great teams win

Leadership is all about team. It is easy and somewhat understandable to get self-absorbed when you are responsible for a project in crisis. During those Xbox trials, I certainly fixated on what I should do differently and why I was failing. I took a sabbatical shortly after the launch of the first Xbox, and with the help of some fabulous advisers, I realized that I was not the secret to success. Instead, the team around me held all the keys required to unlock our potential. My job was to give them the necessary strategy framework and direction and then allow them to apply their unique skills to improving our results. Great leaders find a way to attract the right people, and the right people form great teams, and great teams win.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

find your inner grist

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following...

Find your inner grist. Being in the depths of a crisis strikes at the core of your being and challenges your very soul. As an individual, you have to believe that you can lead the team successfully and fix the issues you face. If you have this type of faith in yourself and in others, it will become a force-multiplier, making you and the team stronger. You also must consciously decide to persevere regardless of the obstacles, and in the process have the courage to make difficult make-or-break decisions. I’ve heard several people recently define this combination of faith, perseverance, and courage as grist, a wonderfully rough-hewn word that clearly communicates what it takes to transform crises into opportunities. There is no logical, rational reason why Xbox was successful, but the team absolutely had the grist required to do what others thought was improbable.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

issue an S.O.S.

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following...

Issue an S.O.S. We are all taught that self-reliance is key for accountability and leadership, but I’ve learned that the reverse is often true. When things are going badly, the height of leadership is knowing who to ask for help. This is not an invitation to hire a bunch of consultants but rather a suggestion that you find people uniquely qualified to provide new ideas and approaches. My boss treated my resignation letter as a request for help, which he gladly answered by rejecting the letter and working with me to change my leadership style. That was the end of the beginning for me, and it enabled me to rebuild the team and create a set of new opportunities for the business.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

simplify and focus

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following...

Simplify and focus. When things are going badly, there is rarely one obvious problem. In fact, the issues are usually more like a giant knot of yarn, rich in complexity with threads running randomly through the organization. To untie the knot, you can’t pull on every part of it at once. Instead, you have to reduce your activities to a few focused efforts that are both urgent and important. As you begin pulling on those areas, more clarity will emerge, and logical next steps will appear. The secret to solving complex problems is actually radical simplicity.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

step away

Today, most assume that Xbox was somehow destined to be a winner, but having been Microsoft’s chief Xbox officer, I am here to report that its early years were much more like a ship on the rocks than a sloop cutting through the waves.... As I reflect on surviving the near-death Xbox experience, which we turned around using a strategy process called the 3P Framework to create Xbox 360... I would humbly suggest the following:

Step away. Almost every leader’s first instinct is to dive into the engine room to fix problems he or she sees. At the depths of the Xbox process, I found myself up late at night doing manual DVD testing to identify flaws in the Xbox DVD drive. Although that level of engagement theoretically shows that you are part of the solution, it is almost always a mistake. Instead, take the time to step away from the keyboard and elevate your attention to the broader issues. How and why did we get here? What are the root causes of our dysfunction? How can I use strategy, team design, delegation, and other macro tools to guide us in a better direction? If you dive in, you encourage the team to cede responsibility to you. If you step back and provide guidance, you empower them to take ownership.

Robbie Bach

"The Big Leadership Lessons I Learned Almost Failing To Create Xbox For Microsoft" Forbes. 11/5/2015

don't throw me out of the boat!

When I think of crisis I think of the story of Louie Zamperini as told by Laura Hillenbrand in her book, Unbroken. While on a rescue mission, Louie’s B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The three survivors (Zamperini and his crewmates, pilot Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara) end up in a life raft with minimal food, trying to make landfall. One night, in an act of panic, Mac ate all of the chocolate bars (approximately 6) as the other men slept. Mac’s actions put the other two at significant risk. Louie and Phil were discouraged by Mac’s actions, but they didn’t throw him overboard.

