Disrupt Yourself
Podcast

EPISODE 327: ED CATMULL

Welcome back to the Disrupt Yourself podcast. I’m your host, Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors, where we help you grow your people to grow your organization because organizations don’t Disrupt people do. The building block of that growth. It’s you. When’s the last time you saw a Pixar movie? There’s Toy Story, of course. Inside Out was one of my favorite movies. Or maybe you’ve seen one of their newer films like Elemental. Now, shooting a movie is hard enough. We’ve dedicated an entire wing of American culture to the trials of the silver screen. But how do you shoot a movie entirely on computers? What’s the role of a director now? Who builds the sets? Who arranges the shots? How do you act without flesh and blood actors? And who’s going to make the software for all of this? It’s these questions that wracked Ed Catmull’s brain in the early 70s.

Ed would go on to invent many of the early computer techniques that got a 3D image on the big screen. Building tools from scratch for Pixar’s staff to use. Another visionary saw the promise in computer animation to Steve Jobs. Jobs was the one that funded Ed’s vision into reality in the 80s less than a decade later. Pixar releases the first Toy Story movie. But it wasn’t just money or software that made Pixar into the storytelling behemoth that it is today. It was Ed’s careful engineering, not software. The cultural and spiritual. You’ll hear how Ed took apart structural or cultural barriers to creativity in his company. Took them apart like an old motorcycle that’s clogged somewhere, then put it back together better than before. And he’s out this month with an expanded edition of his manual on creative cultures. Creativity, Inc. We’ll talk about the movies, of course. Who doesn’t love a rat? Who learns how to cook? But we’ll zero in on just how these movies get made because, yes, it’s computer spitting out these images, but it’s people sitting down behind the keyboard and it’s their creative spirit that fuels the tear jerking engines of Pixar. I hope you enjoy.

Whitney Johnson: Is there a moment where you first really believed in the power of the heroes? The first time you said, “Yeah, there’s truth to this idea.”

Ed Catmull: Well, I was aware of the concept for a long time and as applied to literature and storytelling, and because we were telling stories then, that was part of the discussion. I think the first time you really hit me was in realizing that that was what Steve Jobs was actually doing. Betty had a certain behavior that was very public. When he was younger and then it became a sexy story that people wrote about or made TV or movies about, but it represented that thing, which is like a story to tell, but it’s the wrong story. It was that, okay, now having gone through that and then he went through other steps and had other failures along the way, he learned and he changed. And it was just watching that change and basically an utter transformation into somebody who became empathetic, who listened while at the same time he had this intensity and power about him. But he didn’t get confused about what it meant. And around the early 90s, when he’d gone through this transformation, the people who were with him stayed with him for the rest of his life. And so essentially watching that journey to a person who was a great friend and mentor was actually a pretty emotional one for me. But it wasn’t academic. It was like, okay, that’s what a transformation is.

Whitney Johnson: That’s so interesting. So, you have the hero’s journey in all these films, but it came alive for you as you watched Steve Jobs life unfold and in the early 90s when he went through all the experiences that he did coming back with the boon transformed and then living out the rest of his the next two decades.

Ed Catmull: Yes. And the reason I think the story is important is that people sometimes think that the Steve they read about or see in the movies is the one who made Apple what it is today. And that’s not true.

Whitney Johnson: Ahh.

Ed Catmull: It was the transformed Steve who made Apple what it is today.

Whitney Johnson: Oh. That’s powerful.

Ed Catmull: And that’s why if people don’t understand that story, they will often draw the wrong conclusions and still do.

Whitney Johnson: I see.

Ed Catmull: People are influenced because they think that original Steve is who made Apple and they couldn’t separate out the fact that somebody would change. Now, the fact is for all of us is we all change. We all should change. It isn’t like we find the sweet spot and we stay there. We’re supposed to change. And if you don’t understand that, you can get stuck in the wrong place.

Whitney Johnson: And that’s one of your tent pole values; change in technology, right?

Ed Catmull: Yes, that is one of those it’s a temple thing. It keeps changing. We recognize it’s going to change. And if we don’t do that, we’re actually going to lose our way. This happens over and over again in companies.

Whitney Johnson: In the hero’s journey there, there’s typically some sort of guide. Tell us about your own hero’s journey and who are some of those people? The quiet presence, the gentle advice on your journey that you still feel today.

Ed Catmull: Well, you know, it’s one of those things that that I’ve thought about a lot over the years because some people would identify a particular mentor. And I was trying to think, well, who was my mentor? I grew up in a very good environment, in a very safe environment. But it wasn’t until years later that it began to come together for me because there was something that happened when I entered college that was transformative. Now, the first in which I was very aware of was that the art and technology really belong together. And when people hear that I switched from physics or excuse me, from art to physics, they would sort of like there’d be a titter in the audience because art and technology were considered to be incongruous. And I never viewed them as incongruous. And that’s a terrible conception that’s out there because, you know, when funding goes down, schools lose their art programs and people think, well, drawing isn’t a value, but drawing isn’t about. Drawing art is about seeing. And which of the fields in which the ability to see and understand is an important. So, for me, when I got to college and I, I took my first computer graphics course because I was in the foundation school for it.

