of doing it in an abrupt way, but it was very funny, but it was very informative. It was short, but it told you a lot. So in the end, you end up with something that had the design because the first director was the one who just had the, who led the design of the characters, the look of the film. That was all the first one. In the end, the intent was there of what it was all along. It's just that he was able to do it. Now I'm kind of telling you, you know, stories on the inside about how it is because it was hard.

1:27:55It was painful. It was very painful for the person who couldn't do it. Yeah, and I would imagine many moments of, you know, kind of gnashing of teeth and is this ever gonna work? And this is terrible and it's not working and we've made a huge mistake and how are we gonna fix this? Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's like all of it, right? Like I think there's this idea that every Pixar movie is this perfect jewel box and it was divinely inspired and crafted by geniuses and ends up on the screen. And it's a long and arduous process, but relatively conflict-free and failure-free. And that's just not the case.

1:28:36Like you have said many times, every single Pixar movie was an absolute disaster before it was good. They were bad, like truly bad before they got good and certainly before they became great. And I think there's a lot of wisdom to extract from that and how we think about how we approach challenges and projects in our own life and how we think about that terrible word failure and how it inhibits us from doing the grappling and the kind of having the patience and the diligence and the hard work to see it through and get to the other side of it. Yeah, and it's still true today. And they haven't gotten any easier.

1:29:18They're not supposed to get easier. They're all supposed to be hard. And you can't, there's no matter what, you could take your engineer brain and your physics mind and try to apply a template on top of this that's going to create a hit every time. And we're just going to check these boxes and move down this assembly line and create something that people are going to enjoy. But creativity doesn't work that way. No matter how much you try to impose that, it's not going to work. Was there a moment where you thought maybe it would work yes so so so here's the funny thing is because if you look at what we were doing because it was you know becoming more expensive and we knew that that uh part of the problem is we kept redoing things and we thought well if we could just get it right or closer at the beginning it wouldn't cost as much money the truth was if you brought in any mba to examine what we were they would come to the same conclusion.

1:30:20Quit changing things so much, it'd be a lot cheaper to make. Well, we knew that. It's like a duh. We finally had a film that was pitched to us by Andrew Stanton, where the first pitch was brilliant. This was after Finding Nemo. He pitched this thing. He's actually probably one of the best people at pitching I've ever seen. It's glorious, entertaining. It's like, okay, this is a no-brainer. We're going to do this. And I thought, okay, since this is so good, this is probably the one where we get it right up front and it's going to be easier and cheaper to make. It turned out it had just as many problems, just as much drama, just as much.

1:31:10So, no, actually, if we couldn't do it on that one, to even think it as the goal is the wrong thing to do. The goal is to make a good movie. Well, you're just creating additional suffering for yourself by having an expectation that somehow you screwed up because you still can't figure out how to avoid all of these issues that come up with every single project. It's just gonna happen. Now, I know, we all know that, you know, if films cost too much to make, then we have a problem. So everybody's realistic about it. It's like, okay, it does cost too much. We have to do things to try to address it.

1:31:50But we shouldn't start off by solving the problem with the illusion that we aren't going to have problems. So it's how do we keep the cost down within the reality that we're going to hit with surprises that are unexpected? Well, that's what a surprise is. It's unexpected. So it's just, you accept the fact that that's the way it is. How do we do the best that we can within that? And then you're faced with different challenges, like with costs, when do things run away? Why do they run away? What can we do? And we did a lot of things to bring that back in, but we didn't solve it by trying to find some illusion by just dealing with the realities that we had and why people do things.

1:32:39Right, being in acceptance that this is just the nature of the beast, these things come up. And your attempt to solve it might actually, you know, sometimes trying to solve that problem can screw things up. What you can't do is let go of the fact that you have to do something which is good. Right. If I were to ask you, of all the things that you've done and everything that you've learned over the course of your career, what to your mind made Pixar special? And what can I learn from what you learned running that company that could improve my life? Well, I mean, to be honest, it is somewhat difficult to answer that because there was something about that unique combination of people that came together.

