SUMMARY OF CREATIVITY, INC.

Chapter 1: Animated

Ed Catmull begins this chapter by talking about how hierarchy means nothing, especially when it comes to creativity. The nature of management is such that the decisions made initially give rise to multiple decisions, thereby creating many problems. It’s not easy to disengage these problems by simply rectifying the fundamental errors. In fact, these problems stare right at us in the face, and the key to solving such problems is to recognize what works and what doesn’t. Pixar adheres to this principle even today, but Catmull had realized this even before Pixar existed.

As a kid, Catmull was enthralled by the Disney shows aired every week. Right from Donald Duck to Mickey Mouse, he was fascinated by how the artists working in Disney could transform a comic character into a real entity that displayed emotions. Unlike other kids who were more interested in the shows, Catmull was intrigued about the world of Disney where creativity had no limit. He later pursued Physics because he felt that he wasn’t talented enough to work at Disney, but it was this very pursuit that made him realize his true calling years later.

Stig Brodersen  4:22  

Yeah. 

Preston Pysh  4:23  

But at a young age, he watched this video of Walt Disney. And Walt Disney was describing on this video how he has achieved so much success with animation. And his big point was that with the characters that he draws, he wants the emotion and the expression in their face to really come to life so that you can feel the emotion coming through that cartoon character. So, if you were going to animate for Pixar, they animated a lamp, that’s like their logo, kind of jumping across the screen and then it kind of turns and looks at you and does this thing that you actually think that that’s a living object. And that’s really what Walt Disney was describing in this video that Ed Catmull watched as a young kid. Well, that video had such a profound impact on Ed even through adult life, and he never really forgot this interview with Walt Disney. It had such a profound impact on him. 

And so, like I said, Ed went on to major in college in Computer Science. He then started working for ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). The one that I’m a little bit more familiar with is DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which is this government organization that they put a bunch of money, and they invest a bunch of money into. And the government makes these large leaps in technology in technological advancements  because they’re funding things that are like a 10x jump in capability. They have like these moonshots, if you will, in capability. So Ed Catmull went to work for this. At the time when he worked there, it was called ARPA. And one of the things that he did at ARPA was he was one of the pioneers, one of the first people that was creating 3D animated objects on computers. And when he was doing this, it was at a time where 3D animation. There wasn’t much processing power on the computers that they were using to actually do this well. Like, the objects that they were building were really generic and really basic. But Ed went through this, he ended up going to New York, he worked out in New York for a bit, and then he finds himself working for George Lucas under Star Wars. George Lucas actually stood up this division, where George Lucas was really trying to leverage computers and computer animation into his original three Star Wars movies. And so he brought Ed Catmull out to run this division of 3D animation. Trying them, mixing it and synergizing it with the way that they did special effects just the old fashioned way with the Star Wars movies. So this was really kind of where Ed got his start. He worked with George Lucas. He talks a lot in the book about how George influenced them, which I found to be a really an interesting discussion. And so he worked under George Lucas and just really kind of had a lot of influential moments, and learned a lot from George Lucas’ leadership style. So, that had a profound impact on him as he went on to be the president and run Pixar later on down the road. And a lot of George Lucas’ qualities kind of come out in his leadership style.

Stig Brodersen  7:33  

Yeah, it was very impressed by George Lucas’ termination. What he has told Ed was, “either you do it or don’t do it. Don’t try doing something that really leaves you room for a lot of failure”. And, this was definitely something that Ed brought him to Pixar later on. He made a ton of mistakes, but he was not like, “yeah, let’s see how this goes”. It was more like, “we’re doing it and we might fail, but we are doing it”. And that was a point that I really liked.

Preston Pysh  8:03  

So Pixar gets more advanced in their graphics and their animation that they’re able to do. And they kind of get to this point where they’re starting to make things that look like, I don’t want to say it looks like at the caliber things that they’re doing in today’s day and age, but they’re starting to make these 3D objects that are able to move and kind of move around the screen. And what I love about this book is he talks about how, even back when he was a computer programmer, and he was just starting to work on 3D technology on a computer, how his goal in life was to create a full motion movie with three dimensional objects on a computer. So this was like something he wanted to do when he was in his 20s, way before the technology was even there. He wanted to make a movie. And this was something that he just kept telling himself, “this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to eventually be able to do this”. It just seemed like along the way, that was probably never gonna happen, but he he stuck to that dream, and he stuck to this goal that he had. And so it was just amazing to hear the development of that. But for me, it was amazing to hear that at such a young age, as he was going through the story of how this all unfolded. 