Then all of a sudden, all these pieces came together. This is what changed my life. So that was very aware of, okay, the combination of these two and with the changing technology, that’s powerful. But I also realized that there were two major influences in my life at that time. One of them was Alan Kay, who later received the Turing Prize. But he’s the one that, you know, made it a deep principle. The things are changing at a very fast rate, at an exponential rate. This is before Moore’s Law is even named, but his observation had been made and he said this is the implication for it, but it’s not the way our brains think. So, it actually takes a fair amount of work to say what are the implications of rapid change? You don’t know for sure they’re going to be different. So that became sort of a principle. But the other thing was, in graduate school, the ones who founded it were Ivan Sutherland, another person who later got a Turing Award, and Dave Evans, who laid the foundation for computer graphics. But what they had was a long-term vision. But also, the grad students were to take a step at a time towards this fuzzy vision.

Whitney Johnson: Oh.

Ed Catmull: And I loved my time there. It was a great sharing environment. And what I came away I did believe that I wanted to have this kind of environment wherever I went. And that was the gift. Excuse me. That was the gift that was given to me. And so, when I went off to New York Tech. To run a program out there. I was 30 years old, and it was the first time in my life I ever managed anything. Yeah. And so, I had some theories about how to do this to get that kind of environment. And some of these ideas worked very well. They’re still in place today, and about half of my ideas were a crock. They didn’t work at all. And I’d boxed myself into a corner and I didn’t have enough skill to get out of it. But when Lucasfilm called me to come out and run R&D, then I said, okay, half my ideas are wrong. I’m going to hold on to the things that worked and I’m going to sort of fix the things that weren’t working. But and this is a key thing which I look back on and realize, oh, this is probably one of the most important insights I had at the time, was that I’ll bet that going forward about half of my ideas and theories about how to manage in future will be wrong. The ratio will stay the same. Now, the truth, incidentally, is still true. And the truth is, I don’t actually know what the number is. It’s just that I know that I’m wrong more than I think I am. And again, this is like this is a valuable thing to go through. So, like it was again, it was step by step trying to figure things out, but also hanging on to this notion of, okay, it’s this culture and how the people work together. It’s really the foundation for this rapid change that’s going on. And we got to get that right.

Whitney Johnson: Right. And so, one of the things that’s interesting is I hear you speak and asking you about whose advice and whose presence is there for you. I hear you say Alan Kay, Ivan Sutherland and the environment that they created for you at the University of Utah. I also hear you saying a willingness to learn from your experience of saying. I have these ideas. Half of them are wrong. I now have this hypothesis that half of them will always be wrong. And so part of it is that you’re teaching yourself as you go.

Ed Catmull: Yeah, we’re doing something new. If I already knew what the answers were, then I would actually skip to the end, right? It actually doesn’t work that way. I really do have to figure things out. And I also. I knew at the top I couldn’t do it alone. I just couldn’t. Yeah. So, I had to have other people as part of this. And I was fortunate because then I went to Lucasfilm and George won the Transform the entertainment industry, and he was completely open. And he supported this.

Whitney Johnson: Mm hmm.

Ed Catmull: So that was actually a great benefit because in trying to manage four different projects within Lucasfilm, then again, like every one was a learning experience because some were extremely successful, and some weren’t. Okay. And why weren’t they?

Whitney Johnson: So, the scientist’s brain says, I’ve got to figure this out, right?

Ed Catmull: Yeah, but it’s true. You need to figure it out. And the issues of how people work with each other is every bit as interesting as the scientific things that I’ve been working on. They’re all interesting. Don’t lose interest in it. It’s just that, “Oh, this is really cool.” And I can recognize the things were changing. I recognize that as we began to have success, that new people were treating me differently than the people I had worked with before. Okay, why are they doing that? Because I felt like I was. I mean, I knew I was changing, but I didn’t feel like my basic personality was changing. Why are they so differential? Oh, it’s my position. And if you realize that, then there’s some implications of that. One of them is it’s more difficult for you to figure out what people are thinking or saying if they’re differential. So, and it’s also as you get into other companies, people manage up. Okay. That means you’re less likely to even less likely to know what’s going on because the people around you might be very good at managing up. So, each one of these has an implication for how you get an understanding on how you communicate with people.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, and I’d love to go there next, which is the building cultures where creativity is not only possible but a foundational virtue. And I you touched on this idea of what’s hidden. And so, let’s go there for just a minute, which is you’ve made this statement. Let’s see if I can find my notes. Okay. Yeah. One of your obstacles to creativity is the things that we can’t see. And you’ve started to allude to those. Is that as you get more senior, there’s a lot that you can’t see because people are managing how they’re interacting with you. I’m wondering, can you think of something specifically that over the — there are probably many things, but one thing in particular that you’d like to share that you didn’t see.

Ed Catmull: Well, one of the values that, you know, I’d come up with, which is a lot of companies have almost like a class structure. It’s not the terminology they would use, but there are people who feel like they’re second class and they would sometimes feel like they’re second class, but other people wouldn’t say they were first class. But it’s actually the meaning of it. Okay. Why are they feeling that way? And I saw this in companies. So, one of the things I wanted to make sure took place. At Pixar as we developed, was that the technology side of the company and the art side didn’t have that structure between them. That is, it was important that the that the technical people view the animators and the artists as world class and as people that they enjoyed working with. Likewise with the artists to feel that they’re the people they’re working with. On the technical side were world class and they were both critical. Now, we did get that as you built Pixar out and that actually has stuck.

Whitney Johnson: So how did you do that? That is the question. I do think it’s interesting. Your art and technology, love of those two together made you perhaps even more sensitive to that. But how did you get so that they both equally valued each other?

