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inkandinsights's review against another edition
5.0
This is a non-fiction nook but written like a beautiful story.
Pixar is perhaps the most beautiful storyteller we know.
But, Pixar is not a single person. it is a collective of creative professionals, computer engineers, animators, producers, directors, and a diverse set of people from diverse backgrounds.
Bringing together the creative force of such a big collective is not an easy task. It is unimaginable for someone like me who still hasn't wrapped his head around the beauty and stunning craftsmanship of Pixar movies.
Ed Catmull breaks down in a beautiful narrative manner how Pixar became Pixar as we know it.
It is amazing to know how a company that was once in dire traits and was desperately looking for a buyer has now become the pioneer of animated movie-making.
The book has textbook lessons on leadership, creative thinking, managing emotions at work, giving and getting feedback, and ultimately, becoming a better version of oneself.
Needless to say, I was actively taking notes that I hope will serve by better future.
What really surprised me about this book is the 'Afterword'. The section where Ed revisits his career alongside Steve Jobs.
Is there anything in this world that has not been influenced by Steve Jobs? I doubt it.
Pixar is perhaps the most beautiful storyteller we know.
But, Pixar is not a single person. it is a collective of creative professionals, computer engineers, animators, producers, directors, and a diverse set of people from diverse backgrounds.
Bringing together the creative force of such a big collective is not an easy task. It is unimaginable for someone like me who still hasn't wrapped his head around the beauty and stunning craftsmanship of Pixar movies.
Ed Catmull breaks down in a beautiful narrative manner how Pixar became Pixar as we know it.
It is amazing to know how a company that was once in dire traits and was desperately looking for a buyer has now become the pioneer of animated movie-making.
The book has textbook lessons on leadership, creative thinking, managing emotions at work, giving and getting feedback, and ultimately, becoming a better version of oneself.
Needless to say, I was actively taking notes that I hope will serve by better future.
What really surprised me about this book is the 'Afterword'. The section where Ed revisits his career alongside Steve Jobs.
Is there anything in this world that has not been influenced by Steve Jobs? I doubt it.
missyjohnson's review against another edition
3.0
More a history of Pixar than any type of business or management book. I did enjoy Catmulls information about what Steve Jobs was like as a boss and colleague. The twenty plus years of working with him and for him gave a better insight as to the growth of the man than the snippets of negative press that are so predominate in this day and age
winterdream1999's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
tashaseegmiller's review against another edition
5.0
I was not prepared for the comprehensive awesomeness that is in this book. While I have admired the storytelling techniques of Pixar for a long time, the things I learned about leadership, the creative process, working with people, advice for life, etc. made me read slowly, think often and highlight incredible points I'll come back to time and again.
Friends in leadership or creative pursuits - prepare for me to recommend this book to you. It is a great, great read.
Friends in leadership or creative pursuits - prepare for me to recommend this book to you. It is a great, great read.
ohcorrica's review against another edition
4.0
A great expansion of a classic book. If you are a creative, work with creatives, or want more creativity in your life then this is a must-read. It is inspiring and enjoyable to imagine Pixar at various times and hear all of the great stories.
polarbearisla's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.5
fbroom's review against another edition
5.0
Ed Catmull talks about managing Pixar, the ups and downs, the lessons they learned over the years. (I loved his advice on failure and how creativity comes from embracing failure itself and accepting that in order to innovate you have to make mistakes. I didn’t like on the other hand, his chapter on the Disney acquisition and I wasn’t convinced that competition would have been harmful to both Pixar and Disney if Pixar didn’t accept the deal. The final chapter talks about his relationship with Steve.
some notes that are relevant to me personally
Trusting your employees:
"We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and fix them” It’s also important that all employee enjoy their jobs and at pixar, every manager does that because disconnect will only lead to low morale.
Competition:
"When the Russians launched the first satellite in space, the united states start ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) which eventually led the development of the internet". Ed recalls the lesson of ARPA and how when faced with a challenge, you should get smarter
Failure:
"Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth."
“fail early and fail fast” and “be wrong as fast as you can.”
"Failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it"
"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 derivative, not innovative."
"But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there."
"The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud.”
note: I loved Ed’s view on failure, unfortunately at many cultures and business making mistakes isn’t an option. In some business you would me made fun of or even punished if you made mistakes.