So, got to a point where George Lucas was finishing up some of the movies and some of the technology, which I think was a little bit further behind than where he saw it. And more importantly, George Lucas needed to raise some money for his follow-on films because they gotten some budget concerns and things like that. So for George Lucas, it kind of made sense, “hey, I can raise some money if I spin off this 3D animation company that I kind of started on the side to take care of things”. And so, he started looking for potential buyers to try to sell Pixar- the division that he had created off into other things. So long story short, along comes Steve Jobs later down the road. Steve Jobs came in, and he [Ed)] talks about this long relationship where Steve Jobs was interested but never really made a formal offer. And eventually, Steve Jobs bought Pixar. And this is after he was ousted from Apple.

Stig Brodersen  10:14  

 And the whole dynamic between Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull was just really interesting. And the thing a lot of you have probably heard about how a lot of different businessmen and women over the years have trouble working with someone like Steve Jobs because especially in his early stages of his career, he was very, I will call it, eccentric. And Steve Jobs always seemed to know the right answer. But he didn’t always agree with Ed. So, before, Steve was actually acquiring the company. Ed was asking, “so what if we disagree about a management decision, how’s that gonna work?”. And Steve Jobs’ response was, “I would just explain it to you until you understand that I’m right”. And I just found that hilarious. Think about having a leader like that, “I’ll just explain it to you until you realize that I’m right”.

Preston Pysh  11:06  

Ed’s question, just for a little more context on what Stig saying. So, Ed asked this question to Steve Jobs whenever he knew he was a potential buyer of the company. Ed was kind of like filling out all these new bosses, if you will, like, “do I even want to work for this guy if he buys the company?”, and that was one of the questions. And basically Jobs’ response was, “well, I’ll just keep explaining it to you until you agree with it”.

Stig Brodersen  11:32  

But at the end of the day, when they started working together, Ed said that, if they didn’t agree there are usually three things that will happen, and they were equally likely (to happen). And he said, the one thing is that he would discuss it with Steve and he would actually sometimes realize that Steve was right. And other times they were discussing, and Steve would say, “well, you’re right, Ed”. Then the third and most interesting option was that they would still disagree after a few meeting. And Ed would just go ahead and do whatever he felt like doing. And the interesting thing is that Steve would never say anything to that because Steve didn’t respect anything as much as passion. And he felt like that if he was willing to go through all this hardship to do this anyway, even though like he was really giving him a hard time for it, it must really mean that he was so passionate that he would ultimately be successful with that. I think that was really a redeeming character because there’s a lot of very controversial things about Steve Jobs. But this was definitely one of the most redeeming characters about him, that he was actually so much respecting passion, which was just so important in a company like Pixar in the first place.

Preston Pysh  12:37  

It was neat because Ed, that last option that Stig was describing there, that Ed would exercise, he would just do it. He didn’t really find that out until he probably worked with Steve for five or ten years. It took him a while to figure that out. At first it was very emotionally charged, and he didn’t really know how to handle it. But after he it worked around Steve long enough, it was kind of like, “I’m just going to ignore him”. And then he found out that Steve really never did anything whenever he did that.

Stig Brodersen  13:04  

And what I really like about this book is that Catmull seems so authentic in everything he’s saying because he’s not afraid of making himself vulnerable. And that’s one of the things that we always looking for in this books that we reading about the successful people. Are they afraid of making themselves vulnerable, like really vulnerable? And he actually said that whenever he met Steve Jobs 1985, in many ways it was not nice because he felt and knew that Jobs was smarter than him and he actually felt threatened. And for someone as successful as Ed Catmull to actually admit that, even though clearly Steve Jobs was super, super smart, I think that this gives a lot of credibility to the book. And he’s not afraid of saying, “I’ve met with some really cool people. They were smarter than me. I completely respect them”. And not in the sense that you hear a lot of CEO saying something like “yeah, always hire people smarter than me”. And you kind of feel like they don’t really mean it. But Ed Catmull was really sincere and authentic about some of the people that he really felt was a lot smarter than him. And when he’s also so frank to say that I was actually feeling threatened. I mean, that’s not ‘impressed’ or anything. He was using words, like ’embarrassed’ and ‘threatened by other people’. And that’s something that you really have to give him credit for the honesty that he shows.