Ed Catmull: Well, the first step was just to recognize that it’s a problem because when I was in other places, they didn’t see the problem. That is, one might naturally think in any company the people who are most likely the drivers of making the money for the company were more important to the company and other people were fungible And so forth, so they weren’t valued as much. And this gives signals to people at every level. If you’re not aware of it, then you are giving signals to people that there’s a value system in place about people. So, the first step is just to know that it happens and that if you allow it to happen, then it gives a signal to everybody in the company. So, we did that successfully. Plus, they liked working with each other. So, as we brought in our first person was John. And then we brought in Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter and other people there. And they just they were all good. And they could just see that any stereotypes they might have about them just weren’t true. So, we the joke was it was that none of the like each other and work with each other, but we wanted them to socialize with each other and even allow them to intermarry. And they did.

Whitney Johnson: So, awareness like each other.

Ed Catmull: Awareness is the first step. And to think about it and then set it up so that you’re ranging the different parts of it in terms of their physical location the projects together and also be frankly explicit about it; like it’s important. It isn’t just being explicit because then it’s just words, right? The words have to go along with actions and structural things to make sure that it’s in place. Now, having said that, as we built out Toy Story at this time, getting this film done and right was an existential question for Pixar. If we didn’t get it done, we were dead as a company, and they all knew it. So, we brought in people to build out the full staff, but we brought in another group to help manage it. At the end of the film, what we found, if we were getting ready to go to the next film, that the new people that were brought in to help manage the process said, “Well, actually I felt like we were second class.”

Whitney Johnson: Okay.

Ed Catmull: So, I’m looking for it. I didn’t see it. Okay. So why did I miss it? That’s the first question is why did I miss it? And the reason I missed it was because we were under an existential threat and because it was an exciting project is that the people who are feeling this way, managing it weren’t actually complaining about it. They came out of the gig economy. When the thing is over with, they typically move on, move on to the next project. But we wanted them to stay. And that’s when we found out there was a problem. So now once you discover the problem, what do we do about it? And furthermore, why was it that people who were good on the technical and the artistic side think that these managers were not good? Well, the reason is they’re trying to control a process which we’re inventing along the way. So, they’re now viewed as sand in the gears because they were over controlling. Because of their own desire to make sure we got it done. So, these are natural things that happen. Is that okay? Well, let’s get rid of the overcontrolling part, because they’re necessary. What they’re doing is very good. By the end of the next film, the technical people and the artists thought that the production managers were world class and it happened very quickly. Now, having said that.

Whitney Johnson: Wait, wait, wait. It happened very quickly how? So? We went back to awareness like each other, control less. Is there anything else that they did that made it so that they shifted their perception?

Ed Catmull: The first issue was the over control. So, there was so much at stake that they were trying to control all everything having to do with communication between the groups. We’re all in the same building. So, if there’s a problem, they can just walk over and talk to somebody. So, the managers may find out after the fact rather than before. But the most efficient thing is to have the person talk to somebody else. So that principle of trying to have direct communication where appropriate, is what we’ve always tried to apply. It’s like just give somebody a call and you shouldn’t have to go through proper channels. Um, and by doing that, then the perception of the managers was they were doing something that was in fact valuable because you do have to manage a complex process. And if it’s not the sand part like the overcontrolling part, then you’re actually doing what you need to do because everybody is doing what they want to do. And it just changed it because they looked at the managers, looked at their role in a different way. And the role of a good manager is valuable. And we know we need people to help organize things. Right.

Whitney Johnson: To get things done.

Ed Catmull: Yes. I mean, they’re not naive about it. They’re not asking not to have anything, any guardrails around them. They just also want to be able to do the right thing in terms of doing the right communication with other people.

Whitney Johnson: That brings up something that you had said in the book, which was so you mentioned this idea of communication, of just go walk and talk to that person. But you also, if I recall correctly, were very deliberate about making sure that anyone could talk to anyone so that they could have those conversations. Is that correct?

Ed Catmull: Yes. This now is a stated principle. Now, having stated this and having fixed that one, there were two other times in which the problem of a of a group feeling like second class has recurred. And the reasons are somewhat similar in this case in this case in the in the in the second two cases it’s that you’ve got new people coming in to a particular area. But now they’re coming in for a very successful company with people that they admire. So even though I would give these talks saying, look, we’re always making mistakes, you have to say what you think. The reality is they’re looking at things and they’re trying to figure it out. And they can easily draw the wrong conclusions based upon observed behavior. So observed behavior is a critical thing in the way people make decisions about what they’re trying to emulate, but it doesn’t mean they’re actually interpreting the observed behavior correctly if they’re kind of holding it in. Not saying anything about it, but they are talking with each other. Then at some point, it kind of bubbles out and you find out this whole group feels like they’re undervalued.

Whitney Johnson: Okay, So.

Ed Catmull: You find the problem even though you’re looking for it, and there’s a lot of things going on. It’s sometimes hard to find. And when it does find, then you can address it.

Whitney Johnson: So, when you have so new people coming in, they’re now around people that they’ve admired. And so, they find themselves a bit hesitant to speak up. Was there something that you did? You’re saying it’s observed behavior. Was there something that you did? Remember, you changed the configuration of how people sat. What did you do to break that logjam of people feeling like they couldn’t speak up? What did you do so that they didn’t feel like second class citizens anymore?