Becoming too big
As companies get bigger and become more successful, there will be pressure to deliver at a certain speed and a certain rate. Ed calls the process “Feeding the Beast”. As you get more employees and start generating revenues, you will want every one of them to be working at a 100% rate just like workers on an assembly line, every worker needs to feed the beast. Unfortunately instead of having ideas drive the output, the schedule instead start driving those companies.
Ed himself told a story of trying to do the same at pixar, with Finding Nemo, they tried to lock down the story before production started, to be more “efficient” but at they moved along, they couldn’t commit to that and returned back to the old way of modifying and iterating through it until it was the right plot.
note: Ed also mentions later in another context "Therefore, we came to the conclusion that a blend—one original film each year and a sequel every other year, or three films every two years—seemed a reasonable way to keep us both financially and creatively healthy.” which made me feel like he was contracting himself
Balance:
"Our mental image of balance is somewhat distorted because we tend to equate it with stillness—the calm repose of a yogi balancing on one leg, a state without apparent motion. To my mind, the more accurate examples of balance come from sports, such as when a basketball player spins around a defender, a running back bursts through the line of scrimmage, or a surfer catches a wave. All of these are extremely dynamic responses to rapidly changing environments."
Creativity is not an instant thought, it’s an on going process:
"Many of us have a romantic idea about how creativity happens: A lone visionary conceives of a film or a product in a flash of insight.” creativity is none of that, "creativity is more like a marathon than a sprint.” Working on a movie, takes not just months but years. they have to go through changes that unfolded over not months but years—to find the movie’s heart.
“If I start on a film and right away know the structure—where it’s going, the plot—I don’t trust it,
“I feel like the only reason we’re able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, ‘discovery’ means you don’t know the answer when you start. This could just be my Lutheran, Scandinavian upbringing, but I believe life should not be easy. We’re meant to push ourselves and try new things—which will definitely make us feel uncomfortable."
Ed also explores how his other colleagues approach their creative work:
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay
“So I tell myself that I have time, even when I don’t. As in, ‘Okay, I’m going to proceed as if I have time—I’m going to sit back and muse rather than looking at the clock—because if I sit back and muse, I’m more likely to solve the problem.’
I do my best work when I’m zipping through the scene, not overthinking, not worrying if every drawing is perfect, but just flowing with and connecting to the scene—sort of doing it by the seat of my pants.”
“If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?”
"The key is to never stop moving forward”
Ed also talks about some of the rituals they do at Pixar to help with creativity from their daily meetings and research trips to making shorts and exploring new technologies and also the Pixar university program that offers various classes to all the employees.
"The future is not a destination—it is a direction."
"Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear.”
one artist wrote to Ed:
“To Whom it May Inspire,” Austin wrote. “I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time. The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems. In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision.… ”
note: Notice how creativity is so linked to embracing failure, without failure there is no creativity.
Disney buys Pixar:
Basically Ed and John headed both studios while keeping them separate from each other. They divided their time between Burbank and Emeryville. Ed talked about how the employees at disney were talented but the whole organization was dysfunctional and blocking the talent. They applied what learned at Pixar, for example the brain trust meetings. Disney with Ed and John was transformed to making top movies again after 16 years of drought
note: I didn’t personally like when Ed was defending the merge because otherwise competition will destroy both animation studios. Isn’t competition a good thing?
Final points from Ed (final chapter)
Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won’t have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them
Change and uncertainty are part of life. Our job is not to resist them but to build the capability to recover when unexpected events occur.
If you don’t always try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead
Similarly, it is not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them. • Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new
Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up—it means you trust them even when they do screw up.
The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal—it leads to measuring people by the mistakes they make rather than by their ability to solve problems
Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way. And that’s as it should be
some notes that are relevant to me personally
Trusting your employees:
"We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and fix them” It’s also important that all employee enjoy their jobs and at pixar, every manager does that because disconnect will only lead to low morale.
Competition:
"When the Russians launched the first satellite in space, the united states start ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) which eventually led the development of the internet". Ed recalls the lesson of ARPA and how when faced with a challenge, you should get smarter
Failure:
"Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth."