Preston Pysh  14:28  

The thing that I really liked about Ed’s book is his writing style is phenomenal, which is something you’d kind of expect out of a guy from Pixar. But, his storytelling in the book is obviously phenomenal, his writing style is phenomenal, you get the sense that he’s just such a humble person, and somebody that you would love to get to know. 

Okay, so we’ll continue on the story here. So, one of the things that I really liked about the story between Ed and Steve Jobs is, he [Ed] really kind of talks through a lot of Steve Jobs, the way he saw the business evolving, the way that Steve thought of things from an owner, from like, “hey, Disney is going to do this next so you guys need to be prepared and set yourself up for this decision that Disney’s going to come at you and they’re gonna want to renegotiate at this point so we have to situate ourselves and maneuver ourselves into this key position before”.  So from like a business standpoint, if you really want to understand acquisitions for large, big billion dollar acquisitions, and how some of these billionaires think through things, you got a little that in this book. And I really enjoyed that conversation. I’m not going to get into the specifics on the podcast, but if you would read this book, I think that for people out there to hear that conversation, and to hear that thought process, it was really valuable reading. And I think that it was something that a lot of people will enjoy.

Stig Brodersen  15:59  

Steve Jobs was explaining about the timing of different events. And he was saying, “oh yeah, we know that Disney wants to acquire us. We need to be successful. We need to create Toy Story”, that was by the way a type of movie that was never seen before. And they even had to invent new technology to make that.

Steve Jobs was like, “yeah, we’re just going to invent new technology then we’re going to create a new movie. It’s going to be number one. Then we’re doing the IPO one week later”. He was actually doing all these things like they would happen. He was doing the whole roadshow, raising capital and everything. Just like he was a hundred percent certain that Toy Story would just be a blockbuster. And it was. And then Disney, one week later or something, actually called them and renegotiated the contract just as he said. And they offered him. Was in enough *inadubile* score amount of money, but exactly what Steve Jobs actually predicted. So, as Preston said, there were a lot of great details in the book about this acquisition. But it was really impressive to see how certain Jobs was – that certain things would happened. And it was exactly how it played out.

Preston Pysh  17:01  

You know, I like the comment about Steve saying, “so this is what’s going to happen at this point in time. This is what’s going to happen next. And this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to have a number one film”. And I kind of see that as a common thread amongst a lot of these billionaires that we study is that they literally think in these terms of like, “okay, so in five years, we’re going to be here, this is going to happen”. And I think that mindset is so important for people as they’re trying to create things and to think in that positive direction as if it has already happened. It’s an amazing mindset. 

Okay, so once you kind of get through this discussion of Toy Story, which was the first major big hit for Pixar, that was just a total blockbuster total game changer. Like we said, Disney came back. They wanted to renegotiate the terms because they felt very threatened at that point. And Pixar really kind of established themselves as a major competitor to what Disney had been doing up to that point in time. So this is where Ed talks in the book about a real change in his own personal life because from the time he was in his 20s, until this occurred, which I don’t know what his age was when Toy Story came out, but I would guess he was 50 years. I really don’t know what his age was, but he was older at this point. And the thing was, is he had accomplished his major life’s goal at that point. 

His major goal was to create a 3D animation full length movie at this point, and then he did it. And he said, you would think that at that point, it would be really exciting to go on and make the next film and they’ll film after that. He said, “but to be honest with you, I went through a major emotional event in my life where I felt like I didn’t really have anything else left to do”. He really never felt so lost in his life is the way he described it in the book. And so he said it took him a full year to really kind of grasp but what it was that was next for him to do. The thing that he kind of settled upon and that gave him the passion and the motivation and energy to move forward and move on to the next thing, was this idea of, “how do I preserve and protect Pixar at this point from becoming like so many other creative companies out there that die and lose that initial foundational touch that the whole thing was all about in the first place?”. And so he really kind of sets off on this journey of trying to capture what are those things that protect your company, and protect your creative company specifically, to maintain the standard. And that’s what Stig and I are going to outline right now. He talks about a bunch of things. He really kind of goes in this whole different direction and talking about their leadership style at Pixar. They talk about how once Disney bought them, Steve Jobs help to negotiate that Ed would be in charge of not only Pixar now, but also all of Disney Animation. And as Ed took on Disney Animation, they had all these problems because the management style within Disney was very robotic and not very creative at this point. 