Ed Catmull: Yeah, So I’ll give a couple of examples. One of them is, this isn’t a class related thing, but it has to do with behavior. So, the company starts off really young. Most of them don’t have families, and they’re playing a lot of gags and jokes on each other. It’s fun. You know, which happens a lot with younger companies. And they love it. And as new people come in, they would do that. But at some point, some of these people that were there, where they were at the beginning, got married and they had families. And so, they went home at night. Now, they still loved the idea of it, but they weren’t doing it as much themselves because they had other obligations in their lives. So, you’d say to these people you should do. But what they see is that these people are going home at night. So, they feel hesitant to have the same kind of rowdy fun that they hear about, but they’re not seeing anymore. This isn’t the sort of thing they would speak up about. So, amongst themselves, they would just be cautious. But meanwhile, the older group of people would say, “What’s wrong with these new people? They don’t have the spirit of fun that we have.”

Whitney Johnson: Okay.

Ed Catmull: S,o and they’re not saying anything. So, when you kind of figure this out, you say, “Okay, we’ve got to get that back.” But this kind of thing isn’t the sort of thing that you can manage top down. Okay. Because I always have to arise within. But I do know some instigators there. So, you can go to the instigators and say, you know, could you sort of make stuff happen? So, it then becomes this self-organized event within the company and then you get it back there again because they’re not participating in a self-organized event. But we just couldn’t do it top down.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah. So, the key is awareness.

Ed Catmull: Yes.

Whitney Johnson: If you’re aware, then you can come up with a solution.

Ed Catmull: Yes, and the thing is, some people go for like the quick fix.

Whitney Johnson: Right.

Ed Catmull: We’re going to organize a company party. Right. You know, there are times when a company party is a great thing to do. But it’s not the same thing as these self-organized events. So, you need to send signals out. And I’m a big believer in signals. So, we have got people who are pretty unusual and they sort of stretch the boundaries. Now, the only boundary they can’t cross, of course, is when they hurt people emotionally or physically. But they do things which would not normally be considered to be acceptable in a company. And if everybody did that, we probably couldn’t function. But if a few people do it and it’s really okay, then you’re actually sending a signal that the tent’s pretty broad. Part of the trick is you’ve got to think about the signals that you send. So, another example of that would be in our meetings when we’re in production. So normally what happens in production, because it’s always a tight deadline and we’ve got these meetings and they get together and you’ve got some really experienced people, but you also have some less experienced people.

And typically, in an production coordinator and normally the production coordinators and the new people aren’t supposed to talk in the room, not because not high potential or because they want to dismiss them. It’s just they’ve got so much to do. They have to focus on the problem, and they need that group of people to do the talking. So that becomes the expectation. The leader of one of the groups said, “I’m going to make sure that everybody talks, including the production coordinator in the room.” And he got some pushback from the people there saying, yeah, it’s a great idea. We really don’t have the time to do this. But he insisted at the end, everybody said, “Oh, this was a great thing to do.” And the signal is that if it’s safe for the least powerful person in the room to talk, then you’re giving a signal to that person about their growth and their potential. But you’re also giving a signal to the senior people about the value that’s given to other people. So, it makes their work with each other better. Because of that way of thinking about people.

Whitney Johnson: All right. Let’s talk about failure. One of the things that you said is to be a truly creative company. You must start things that fail. What’s one of those failures?

Ed Catmull: Well, basically, except for 1 or 2 films, they all don’t work at the beginning. So just in thinking about this, because I realized that failure has become very popular lately.

Whitney Johnson: Well, the idea of failure is popular.

Ed Catmull: Yes, and but I was thinking about this, realized well inside of Pixar, because we use the same terminology like fail fast and fail often, but inside we don’t typically use the language of failure. Now, it’s not that there aren’t some big things that are failures, in which case we will use the word. So, we’re not trying to pretend that it’s not there or we fix a problem by avoiding using a word. But if we think about a project, we are trying something, and it doesn’t work and so we try something else. And so, when we start off with a movie, for instance, there’s a basic idea we have a lot of work to do to figure it out. And so, we will try things to convey the concept that we’ve got. And those first passes at it don’t work. But our terminology is that that doesn’t work. We got to try something else. So, they’re trying to help each other and we’ll go through 7 or 8 major screenings of a film trying to solve the problems. And one could say that the attempts were failures, but it’s actually not the way we think about them, because everybody knows that that’s the process that we go through. And one of the reasons I’ve tried to be careful about failure is failure is a very loaded term. Yeah, it’s almost impossible for people emotionally to disconnect the negative meaning of failure. From the learning aspect of failure. Because, well, you know, relationships can fail and business can fail and politics and business failures is used to bludgeon opponents.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.

Ed Catmull: So, it’s like sometimes it’s bad. And so, you can’t say, well, that doesn’t happen. But at the same time, we all know that we learn from our failures. But emotionally we just can’t separate them. And we have to acknowledge that that is the way that people think, like it’s a core response to people. So, we have to be aware of their vulnerabilities and how they might perceive it. And so, you have to turn the focus onto the problem. Were you able to fix the problem or not fix the problem? And the goal is to iterate on fixing the problems and not get caught up on the thing that can derail you.

