10 Leadership Lessons from Pixar
I recently watched the documentary, The Pixar Story, which is exactly what it sounds like: the story of Pixar becoming the powerhouse computer animation film studio it is today. (You can watch it yourself for $3 on Amazon and Youtube)
It’s a fascinating story hearing how they built a team of people sharing a common and seemingly impossible dream when they started: making a full-length, feature-film made entirely with computer animation.
There’s a lot of awesome anecdotes in the film and the documentary’s creators did an excellent job of capturing the emotions of creating these movies many of us know so well: Toy Story, the Incredibles, Monsters, Inc and Finding Nemo.
I’m a bit of a leadership geek, so I wanted to share leadership lessons I saw in the film that stood out. (Note: some of these are also inspired by the books, Little Bets, which uses Pixar as one of the key companies it draws stories from, and Ed Catmull's book on building Pixar, Creativity, Inc.)
1) Collaboration and spontaneity matters
After their first major success, Pixar opened a new facility that embodied the culture they had built, and worked to foster it to greater levels. This new facility is expansive and open and allows for employees to be creative and collaborative in new ways. They even called it "Steve's Movie" because Steve Jobs invested tons of time and effort into making it a great space to work in.
This is why cubicles can be the enemy of a great company; random connections that happen in a more open environment can quickly outweigh the costs of interrupting others. It's also why Jobs put all the bathrooms in a central location, thus creating moments of serendipity for everyone throughout the day.
2) Openness to criticism and feedback is essential
Everyone sees the world a bit differently, which is hugely valuable. At about 68 minutes into the film you see an artist showing his peers a rough draft of Nemo the fish talking to his Father. The artist had focused all his efforts on the father and Nemo looked basically dead. His peers helped him realize the importance of showing life in both characters. Throughout the film, collaboration is emphasized as a key to their success.
Without a collaborative environment where feedback is welcomed, you will never be able to move quickly enough. This is why Pixar creates "Braintrusts" to give candid feedback and Catmull considered it an essential part of his job as leader to foster that candor constantly.
3) Celebrate real success
The Pixar team worked insane hours and under unbelievable pressure as they more than once put their backs against the wall trying to rewrite films with tight deadlines approaching. To make up for this, they majorly celebrate their successes when all that hard work pays off. In one scene, the director of Monster’s, Inc announced to the whole company the box office receipts for opening weekend, which were huge. The whole company was celebrating with champagne and cheers.
Many have talked about the distorted reality of celebrating funding for a startup. It’s important to remember that especially after a major struggle for your team to celebrate key successes (like customer and revenue milestones) and recognize those making extreme efforts. It goes a long way to refilling the well of employee energy and motivation.
4) Take bold chances by investing in your people
After 3 straight hits on their hands at Pixar, the reins of directing their next film was handed over to someone who had never even been an assistant director. As it turned out, this led to Monsters, Inc, a huge success.
Recognizing talent within your company and giving them the opportunity to grow beyond their current role can yield great results as demonstrated here. The director of Monsters, Inc, was employee #2 at Pixar. He was ready, and he got the help he needed as Catmull set up a mentorship program to develop new directors in the coming years, which Catmull details in Creativity, Inc.
5) Push the limits of what's possible
At Pixar, it was a constant back and forth: the tech team would give animators new possibilities to try to animate and then the animators would come back pushing the tech team to allow them to do even more. In A Bug’s Life, the tech team said they could only render 50 ants on screen at a time. The animators pushed back and the tech team delivered: they made it possible to render over 400 ants on screen.
The greatest inventions of man have always come from those willing to try to make the impossible possible. It is a worthy exercise to ask your team “what if” and make things happen. Often, what starts as "that's impossible" can quickly become, "well, we'd have to do..." and then with a lot of hard work, impossible becomes reality.
6) Never Settle
After a string of hits, Pixar was on top of the world. They could have stuck to their formula and made a ton of sequels, but they didn’t. Continuing to push themselves, they brought on Brad Bird, who had just made the flop, Iron Giant. He brought fresh ideas to the company and thrived in the Pixar culture that assimilated him.
When you get comfortable and rest on your laurels, it provides a window of opportunity for your competition. If instead, you continue to push the limits and innovate, you will never be caught. This is why Catmull built a culture that embraces failure over and over again; movie ideas will often go through cycles for years before they get the green light to become a full film at Pixar. One of my favorite parts of Creativity, Inc, is how Catmull talks about a film they struggled to get made and never happened...until now it's coming out this summer and called Inside Out. The struggle to get something right can bring out greatness if you stick with it and don't settle.
7) Be your own best customer
It was said best right in the documentary, “We’re a team of people that love film…We just make things we all just want to see.” As it turns out, when they were unhappy with drafts of their films and pushed themselves to rewrite and improve what they were doing, they created great movies that they were proud of and people loved. Believe it or not, Woody was a horrible character everyone hated in the first version of Toy Story. They did a massive rewrite of the film to make him the lovable cowboy you see in the film.
Every startup knows the best customer in the early days is full of ideas and constructive criticism. Make your people a great customer of their work and don't be afraid to try your dog food yourself. Catmull has his famous Braintrust constantly review the movies as they're being made to help get the story right. Only once they love it do they know it's ready for all of us to love it.
8) Your competition doesn’t understand your value prop
Towards the end of the film, they mention the decline of 2D animation and the fact that other studios gave up on the medium after a string of Pixar successes. As it turns out, they seemed to think that audiences no longer had an interest in the 2D animation form and that the success of Pixar was attributed to their technology. They couldn’t be more wrong. 15 of the Top 25 all time highest grossing traditionally animated films have come out since Toy Story premiered in 1995.
Know what your company is all about at its core and focus on delivering your best possible product. Don’t worry about competition, because they are likely to look at your success and be unable to understand what the real reasons for your success are. Catmull always stressed when they made Toy Story and other films that the story matters most; no one would go see the movie just because it was animated. It had to be good and he was right. Every Pixar success has come with a heartfelt story. It just so happens great computer animation delivers that story.
9) Empower your people to have control of their work
Everyone at Pixar has a great level of accountability to themselves and their peers. Everyone takes great pride in their work and believes in the mission. Pixar’s employees are operating at the highest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the quality of their work demonstrates it.
Give your employees the opportunity to surprise you. Give them ownership and the opportunity to see their work to the end. This empowerment will give them new vigor in their work. It's why in Catmull's Braintrust meetings, the Braintrust can tell the director the problems with the film, but not how to solve the problems. It's up to the director to do that and quite often they come up with a much better solution than the Braintrust could think of. Trust your people and you might be surprised by what they can do.
10) Overnight successes are far from overnight
Pixar was a fledgling arm of LucasFilm in the 1970s when their journey began. It wasn’t until two decades later that Toy Story finally came out. They were constantly on the edge of going out of business and had many sleepless months producing their hits. They were almost sold for scrap multiple times and required many infusions of capital from Steve Jobs before Toy Story's success.
I constantly remind myself this no matter what the press tries to paint: No success is overnight. It’s a collection of small victories, hard work, and perseverance that eventually add up and one day reaching the tipping point of success. We don't all make it to the end with the press profiles and success stories, but anyone who does put in years of work to get there.
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