And so he talked about that process, he talked about how he tried to preserve the process at Pixar. And he threw out a bunch of different things. And what I did is I made a list of the four things that I found to be most important that he talked about. And so I know Stig might have a different list, and he might have some of the same stuff. But what we’re going to do is just kind of a back and forth on our four main points of what we captured for that idea. So the first thing that just from an overarching point of view that I found, and this is more from the way Ed described things than the way that he directly told the reader what he thinks people need to do. And the number one thing that popped into my head after reading this whole book was the idea of humility and being humble. And that really comes from the way Ed was a leader. I’ve never worked at Pixar, so I might be completely wrong. If you’re an employee, you might think that Ed’s a total jerk, or you might completely agree with this. But from the information I gathered from the book, and from reading his comments, he came across to me as being a very humble person, and a person who doesn’t see himself as being this big shot president of the company, and the guy who’s running the show. He was more of this figure that, “yeah, I’m the president. And if you guys can’t make the decision, I will make the decision, but I’d rather sit in a meeting and allow everyone to take part in the creative process, and be that balanced person that just provides good candid feedback and I want every person to be a part of that process”. And so his humility to me was such an important part to the success that he has had with Pixar and Disney Animation because they went on to do big things. As soon as Ed took over, you saw them start having some enormous hits as far as the movies that they started making. So that was my first one. I want to hear what Stig got for his.

Stig Brodersen  22:10  

I think my first one is sort of like piggybacking on what you just said. And it’s about how people interact. Actually I have another point about interaction too, but in the interaction terms of can everyone really speak their mind? And this is actually, I think is within the first two minutes of the book. He talks about that at Pixar, they used to have table cards, that would say, “Catmull, CEO”, or whatever other name and title he would have. And the problem about having that might seem practical, and should avoid confusion, is that people go into a certain role. So it would say, “John Smith, the Creative Designer”. And, when you’re put in the box, you’re not creative. That’s basically what he’s saying. And he was also very humble about that the good ideas didn’t always come from the top. Everyone should be able to participate. So for him, it was about creating the environment. That was also some of the points that Preston was touching on before. But creating the environment to empower your employees and make them thrive. And if he’s very humble about him being at the very top, and that’s not always a good thing. His said that at some point of time, he felt like, there were actually no problems in the company, like, no one was showing up late, no one was ever rude. Everything seems to be completely perfect. And he questioned that, he said, “is that because everything is perfect now or is it because my reality is very different from the reality that my employees experience?”. And what he figured out, probably not surprising here. But what he figured out was that it was just his reality because he was now the CEO of this big corporation. Then people would behave differently around him. They will give him more attention, they will listen more to his ideas. Like, that was not the way it actually worked at Pixar. Everyone couldn’t just speak to each other way one or two. There was real strict hierarchy which is not always good in creative environment. So again, this speaks about his humility, and also speaks well of him in terms of being open to the idea that his reality is not everyone’s reality. And I really liked that point.

Preston Pysh  24:26  

So my next one is refinement. And let me just provide an example. When you were in college, or high school or whatever, and somebody hands you a paper that they just wrote. That was a creative process. When you write something, it’s a creative process because you’re creating something that’s never been written before. This person would write this and they’d hand it to you and they say, “hey, can you read this over and tell me what you think? And you know, if you see any grammar mistakes, fix it or whatever, prove it”. So what I find, and this is so common in so many people, is when they write something, they literally just finished writing it. They hadn’t even read the whole thing from beginning to finish, and they’ve already handed it off to you to review for the final product, like they’re getting ready to turn it in, and they just want one person to look at it. And you can tell when you’re reading it for the first time that the person themselves that wrote it never even refined it themselves. They just looked at it. They just typed it and that was it. 