Later, the three men are spotted by an enemy fighter pilot, who strafes the small raft – puncturing the boat. Hillenbrand writes:

Phil’s raft had been slashed in two…. [T]he ruined raft… didn’t sink, but it was obviously far beyond repair…. Each time one of the men moved, air sighed out of the chambers and the… raft sat lower and lower in the water. The sharks whipped around it, surely excited by the bullets, and the sight and smell of men in the water, and the sinking raft,

As the men sat together, exhausted and in shock, a shark lunged up over a wall of the raft, mouth open, trying to drag a man into the ocean. Someone grabbed an oar and hit the shark, and it slid off. Then another shark jumped on, and, after it, another…. As they turned and swung and the sharks flopped up, air was forced out of the bullet holes, and the raft sank deeper. Soon, part of the raft was completely submerged.

If the men didn’t get air into the raft immediately, the sharks would take them…. The men hooked [a pump] up to one of the two valves and took turns pumping as hard as they could. Air flowed into the chamber and seeped out through the bullet holes, but the men found that if they pumped very quickly, just enough air passed through the raft to lift it up in the water and keep it mostly inflated. The sharks kept coming, and the men kept beating them away….

Louie began patching… As Louie worked, keeping his eyes on the patches, the sharks kept snapping at him…. Hour after hour, the men worked, rotating the duties, clumsy with fatigue. The pumping was an enormous exertion for the diminished men…. All three men were indispensable. Had there been only two, they couldn’t have pumped, patched, and repelled the sharks. For the first time on the raft, Mac was truly helpful. He was barely strong enough to pull the pump handle a few times in a row, but with the oar he kept every shark away.

I think of those three men, struggling to survive in the boat. Surely, if Louie and Phil had thrown Mac overboard for eating all of their food, they wouldn’t have survived the sinking raft and attacking sharks. Mac had the opportunity to act during this crisis, and his heroic efforts saved the lives of the men. Mac was necessary to avert disaster.

While we’re in crisis situations, stress levels rise and it’s easy to find fault with one another. Encouragement is more important than criticism when the team is truly up against it. Are you inspiring the troops, or busy trying to throw them overboard when the going gets tough?

Adam Dibble

"Don't throw me out of the boat!" leadershipYES 2/24/2016

and make sure to read:

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010.

toxic leadership

[Tony] Fadell’s reputation for being intense, very animated, and prone to raise his voice (not necessarily in anger) spilled over to push the Nest team. Carr wrote, "A meme is floating around the office comparing Fadell's style to that of the Mountain in Game of Thrones, the towering brawler known for beating his opponents to a pulp. But surviving as a startup consumer electronic brand requires just that sort of attitude." Another anecdote reveals: "When one employee failed to live up to his standards, Fadell ordered a manager to fire the employee, saying, "You gotta Glock Glock that dude," as he mimed shooting off a handgun. He was joking, but unapologetic."

All of that fist-banging and hard driving for perfection is supposed to bring out the best in his employees, according to his cofounder Matt Rogers. "But at the same time, he is incredibly caring and passionate about their development," Rogers said.

You can’t develop much of anything under such circumstances, according to workplace experts. As psychologist Paul White notes, toxic leadership may appear successful for a while. "Over the long term, their attitudes and actions catch up with them," he says, "Trust and teamwork deteriorate in their areas; they have a high turnover rate in their department, and they will eventually destroy the health of the organization."

Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, co-authors of Primed to Perform, underscore the importance of total motivation and how it erodes or boosts bottom line results. "In one company we surveyed, salespeople with positive "total motivation" produced 28% more revenue than their more negatively motivated counterparts."

Lydia Dishman

"What's Going On At Nest?" FastCompany. 2/17/2016

crucibles of leadership

[O]ne of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders…. 

We came to call the experiences that shape leaders “crucibles,” after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assumptions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose—changed in some fundamental way….

So, what allow[s]… people to not only cope with these difficult situations but also learn from them? We believe that great leaders possess four essential skills, and, we were surprised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning…. Second is a distinctive and compelling voice…. Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). 

But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call “adaptive capacity.” This is, in essence, applied creativity—an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before. It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents….

It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not only survive an ordeal, but to learn from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever. These attributes allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, instead of being destroyed by them—to find opportunity where others might find only despair. This is the stuff of true leadership.

Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

"Crucibles of Leadership" Harvard Business Review. September 2002

ask for commitments

Real leaders don’t “give assignments”—they ask for commitments. They understand that the initial conversation is a chance to frame the entire subsequent experience. When people make a commitment—a choice—they feel a far deeper connection to their work. When it is assigned to them—or others sell them on it—a subtle and insidious agreement is made: that the leader is responsible for their motivation. The worker is consenting to this work as a favor to the leader.

Joseph Grenny

"Leadership Lessons from Ex-Cons" Crucial Skills. 9/15/2015

availability and openness

Pope Francis is arguably best known for availability and openness to the public. On his first day as Pope, he reversed the tradition of blessing the people by inviting them to bless him instead. He's since decided to ride in a bus with his team rather than in a bulletproof limousine. Pope Francis has also been seen getting around Rome in a Ford Focus and a Fiat during his U.S. visit.

Personal, handwritten thank-you notes and birthday lunch invitations to the homeless of Rome take priority in his schedule and exemplify his leadership vision.

Those who aren't spiritual leaders should also rethink what their most important responsibilities are—people over processes, names over numbers. Accessibility sows trust and loyalty among colleagues and customers, making other transformations possible.


William Vanderbloemen
The 5 Leadership Lessons From Pope Francis. 9/25/2015.

your brand: the people who report to you

Reflecting on his time as CEO, Hurt emphasizes that there is no better way to enforce culture and values than by the way you hire. “You’ll be most defined as the CEO by the people [who] report to you. That’s going to be your brand.” Moving quickly at startup speed brings out the true integrity of your hires — both the good and the awful. 100 mph work speed is where your top players step up, the people Hurt describes as “born to change the world.”

The individuals you choose to bring onto the team speak volumes. With each new hire, the CEO reinforces the values of the company, highlighting the traits perceived as most valuable for the organization. The same concept is applicable to firing. Hurt clarifies, “If you fire brilliant jerks, it says to everybody, ‘that’s not going to be condoned.’ If you hire people that have real passion, love your calling, it’s going to feed on itself.” The CEO sets the tone.

Drake Baer (presentation by Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt)

"You Aren’t Born Knowing How to Be a CEO" First Round Review. 7/2/2013

a new order of things

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Niccolò Machiavelli 

"The 4 Core Steps of Change Leadership:How to lead change for results" by Samuel Bacharach. 2015

living on the frontier

There is another group of people whom Francis admires, and this one has nothing to do with social stratification such as marital status or sexual preference. These are special people who go beyond the call of duty, day in and day out, because they live on what Francis has described as the “frontier.”

Here, Bergoglio uses a very personal example to explain the term: “The frontiers are many. Let us think of the religious sisters living in hospitals. They live on the frontier. I am alive because of one of them. When I went through my lung disease at the hospital, the doctor gave me penicillin and streptomycin in certain doses. The sister who was on duty tripled my doses because she was daringly astute; she knew what to do because she was with ill people all day. The doctor, who really was a good one, lived in his laboratory. The sister lived on the frontier and was in dialogue with it every day.” You can’t lead from the back, Francis is saying. You have to lead from the front, where the struggle doesn’t end just because the leader has left. So he lives on the frontier himself….

Although frontier – or new frontier – were popular words and phrases for John F. Kennedy when he campaigned for president, Francis has a slightly different meaning for the word today. In American parlance, he means pushing the envelope by doing courageous things on the front lines. Don’t be afraid to push yourself beyond limits that are self-imposed or placed on you by society or convention…

Jeffrey A. Krames

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. 2014

TWIST

Tesco has a unique program that requires all its front office executives and the managers in departments such as distribution to work more traditional store jobs for a full week every year. The program is dubbed TWIST, for “Tesco Week in Store Together.” From Tesco: “TWIST reinforces our values and aims to improve knowledge-sharing throughout the company…. IT covers all aspects of store operations, from the back door to the shop floor working as a Customer Assistant, including: receiving deliveries, working in the warehouse, filling, working on checkouts and the Customer Service Desk and this year completing a nightshift.”

TWIST is only a part of what helped Tesco grow to become the largest retailer in Europe. However, this is the type of program that brings people at the top of an organization closer to those who get the real work done and, more important, closer to customers. 