Whitney Johnson: Something that you said I think is interesting. So, in the book you said for most of us, failure comes with baggage. A lot of baggage like you’ve just described. And I was going to ask you about how do you shift that perception? But think here’s what I heard you say is number one is we tried something, and it didn’t work. Well, you could define that as a failure, but there’s just the language itself changes how it feels. And then the other thing that you just said, which I think normalizes that process of every time we make a film, we’re going to go through 7 or 8 iterations, we’re going to try some things, and then they’re going to work, and some things aren’t going to work and then we’re going to go through another iteration. Well, if you wanted to, you could call that a failure, but you have changed the language so that you take that sense of shame that often comes around that word. And then people can make progress and iterate and move forward. That’s what I heard you say.

Ed Catmull: Yeah, you’re trying to get rid of that and you try to be aware of the words. I mean, another example would be the word hold people accountable that’s used in a very punitive sense in the world, and people aren’t quite aware of the implication of that because we know that we should be accountable for what we do. But as soon as we say held accountable, it’s sort of like saying, well, they should go to jail if they did something wrong.

Whitney Johnson: It does sound very punitive. You’re right. So, what do you say instead?

Ed Catmull: Well, it’s just that, okay, you know, I’m responsible for certain things.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.

Ed Catmull: And saying that and acknowledging it, then you hope that others do the same thing. But you don’t use the term in the way that people normally do, as if you’re disguising. What you’re really saying is that they really screwed up and they should be punished for it because that’s what it means.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah. Wow.

Ed Catmull: That they should be punished for the mistake.

Whitney Johnson: It does.

Ed Catmull: And it’s being sensitive to what the words are because words do have meaning to people. Another example for me was one that I’ve heard this one a lot is at 5:00 your assets walk out the door. So, saying, okay, the people are in value in the company, but they’re calling them assets. It’s like, well, wait a minute, these are people with aspirations and values and needs and we have to think of them that way. And as soon as we start to not think of them that way, we’re kind of going down the slippery slope which devalues people and the energy that people bring and the desires is what you want in any company. It’s like, that’s this incredible force to have.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.

Ed Catmull: So how do you develop it and support it, right?

Whitney Johnson: The words that we use. I want to talk about one more question on this particular topic before we move on, which is you said that it’s important that some of your films, and I’m going to use the word fail, aware that I am failing the elevator test. Can you say more about that?

Ed Catmull: Oh, yes. So, at Pixar, we like to think that we’re people who take risks and people like the fact that we take risks on our films. And so, the question is, okay, what is the nature of the risk that you take both in terms of the stories we do, We take organizational changes, the software we built. You know, if you take on something, there’s a certain amount of risk with it. And if you just keep using the same tools, then you can become efficient at the tools. But they’re not changing. And as soon as you change them, you actually people have to learn something new which slows them down. But if you don’t change them, you’ll become stagnant. So, you’ve always got this notion of, okay, how much risk do we take? And is kind of a balance. So, with our films, some of them are sequels, but we only make sequels if the director actually wants to make them. And we will also make them if we would also only make them if we knew the audience wanted them. So, it turns out a sequel is just as hard to make as an original.

Whitney Johnson: In some ways it’s harder.

Ed Catmull: Yes, that’s exactly right. Yeah. Because the first one is made not in terms of we’re going to make sequels to it. It’s like it’s a standalone piece. Now, you’ve also established the rules for this world, and they say, “Well, I’d like to make a sequel to it.” Well, you’re now bound by the rules of the world that you set up, but where do you take it? It’s a hard problem, so it’s difficult to do, but from the point of view of marketing it’s much easier. And so, you could say that making this film is a low risk proposition. You still have to do a good job, otherwise you’ll get dinged for it appropriately. But it’s lower risk in that sense. Sometimes somebody will come up with an idea and it’s one of those things where you hear it and it’s from a director that we know is really good and say, okay, that’s awesome, let’s do that. So, the notion of the elevator test was what does it mean to pitch something new or to pitch an idea? And it’s used a lot in a lot of places. And people even try to focus on how to do that, which means you’re trying to be so careful and concise about your thesis that you can convince somebody in a short period of time that this is worth giving a lot more attention to. Hence the elevator test. The problem is that the best way to solve this is to do something which is derivative. So, you’re essentially using the language that they’ll understand so that they sort of get what this is. And, you know, sometimes that actually might be fine. So, I’m not saying you should fail the elevator test. I said that sometimes you should fail the elevator test. In the case of Pixel, we roughly try to make it so that about a third of our films were sequels. A third were just they sound like good ideas and a third should fail the elevator test.

Whitney Johnson: And what are some films that failed that test?

Ed Catmull: Well, let’s say you want to make a movie about a rat that wants to cook. Now, there isn’t a way of describing why this is a good idea in three minutes. There isn’t a good way of describing why it’s a good idea in a week. Not even three months. Right. Like this just sounds like a bad idea. And one of the reasons to do that is in order to do that, you really have to stretch yourself creatively to make sure that it does work because it doesn’t fit off of any known model. It isn’t copying anything else. It really has to be original. It’s a tough problem. Okay, so you’ve got a movie that’s going to start off with this. This couple. They start off as kids. They grow up, they get married, they can’t have kids, and the wife dies. And this old man husband is depressed. So, he decides to float away in a balloon. And there’s a stowaway on this house that floats away. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea. But you need a certain number of those. And it isn’t that everybody wants to work on that one. They just want to know that we’re doing it.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, it’s. It’s funny, I. I oftentimes say to people, as you know, I talk a lot about disruptive innovation because I learned from Clay Christensen, who talks about sustaining versus disruptive innovations. But I often say if you want to go up, you have to Disrupt. So, to make that film up, you had to think disruptively.