I read a book a long time ago that was very influential for me as far as writing. The title of the book is, “The Elements of Style”. And this book is all about that idea of refinement. And it goes straight to the stuff that Ed was talking about in this book at Pixar is, they are obsessed with refinement. They want to go once they get something, “okay, it’s a 10% solution. Let’s go back”. It’s almost like a sculpture. You knock off the big chunks at first, then you go back and you refine it a little bit more, and then you refine it a little bit more then once you really kind of get a pull at the hand on the sculpture, you can really start digging into the details and really breaking it out. But you wouldn’t start off with a sculpture by making the hand perfect, and then trying to do the rest of it. And that refinement that they go through there is a very thoughtful process. And what they did is they actually stood up a thing called a brain trust within the company of just a couple people that would watch where the film was at, and they’d go through it, and they would make all their notes on why they thought maybe a certain scene or something wasn’t working, and they would basically just identify problems. They wouldn’t provide solutions at all. That was actually built into their model is just to identify the problems. And then they’d hand those problems off to the director and the person who is responsible for implementing change. And that person could look at it and either make the change, or they could completely disagree with it. They had that latitude to act in the direction that they wanted. But this brain trust acted kind of like the audience and the viewer, if you will, to provide feedback and comments, and they constantly were going through this refinement phase, in order to make their product perfect and optimal. So kind of going back to my initial example of writing a paper. I know you’ve also been handed a paper from a person who has gone over it 10 to 20 times in your reading, and you’re just like, this is amazing. This is phenomenal. And that’s a result of refinement. And so I think that when you talk about the creative process, it’s so important to just go back, get many opinions. Some of them you’re gonna agree with, some of them you’re not gonna agree with. You got to go back and you got to really, really work at things in order to make the quality just amazing. And that’s something I really captured out of Ed’s comments.

Stig Brodersen  27:54  

Yeah, it really seemed Preston, that the quality was just so important for everyone. And that’s also a part of the mission and part of the purpose. Whatever they’re doing, I think it was one of the Toy Story movies as well. The theory goes should be like a video version. It was really stressful for everyone because they felt that the quality was not good enough. And I really like that about an organization. If everyone is stressed out about the quality, and not so much in terms of well, they’re actually pretty sure we’ve made a decent amount of money. But it seemed like people didn’t care about that too much. It was more about, well, q uality, because that was the purpose about through it there.

Preston Pysh  28:33  

So that was my third selection as well Stig, was about the quality. But where I would like to maybe even comment on that a little bit more of like, so why are they so obsessed with pumping out top quality? And what it really comes down to is, they care about their customer. They care about the viewer so much that they do not want to give them a bad product. So it’s actually customer focus when you kind of pull back a little bit more on it, like, okay, so why are we so obsessed with quality because we want to make our customers extremely happy. And I think that where a lot of businesses miss the boat on when you take that approach of focusing like a laser beam on the customer, what you’re actually creating with the benefit of that is the long term benefit. And I think that’s the really key word here is the long term benefit is that you are creating a brand with power over the long term. And so that’s why when you look at Steve Jobs with Apple, quality was like, there was nothing more important than the quality of the product. You look at Pixar, which, you know, Steve Jobs owned it for the longest time and Ed shared that vision of quality with him and that focus on customer experience. And that’s why the brand got so strong. And what a common theme that we see. I mean, Amazon, you name it, any big major company out there and that is how they operate. They’re so focused on the quality and the customer experience.

Stig Brodersen  30:01  

One of my high points is about failure. I always liked this discussion about failure. And I think action speaks louder than words because a lot of companies are saying, “yeah, it’s okay to fail, learn from our mistakes”. But I don’t think that many companies are actually, I wouldn’t say passionate about making mistakes. I think they are probably wrong to say that, but really accept that as a premise of doing great work. Clearly, this comes from the CEO, but he actually brings up a very interesting example in terms of failure. 

So he’s saying that at some point of time for Toy Story 2, the movie was actually more or less deleted. And it was because of a personal error. Apparently, some employee had typed in the wrong command, and then 90% of the movie just disappeared. And then, well, luckily, they had a backup system in place. Well, the problem about that backup system was that they actually didn’t install that correctly. So there’s actually no backup. So this is pretty bad. They’ve been working day and night for this for a year or something like that. So this was really, really bad. But they were really lucky. One of the employees had taken home a backup because I think she was pregnant or she was on maternity leave at that point in time, so she kind of had almost all the files that were automatically backed up at her computer at home, so they didn’t lose the movie. But what actually happened next was really interesting. They didn’t set out to find and punish that person. Surely they were making sure that the system worked and wouldn’t happen again. But he said that whoever did that they weren’t that interesting, and then never announced that. I don’t know if they even realized who that person was. Perhaps it was sugar coated, I don’t know, but that was actually what he said. He said that his thesis was that his employees had good intentions. And even if they had good intentions, they must still mean that random events occur. But at the end of the day, it’s not a question about random events. It’s a question about trust. And if you don’t trust your employee, you can’t have a good organization. And he said, it was something that just happens. I found that point really, really interesting. And I think it’s really admirable that they’re actually not sending out to find that person because I think a lot of organization would look for the scapegoat. I think that would be the first thought that will come to people’s mind.