1:33:29Again, this happened because Steve and Andrew and Pete and John, that group that came together, but also people that others wouldn't know about in terms of the ones who developed the technology, like Bill Rees and Evan Osby and some rather remarkable people there. So how did they come together? I do think that, first of all, there was some serendipity involved because I don't believe I should take credit for having thought of things or just got it on myself because I didn't. but I also believe that if you recognize that serendipity happens, you can also lose serendipity because you don't do something with it.

1:34:21So there was that element of it. I think there was something about the fact that we were all trying to figure it out and that none of us, like neither Steve nor I I were also interested in sort of not developing that as a way of thinking. Not developing what? In other words, here we had a group that was trying to figure things out, but it was the group that did it. But what I'm saying is that Steve didn't ever say he was the one that was doing that. So he wasn't trying to take credit for it. Now he was, you know, the one that was funding it, and he was obviously a key protector of what we were doing.

1:35:07But he also didn't impose on us what we did. And I wasn't trying to impose on other people what they did. And likewise, when we start up each production, we try to think of each one as trying to do something like that, like they have to figure it out. Because there is something about figuring something out which makes a group special. and I know it's hard to describe but whenever I've seen a group work together to figure things out then some rather remarkable things happen and so then the question is how do you set it up wherever you are so that people feel like they own it they own the culture they have the that it's their problem to solve you're a avid meditator right yeah which is not surprising because I think, you know, my view on this or, you know, kind of how I interpret this is an elevation of consciousness.

1:36:14Like I see somebody who went into an organization, tried to look at what was happening objectively, tried to think of a creative solution that would help create a better environment for people to do their best work. And you deployed certain strategies towards that end, but ultimately, to me, they're all a reflection of this desire to elevate the collective consciousness of an organization. Like if you can create an environment where pettiness and politics and judgment and backstabbing and all of that fades into the background because there's a higher purpose and a shared sort of sense of togetherness around that that comes with a mindful approach to being present with the people that you work with and finding a conscious way to lead them.

1:37:14Everything else is a product or a reflection of that practice. Yeah, I believe very strongly in that. I almost made a mistake once too. and also I want to add this in is that after we went public in the year afterwards, I did ask this question of myself was how much of it was me? And at the end of the year, I realized, oh, actually trying to answer the question is a bad thing to do because it's... You're thinking about yourself. Yeah, and it's separating myself from others. And so part of meditation, which came later was like, I think sort of, and the weird thing is like, just something you're by yourself, but one of the things that comes out of it is like a genuine connection and the appreciation of what other people do and they were not separate.

1:38:11We really aren't separate. And to try to think that we are, that it's all by ourselves, like that's actually not good. That's not healthy to think that way. Did that come to you as a result, like over time, as a result of your meditation practice, or was that? No, I was at the end of that year. A lightning bolt? No, it was actually in the year of 1996, in which I was wrestling with two personal things. One of them was, okay, I had this goal for many years, which was one of my driving forces. is, well, we just did it. Now what? Right, a loss of purpose after achieving your goal of creating a computer animated film, that goal being realized and then suddenly having a now what moment.

1:39:07Yes, and part of it was, well, okay, just repeating it actually doesn't feel creative. So, okay, we do a film again. Let's just repeating what we've done. So we've stopped. So no, actually, there's a big problem. and the big problem is how does a group do? Because as a group, we do something rather special. But I know that groups are fragile. So now the question is, how do you keep doing it? And it was one of the things Steve said before we did this. He said, the thing that happens to all companies is right after they get their first part, they come out with a dud. So that's like a, I mean, he's just making a comment.

1:39:52I mean, other people said this similar sort of thing, but for me, it was like an internal challenge. Okay, how do we not do that? So that's a special kind of challenge.