Ed Catmull: Yes. It’s like you just have to think that way and look at it in terms of organizational issues and also in terms of the technology. It’s like, okay, yeah, we’ve got the technology, we have the best in the world. But it was one of the lessons I learned early on. But rapid change is that whatever we have, at some point it’s going to not be it’s going to get left behind.

Whitney Johnson: The technology will get left behind.

Ed Catmull: Yes, we’ll get left behind in terms of the technology, because we stuck with something which works extremely well right now and it takes a while to figure out how to disrupt yourself. So, you better get started before you need to, right? Right. So, and that’s what we did. It was for the system that was used for making Brave. We spent years doing that and we had to do three starts on that because the first two didn’t take well. And so, it was only on the third one in which because we had it hadn’t taken before.

Whitney Johnson: So, when you say hadn’t taken say more so understand.

Ed Catmull: Well, in this particular case, we’re saying to a group, you need to design a whole new animation system. Got it. Because at some point we’ll be outdated. We got a group together, very creative group, and they’re designing this new system. And what we found was that because we’re making films and these are really gifted technical people for solving problems, then they were getting sucked into helping problems on the current film and all of a sudden the schedule they had didn’t happen at all. Okay, let’s regroup, have a different group of people and try it again and talk about the problem. And the same damn thing happened again. Okay, so now I’m being stupid because I haven’t figured out how to set this up. So, in this case, we set the equivalent organizationally of what we do with films is we had a producer and a director on the software project and we put them in a different building. And they then came up with a program for doing that. So it was still a lot of hard work. And when they finally got it done, we used it on the first film, which was Brave and it was like a difficult process. And it was also brutal because they’re having RSI problems to begin with and when the thing was done with. Knowing the pain that they went through. To get to this new generation of the system. I met Jim Morris and I met with that group without any of the technical people around to ask them about the process, and they didn’t talk a lot about it because they knew we knew all the stuff. What they said was it was very difficult, but we’re so glad you did it and we want Pixar to always do this. And they were the ones who lived through the pain, but they recognized the value of it.

Whitney Johnson: Okay. Two clarifying things. Just so that I know. What does RSI stand for?

Ed Catmull: Oh, that’s a repetitive stress injury.

Whitney Johnson: Okay. Repetitive stress injury. Got it. So, one of my favorite parts of the book actually was this big reveal where you said after making Toy Story, you would struggle to find purpose and that you had found it in building a sustainable culture. But there was a second question that you hadn’t shared in the first edition, but you shared it in the second edition. Will you share that now; what that was and what you found?

Ed Catmull: Yes. Incidentally, I did intend to put in the first book in the rush of getting things out. It got dropped out and I didn’t notice.

Whitney Johnson: Oh, so this isn’t the big reveal?

Ed Catmull: It is in the sense that I realized because it also matured as a concept. But I had it in that that year and had my realization then. But for me, it was always something that had to be very aware of because I could see the behavior that in other people. So here was the problem that I was addressing, because in that year, after the movie came out, I was completely aware of everybody that it took to make this happen. Um, everywhere, everything from the contribution to enable this path like George Lucas or Steve Jobs. And then there was the Brain Trust with John and Steve and so forth. And then there are people that others don’t know at all about what’s on the technical side, or at least brilliant people that actually made it. So, like on the outside, people don’t know who Bill Reeves is, but he’s like one of the critical people to put the system together. So, I was very aware of all of this.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

Ed Catmull: But also, was the one who, when I left, that got it started. So, when I got to this period, I also asked the question of myself, how much of it was me? It’s not the kind of thing that one can talk about with other people very much, because it actually seems like a very selfish question. In fact, it is.

Whitney Johnson: But very human. Very human.

Ed Catmull: Yeah. I just recognized that I did that. I was asking that question.

Whitney Johnson: Right.

Ed Catmull: And I was trying to think what the answer was. And it actually took me a while to realize that trying to answer the question was an act of division. It was an act of separation. There was no separation there and that if I were to try to truly answer it, I’d have to try to pull myself away, away from everybody else and say, okay, now what can I do? But that’s not how it was done. It was really all of us together. And the notion of even having to answer that question is not useful or helpful. But I have seen people who leave like we had one person who did a short film, but he said okay. And we liked him, but he wanted to leave. He said, I need to know what I can do without the safety net. That was his term, without the safety net. But they’re not the safety net. They’re the group of people you’re working with to help make the film. Thinking of them as your safety net rather than as your colleagues was not helpful. It wasn’t helpful to him. I have no idea what happened to him since then, but it’s truly valuing what other people do.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, I so. So, you I’m going to say out loud what you wrote. The separation impulse is fundamental. Oh, don’t know why I’m getting emotional. This is just so beautiful to me. The separation impulse is fundamentally anti-creative.

Ed Catmull: Yes, it’s.

Whitney Johnson: Beautiful.

Ed Catmull: Thank you.

Whitney Johnson: I’m going to share one more quote of yours and then we’ll go to the next question. You said, without a doubt, my happiest times at Pixar were when the studio’s top leaders met as a team, and we owned a problem together. Seeing that shared ownership brought the most satisfaction.

Ed Catmull: It’s that it was like a real feeling because I’ve gotten awards and things like that and it’s nice. But there was something about knowing that they owned the problem and they weren’t saying, What are you going to do? It’s just like, “What are we doing? How do we do this?” And even if we didn’t solve it, remember it came out of the meetings and that’s great. We didn’t fix the problem. But, you know, I know that these friends and colleagues are working on it.