Preston Pysh  32:30  

You know, if you’re wanting to learn a little bit more about that concept, we did an episode on a book called, “The Speed of Trust”. I don’t remember the episode number, but it gets into a lot more details of what Stig is talking about. And for me, I totally agree with you, Stig. The message that’s now sent to the rest of that entire company is, “I think I can actually trust this company. I think that they genuinely care about me even if I make a mistake”. And boy, let me tell you, you’re going to get some real performance out of people when they start thinking like that for you. And here’s another comment I want to kind of make for maybe our younger listeners of the show. Especially ones that are maybe at the point where they’re thinking about what career field I want to go into and work in starting out, is, think about a culture that you want to work in. We talk a lot about the financial sector, and I can tell you one thing for most companies. If you would make a major mistake, kind of like the one that Stig described at Pixar in the finance industry, not only would you be fired, but you would probably be paraded around in front of people. You would have been fired so bad, and that’s the culture of that community. So each one of these industries, finance has kind of a cookie cutter culture within it. You go to maybe a more artsy kind of background. It has a culture that’s built into it. Music industry has a culture built into it. And so what I would tell you is look at your own personality traits that you want to try to protect and keep, and make sure that they totally align with that profession that you’re looking to go into because the longer you stay in an organization and a culture, it will change you. And it can take some of those things that you value most, and pull them away from you. So be very conscious of that because it can really change and manipulate your life in a major way. Not that one’s right or wrong but the main thing is, is what is your internal values? And you need to find something that when you go into that workforce, it’s not going to rob you of the ones that you value most, and that that you do want to hold on to. So, we’ll come off the the topic, but I think that’s really important. 

I didn’t really have anything else for the book. Did you have anything else, Stig?

Stig Brodersen  34:49  

Yeah, I had a few points. And I think one of the points that I really liked, and this is actually to say something about how authentic the book was, and how we might sometimes be perceived by our own intentions. So, at the last part of the book, Catmull talks about the merger with Disney, which happened in 2006. And at this point in time, Catmull and John Lasseter, he was also one of the top guys, both of them would be running a division between them in Pixar and Disney. So they were pretty much taking over. Ed actually talks about how he wanted to create a creative, sustainable environment. And he ensured the Disney staff that it shouldn’t be like, a mini Pixar, whatever you want to call it. I mean, they should still have their own identity. He didn’t want to merge cultures because he really respected that the culture is really different. But as I was reading through this chapter, I was thinking that he is not seeing what is going on here. He was actually doing everything he could do to turn Disney into Pixar. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying that leaders have to live the culture to be successful. They probably can’t lead any other way. But to come as a leader and say, “I don’t want to change anything with your culture, what you’re doing is perfect”. And then what Ed was doing, starting to pinpoint everything that was more or less wrong, and firing people that you didn’t like. There was too much Disney and not enough Pixar. I was like, did he even see what was going on? And I’m not saying that his intentions were bad or anything, but for me was just very profound that even someone with the best intentions, he was actually doing the exact opposite of what he was promising himself and everyone else in the organization. So I’m really curious, Preston, what your thoughts were about that section in terms of changing the culture in Disney.

Preston Pysh  36:53  

I guess I didn’t read it that way. I kind of read it a little differently. I think he went in there with the intention of not changing it. But at the same time, I think there were things that were functioning poorly within Disney that didn’t need to be changed. And, he had a model over at Pixar that did work. I mean, that’s why they were able to do what they did. And so he took some of the things from Pixar brought it over to Disney and implemented them. And people that I think he removed from Disney were the people that could not sit in a room and take criticism well, or provide comments of criticism to the group and just this kind of open kimono-type sharing of information and being open and honest. If you didn’t fit that way of interacting, then you just weren’t a fit anymore. And I think that that was a little bit different to the previous Disney culture that existed. And I think that that was a good change. So, I guess I just I read it a little differently than you, Stig. I really did.