“fail early and fail fast” and “be wrong as fast as you can.”
"Failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it"
"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 derivative, not innovative."
"But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there."
"The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud.”
note: I loved Ed’s view on failure, unfortunately at many cultures and business making mistakes isn’t an option. In some business you would me made fun of or even punished if you made mistakes.
Becoming too big
As companies get bigger and become more successful, there will be pressure to deliver at a certain speed and a certain rate. Ed calls the process “Feeding the Beast”. As you get more employees and start generating revenues, you will want every one of them to be working at a 100% rate just like workers on an assembly line, every worker needs to feed the beast. Unfortunately instead of having ideas drive the output, the schedule instead start driving those companies.
Ed himself told a story of trying to do the same at pixar, with Finding Nemo, they tried to lock down the story before production started, to be more “efficient” but at they moved along, they couldn’t commit to that and returned back to the old way of modifying and iterating through it until it was the right plot.
note: Ed also mentions later in another context "Therefore, we came to the conclusion that a blend—one original film each year and a sequel every other year, or three films every two years—seemed a reasonable way to keep us both financially and creatively healthy.” which made me feel like he was contracting himself
Balance:
"Our mental image of balance is somewhat distorted because we tend to equate it with stillness—the calm repose of a yogi balancing on one leg, a state without apparent motion. To my mind, the more accurate examples of balance come from sports, such as when a basketball player spins around a defender, a running back bursts through the line of scrimmage, or a surfer catches a wave. All of these are extremely dynamic responses to rapidly changing environments."
Creativity is not an instant thought, it’s an on going process:
"Many of us have a romantic idea about how creativity happens: A lone visionary conceives of a film or a product in a flash of insight.” creativity is none of that, "creativity is more like a marathon than a sprint.” Working on a movie, takes not just months but years. they have to go through changes that unfolded over not months but years—to find the movie’s heart.
“If I start on a film and right away know the structure—where it’s going, the plot—I don’t trust it,
“I feel like the only reason we’re able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, ‘discovery’ means you don’t know the answer when you start. This could just be my Lutheran, Scandinavian upbringing, but I believe life should not be easy. We’re meant to push ourselves and try new things—which will definitely make us feel uncomfortable."
Ed also explores how his other colleagues approach their creative work:
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay
“So I tell myself that I have time, even when I don’t. As in, ‘Okay, I’m going to proceed as if I have time—I’m going to sit back and muse rather than looking at the clock—because if I sit back and muse, I’m more likely to solve the problem.’
I do my best work when I’m zipping through the scene, not overthinking, not worrying if every drawing is perfect, but just flowing with and connecting to the scene—sort of doing it by the seat of my pants.”
“If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?”
"The key is to never stop moving forward”
Ed also talks about some of the rituals they do at Pixar to help with creativity from their daily meetings and research trips to making shorts and exploring new technologies and also the Pixar university program that offers various classes to all the employees.
"The future is not a destination—it is a direction."
"Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear.”
one artist wrote to Ed:
“To Whom it May Inspire,” Austin wrote. “I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time. The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems. In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision.… ”
note: Notice how creativity is so linked to embracing failure, without failure there is no creativity.
Disney buys Pixar:
Basically Ed and John headed both studios while keeping them separate from each other. They divided their time between Burbank and Emeryville. Ed talked about how the employees at disney were talented but the whole organization was dysfunctional and blocking the talent. They applied what learned at Pixar, for example the brain trust meetings. Disney with Ed and John was transformed to making top movies again after 16 years of drought
note: I didn’t personally like when Ed was defending the merge because otherwise competition will destroy both animation studios. Isn’t competition a good thing?
Final points from Ed (final chapter)
Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won’t have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them
Change and uncertainty are part of life. Our job is not to resist them but to build the capability to recover when unexpected events occur.
If you don’t always try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead
Similarly, it is not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them. • Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new
Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up—it means you trust them even when they do screw up.
The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal—it leads to measuring people by the mistakes they make rather than by their ability to solve problems
Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way. And that’s as it should be
reneeritchie's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
I really enjoyed this book!! Such a great example of successful corporate leadership and dealing with creatives. It was also fun to learn about Pixar's trials and successes, and how the stories and staff developed into the Pixar we know and love.