Whitney Johnson: All right. So, we sometimes have that sense that creating a culture or changing a culture starts with something big rather than small and seemingly really simple things. In the spirit of those simple things, how do you give underrepresented groups in storytelling? Women, for example? How do we build the culture that enables their creativity too?

Ed Catmull: Well, like in this particular case, I would say, first of all, most of our producers were women. So, they were like these like the most organized and thoughtful people in the company. So, I would say that everybody in all the directors thought we should have more women, but they kind of had the thought that using a lot of companies is, well, the pipeline coming out of the schools isn’t producing the people at the right thing. So that then became kind of an excuse for why it wasn’t done. So, what happened was when this sort of arose to the surface, it was like, wait a minute. It’s like, that’s waiting for somebody else to solve a need for us when we should be doing it. So, after Notes Day, really it was two of the women who came into my office and said, “We really aren’t doing the right thing because we do have people in the story department, but they’re not being pulled into a real training role to become a director because there was a pipeline, but they weren’t really going into that pipeline.” And the answer was, “Oh yeah, okay, we didn’t see it correctly. You are right.” So, everything that’s there now is describing what they organized. So even the issue of how they speak up in that room was something that they recognized, and they were the ones that went in with those story women into the story meeting to talk about how they interact with the others, because those two in particular have been there a lot. They know they’re quite comfortable in that room and saying what they think, but they were the ones who said, “Well, these other women aren’t comfortable yet with it.”

Given the reputation, I can understand why people might be a little intimidated to walk into a rather intense room. And nobody means to be intimidating. But it is an intense conversation. It was like self-organized for how they do this, including the fact that they reached the point that the two were organized in the first place, where they stepped away from and said, okay, the women who are becoming the directors like it’s theirs. All this was to get some people in this path and that was successful. And the first person to come out was Domee Shi Okay, so what does it mean in the other areas? Now, in the case of having more women in the crowds, it was one where the director said, “Oh, well, we definitely should fix that problem, so let’s make sure that we’re equally represented.” But it’s after the movie came out in which we realized, well, the voices weren’t equally represented. And it was one of those like because he just went like this. Oh, he felt bad because he missed that. Because it’s not obvious. If you’re raised in a certain culture, a different way of thinking about things, you kind of miss it. So, then they changed that. So each one of these to say, okay, we didn’t see it. We know what our intents are. It’s like, let’s get this right. And it takes a while, but it also means having enough people and to draw to actually have the balance in place. And so it means having an inside. But we also recognize that our movies have an impact on the world, on the outside. So we have a responsibility to try to do the right things to the outside.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, it just really struck me. And I think it’s interesting how there’s this thread running through this conversation and your work of, you know, what’s hidden, what am I not seeing? Once I see it, once I become aware of it, I can make a change. And and again, it just and you talk a lot about paying attention. And as soon as you started to pay attention to something or pipeline crowds, there were some very simple things that you could do upstream that were going to have really significant downstream implications. And I just think that’s very powerful for anybody who’s trying to create a sustainable culture.

Ed Catmull: For me, it’s generally applicable. I know it’s resisted in a lot of places in the world because it’s not really I mean, for me it’s not valuing potential. Yeah. It’s just the reality is that it’s very hard for people to value things they can’t see. And that’s one of the difficulties. And and even for me personally, you know, as we were going through issues at Pixar, I made some missteps in the way I was talking because I was I didn’t understand. You know, it’s like there’s this question. I remember going something because we were bringing in somebody for implicit bias training. And I walked into one meeting and the the woman who was teaching it said, How many people here don’t have an implicit bias? One guy raised his hand and I couldn’t believe it. It’s like, oh, my God, talk about walking into something. So most people aren’t that naive. They know there’s some some bias. But, you know, I miss something because of a of a bias that I had. And I was called on it immediately by three different people. And I was first of all, I was I genuinely felt thankful that I had a relationship with them in which they could call me.

Whitney Johnson: Exactly.

Ed Catmull: So then I was just trying to think it through. And then what I finally realized was that that in trying to get rid of the biases, I was actually not thinking about it the right way. I can never be another gender. I can never be another ethnicity, and I can never be raised in a different culture. So there are experiences that people have that I will never know and I can never know, but I can value what I can’t see. I can have faith that there is something of great value. And for me, it’s like having the faith that there’s something there, even if I can’t see. It is very it’s critical.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah. So I love this quote where you said, “To me building a dynamic, creative culture is itself a creative act. Painters use brushes and canvases and oils and acrylics. Musicians use tones and harmony.” What are your tools of this creative trade?

Ed Catmull: I believe that the creation of the culture was the thing that was the most important thing that I did. Then I think the part of the tool of it is, you know, there are a few major tools. One of them is the true value of what people bring, valuing what leaders do and how they think, but also valuing our kitchen staff and understanding that change is going to happen and they’re not going to be the same. So the tool for me was like figuring that out and loving it. So it was the change that was there. It wasn’t the position. What a lot of people don’t know is that I was the President of Pixar three times.

Whitney Johnson: Oh! Yes. Did not know that.

Ed Catmull: Which meant that I was unmade the President of Pixar twice.

Whitney Johnson: Huh.