Stig Brodersen  37:51  

Yeah, and I’m pretty sure we agree with this, Preston, that he was actually turning the culture into something that was better. I actually think he did that. But I think in that sense, and perhaps this is because there’s actually no really good solution to this sometimes. It seems to me that Ed was looking too much at symbols, and not always at the reality. So one of the things that he said was, it was very important for him to personally thank each employee to tell them how much they meant to him and to applaud their effort. Well, whenever I read that, I felt, well, that’s really, really nice. And in the way he told the story. It felt like one big family. Now, I’ve been on the receiving end of that when I was an employee. And I had a CEO that, well, he actually knew my name because I was at my office, or, I don’t want to say office, but my tiny cubicle was just outside his office. So that was actually why we knew each other somewhat. But he had no clue about what I was doing. And he was walking around the entire day in the company, shaking hands and telling everyone like, specifically how important they have been. But I just found that so insincere. I mean, I think the intention was good, and intention’s really important. But he had no clue about like 95% of the staff, and it just seemed like, to me it had the opposite effect. Whenever I read something like this, I’m also very cautious about what people are saying, and what’s actually the reality. And I’m really sorry if this comes out into something that’s negative. I can see Preston that you have a you have a point, so I’m curious to hear that.

Preston Pysh  39:28  

Yeah. So I want to talk more about this handing out the checks thing. So, it’s interesting because whenever I read the story of, in the book about Ed doing this, I got a very positive vibe from it as I was reading it. And then as I hear your story, Stig, I can also understand and see that viewpoint of how you would have experienced that. And, what I think the key variable here is, in your scenario, you felt like you understood the true intent of your manager. And that was, you know, managers always hand out the checks and they go around and that’s what they do. That was in your example, that was the intent that you read on that manager that you had at that point in time. 

Now, the people at Pixar might have had a completely different read on Ed, depending on how they viewed Ed – if it was a very genuine thing that he really wanted to go, get to know them. “Hey, what did you work on during this film? I really want to know what you did”. You can tell, and this is the thing that I found in life, is that human beings can sniff out an intention faster than anything on the entire planet. Okay, that’s what I’ve learned. And so, if you buy into that idea, and you’re listening to this. Make sure that if you’re doing something and your intent is to really just kind of not be sincere, be genuine, but it’s actually self satisfying what you’re doing, people know that immediately. It’s not something that they actually have to be told or something that you have to disclose or hear from another person. They can sense it immediately, whether it’s genuine or fake. So pay attention to your intentions because everyone around knows what they actually are.

Stig Brodersen  41:17  

Interesting. And thank you for showing me the more positive angle. It could be really interesting to see what actually happened. I think we all have tried to be appreciated by your superior. It’s just very different, if you feel like that person actually knows this about you, and they’re telling you that you’re doing a good job. And then if another person is looking at you, he kind of knows who you are. He might even know your name, and he’s saying something like, “X, Y, and Z, I really appreciate your effort and what he has done for this company. We couldn’t have done this without you”. And then you just hear him say the same thing to the person sitting in the cubicle right next to you. It just feels, “oh man, we’re just wasting each other’s time”.

Preston Pysh  41:59  

Or he has his assistant say, “okay, the next person is Stig Brodersen. He did X, Y, and Z, and you should thank him for this”. Which happens. I mean, I’ve seen some of this ridiculous behavior. But you know what, if as a leader and I guess we’re getting into more leadership discussion here. But as a leader, if you go up to the person and they’re in your workforce, and you say, “hey, Stig. Hey, tell me all about what you’ve done this last month. I really want to get to know you. Hey, what’s what’s the name of your wife? Do you have any kids?”, like, have a candid conversation. It’s obvious he doesn’t know you, you don’t really know him, but when you’re candid, and you just have a pure intention to get to know the other person, man, it makes such a difference people buy into it people respect that. You’re being real, and you’re being sincere. 

Alright, so guys, sorry to kind of get off on a divergence. As you guys know, we’d like to teach other things in just value investing and all sorts of stuff that we kind of go off on a tangent. But we feel that it’s very important information to talk about some of these things, and we enjoy talking about it. So that’s why we go off on some of these tangents sometimes. In short, “Creativity, Inc.” is the name of the book. We’re gonna send out our free executive summary of the book. It’s like five pages long here. It’s for anybody that’s on our email list. We don’t send out any spams. So make sure you guys sign up on that to get our executive summary of the book. I really liked this book. I think it’s a really important read for people that are looking at a couple different things- corporate culture, how do I create a brand that will be enduring?, how do I become more creative as a person? If you’re in a business that requires creativity, this is a fantastic read. And if you’re kind of interested in the whole Steve Jobs, Pixar kind of business I think it also be a great read to pick up.

Stig Brodersen  43:49  

Alright guys, that was all we have for this episode. We will see each other next week.

Extro  45:47  

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