1:40:08So that was like the next 10 years, like addressing this thing, how does this group work? And so for me personally, that's the thing to do. But the other one was the realization that whatever that is, it isn't something I do by myself. And that to try to say, okay, how much is me is actually a bad question. And the reason I even brought it up was, although it's a little embarrassing to say that I was saying something which is obviously a fairly self-oriented thing to do. But I recognize that other people say the same thing, except they think they need to answer the question. and if they work to answer the question then that means they separate themselves from the group and I did hear this is from a director of one of our short films and after he made the short film it was a nice short film but then he left because he said I want to know what I can do without the safety net the safety net this group of people is this safety net no they're not They're the integral fabric in which we're working.

1:41:21These are our friends and they're like, we're all helping each other. So, you know, it's just how you think about these things, I think matters. And the genuine appreciation of what others do is critical. Where is your head in terms of the direction that technology is headed and how that's going to impact storytelling? In other words, you were witness to the first, you know, VR headsets 50 years ago. We're seeing rapid developments in AR, VR, AI. How is this going to impact how we tell stories and how people are gonna enjoy stories? Like, it almost feels like the first computer-generated graphics and animation, which you were integral in, has matured to the point where those tools on some level are gonna reach some kind of tech singularity with all these other tools that are out there where the effects that you see in a live action motion picture and the computer animation for animated films, there's gonna be a blurring of the lines and these two genres are going to start overlapping more and more.

1:42:35It affects every industry now, But it is true because we've had this underlying exponential activity that's been driving this. And the interaction between graphics and the games world. So it was actually the funding that came out of selling things into the games world, which enabled the chips to be fast enough to enable machine learning, neural networks. An idea that was first written about in 1948. The thing about exponential growth is it can't continue forever. So what happens is it either runs out or it morphs into something else. Now it's pretty unpredictable, except that it can't continue like it's doing forever, so it's going to have dramatic changes.

1:43:29Dramatic changes are more difficult to predict. the important thing is to know that it is going to change and that it's unpredictable. And that's a hard concept for people to get. Just as rapid change is hard to get. So we're definitely at one of those points in the next while where something fairly dramatic will happen just because of all the changes that are going on. So just in terms of storytelling, the way we communicate with each other is through stories. And if you hold a child on your lap, then you're communicating something to them. If you hand them a pad, then that's also communicating something to them.

1:44:11And so it's telling a story, but it's not the same kind of story. All these things are at play at the same time. And storytelling is one of the major components of this. But would you say that overall you're a tech optimist? Or are you fearing what some of these powerful technologies portend? Well, I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I've always felt like I... You're a neutralist. And just like I am with politics or whatever, it's like, okay, we don't get swayed too far because we've got to... This is all very complicated. We have to wind our way through it and not get derailed because the problems are hard.

1:44:54And since the problems are hard, we think, okay, how do we solve it? Who solves it? What are the consequences? and so you get opinions. As you know, you can get all sorts of opinions written on all sides of it. I like to know what the opinions are because they're seeing things that I can't see. I want to know what they see and it also helps inform us in terms of what we do, how we behave, how we marshal the resources that we have. Most people come and want to do good in the world. That's a source of energy. So how do you harness the energy of your own people to do something good? And so that's always the big questions.

1:45:42How do you harness that energy, that desire in a way that they feel good about it and you feel good about it and you actually end up with something that has a positive impact? That's a pretty good mission question, isn't it? Yes, and for me personally, because it isn't really part of a mission statement, it's like, okay, what kind of impact do we make? What's a positive impact that we can make in the world? I think that's a beautiful question to end this. Thank you, Ed. My pleasure. I really enjoyed talking with you. It was great to talk to you. I just, you know, I adore the book, Creativity, Inc.

1:46:18I think the work that you're doing is really vital and important work. And I just have a tremendous amount of respect for what you've built and how you comport yourself in the world and what you represent. So it was an honor to spend time with you today. Thank you. Well, it's been a true joy. As a conversationalist, you were wonderful. Oh, I appreciate that. Thanks. Come back sometime. All right, thank you. Thank you, thanks.

1:46:47That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

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1:48:52Thank you.