Ed Catmull: The first time was as we started. We got into this. We were making hardware and selling it, and I didn’t know anything about it. And Steve said, You know, you don’t really know enough to do this. And that was very painful for me. But I also knew that he was right. So we brought in somebody else to be the president. And I had some title like Chairman or something like that. And then after a while we got out of the hardware business and Steve says, Well, you learn a lot more, so I’d like you to be the president. So now I was the president again and then was the president all the way through the making of Toy Story. But as we got to the end of Toy Story, we were going to go public. And Steve said, you know, you don’t really have what it takes to be the president of a public corporation. Again, very painful. But I also knew that he was right. So we had this sort of it was a wonky structure for running the company and then maybe you’re in or something like that. Steve came to me and said, okay, you are, you know, it’s time. You should be the president again. You know, enough to do it.

Whitney Johnson: Wow.

Ed Catmull: The funny thing on the on the second one was when he got in front of the company, he announced that I was the president. Everybody thought I thought he already was. But remember those personal things like that. But it was also. My having the position had never been my goal. The truth is, I did like to be in charge. Mean to be honest about this. But the goal was to make this successful. And these were the things that I had to go through to help make that happen. That’s what I care about.

Whitney Johnson: So back to the hero’s journey. At the end, the hero returns home. Home may look different. The hero definitely is different, but that’s the last step. So for you, where is home today?

Ed Catmull: Well, because I’ve always thought in terms of change, I haven’t even thought in terms of home. In that sense, it’s more like, okay, I went through about eight major transitions in my life. And it was always like, okay, what’s the next transition? So I don’t think in terms of like returning to home, even if it’s a different place, it’s like, okay. What’s next?

Whitney Johnson: So, Ed, one of the questions that I ask at the end of these interviews is, what about this conversation has been useful for you?

Ed Catmull: Well, I had never been asked the question about Steve in the way that you did in terms of actually gave some clarity to me to think about the power of the hero’s journey in his case and what that means. I know in the case of movies, Star Wars, of course, really was built around that concept.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.

Ed Catmull: Because we teach each other by stories. We teach our children. We teach each other by stories. And that in order for them to really be effective, they need to have an emotion at the core and the emotion comes from the emotion of the people who are making. And the question is always, what do you do? In any area or any field builds upon that emotional core that people have because they want.

Whitney Johnson: To help the world. Well, and I would assert that for you, your own hero’s journey is that you had this boon of this experience and writing it in this book, Creativity Inc. And now you’re taking this experience, this capacity, this understanding, this political and social capital and turning it onto some of these other existential issues. And to me, that’s the boon that you’re bringing to society at this point.

Ed Catmull: Well, and I do look at it that way, too. I mean, one of the reasons for writing the book was I wanted to do something to get some of these ideas out, because I believe that about half of them are right.

Whitney Johnson: And with that, any final thoughts? Half the half of this conversation was right.

Ed Catmull: Yeah, I feel. I feel good about it.

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.

Ed Catmull: Our talk, Whitney.

Whitney Johnson: Okay. Well, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure and a delight.

Ed Catmull: All right. Thank you so much.

Ed mentioned this sense of shared ownership over a problem. Everyone in the room is caught in this mind meld. Egos put to the side where the only thing on everyone’s mind is solving what’s ahead of them. I’m sure many of us have felt that before. That kind of connectedness. It’s a core human feeling. Probably back to the days we had to hunt a mammoth as a group. But we feel it today in those intense planning sessions or the moments before a big presentation, a complete free flow of ideas in search of an answer. That’s a core truth that Ed’s discovered and built a corporate culture around. Pixar’s whole ethos is that they re-engineer the human spirit, figure out what makes it tick, and then present that truth to us in a film. And that’s not far from what Ed does in re-engineering creative spirit and then aligning culture to fit the truce he finds instead of a movie. Ed’s incorporating the moral of our human stories into the way Pixar operates, and there’s only one way to gather those stories so you can comb through them for truth, experience hard fought, hard won experience. Just like Suda last week adds a frontline soldier coming back to the classroom with what he’s learned. I mean, he casually dropped that he was president of Pixar three separate times. That was nowhere in the book. But you can see the influences of that life experience and how he frames failure, for example. Ed said that means two times out of those three, he was removed. But it sounded like that was just a sign he needed to jump to a new S-curve.

There’s a fearlessness in reframing our words and taking away power from a big word like failure and turning it into personal fuel. And there’s a fearlessness in how Ed constantly re-engineers his own cultures, taking full responsibility for sand in the gears. I wanted to end on this idea that the Steve Jobs we know, brash, headstrong, in many ways rude is not the Steve Jobs he ended up as or the Steve Jobs who really built Apple as we know it today. It was a process and I imagine it was incredibly painful. But it’s that acceptance of the process that Steve and Ed exemplify. It’s the intentional change rather than the change forced upon you. It’s motorcycle maintenance instead of waiting for it to break down. For more on building a culture around creativity and taking responsibility for its stewardship, there’s my talk with Angela Ahrendts, the former head of retail at Apple. Episode 310. On the more physical side of creativity, I’d love for you to take a listen to Episode 185. My conversation with Australian chef Ben Shewry. Whether it’s a 90-minute movie or a 12 course Michelin starred meal, the two leaders have built very similar cultures of excellence. Thank you again to Ed Catmull and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, hit subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode. Thank you to our producer, Alexander Turk. Production assistant Ange Harris and production coordinator Nicole Pellegrino.

I’m Whitney Johnson,

and this has been Disrupt Yourself.