Jeffrey A. Krames

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. 2014

a huge bowl of candy

One former Fortune 100 CEO was known for keeping a huge bowl of candy and chocolates on his desk for employees. They were told to come in as often as they wanted to grab as much candy as they wanted. That proved to be a very effective way to get people to stop by his office so he could simply ask, “How are things going?” That often led to far lengthier conversations that helped both the CEO and the employee to learn things neither knew before – and helped the leader engage the employee in a meaningful dialogue.

Jeffrey A. Krames

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis. 2014

leadership is...

Leadership is the ability to articulate a vision and get others to carry it out.

Jack Welch

Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis by Jeffrey A. Krames. 2014.

a noble vocation

Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all…. I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery.

Pope Francis

Message of Pope Francis to the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum on the Occasion of the Annual Meeting at Davos-Klosters (Switzerland). 1/17/2014. As quoted in Lead with Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons from Pope Francis by Jeffrey A. Krames. 2014.

actively noticing new things

Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement. And it’s energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The mistake most people make is to assume it’s stressful and exhausting—all this thinking. But what’s stressful is all the mindless negative evaluations we make and the worry that we’ll find problems and not be able to solve them.

We all seek stability. We want to hold things still, thinking that if we do, we can control them. But since everything is always changing, that doesn’t work. Actually, it causes you to lose control.

Take work processes. When people say, “This is the way to do it,” that’s not true. There are always many ways, and the way you choose should depend on the current context. You can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. So when someone says, “Learn this so it’s second nature,” let a bell go off in your head, because that means mindlessness. The rules you were given were the rules that worked for the person who created them, and the more different you are from that person, the worse they’re going to work for you. When you’re mindful, rules, routines, and goals guide you; they don’t govern you.

Ellen Langer

"Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity." Harvard Business Review. March 2014.

character increases bottom-line results

Tom Fox: What are the traits of leaders who have high character?

Fred Kiel: The leaders who attained the greatest financial bottom-line results had strong character habits that involve four basic principles: integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion. They almost always tell the truth, keep their promises, are willing to own up to their mistakes and take responsibility for their choices. They are very forgiving of others. They are all about learning from mistakes rather than punishing. And finally, they care about people.

When employees say that leaders show these character habits, in contrast to those who show them about half the time, there was an amazing difference in bottom-line financial results—almost five times more.

Tom Fox and Fred Kiel

"Good people make good leaders." The Washington Post. 9/21/2015

can anyone be a leader?

Leadership is a skill, and I believe like all skills, can be mastered with practice and coaching. That does not mean that there aren’t individual differences, but that people can improve on their current capabilities.

One of the reasons why leadership training so often fails—Bill Gentry of the Center for Creative Leadership estimates that about half of all leaders are ineffective in their roles—is that leadership education insufficiently focuses on building the influence skills and acumen in managing organizational dynamics—organizational politics, if you will—that are so essential to getting things done on the one hand and surviving and succeeding in workplaces on the other.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

"Jeffrey Pfeffer: What Most People Don't Know About Leadership." Forbes. 9/15/2015

an accessory to fraud

The classic error that outsiders make in Afghanistan is to single out a proxy in whom to repose trust and through whom to interact with most other locals. Over the years of intrusions by outside powers, some Afghans have grown adept at capturing this privileged position and exploiting it to advance and enrich themselves, while dis-empowering (and thus incensing) their neighbors….

In my case I Kandahar, the self-interested intermediary was a balding, dour-faced Karzai retainer named Abdullah, who called himself an engineer, and who President Karzai’s younger half-brother, the late Ahmed Wali, recommended to me in the following terms: “If I put a million dollars in a storeroom and have Abdullah the key, and I came back in ten years, I’d find every penny of that money still locked inside.” I hired the man.

In late 2002 I departed Kandahar for an extended flurry of talks and meetings in the United States. Before leaving Abdullah in charge of the NGO, I walked him through my system for keeping track of petty cash expenditures: marking each outlay on the back of the envelope in which I carried the money, along with the date and the purpose. For an engineer, he seemed to have trouble catching on.

I returned, after several weeks, to find not a single new mark on the back of that now-empty envelope. Not one receipt, not a record of a single purchase, did Abdullah turn over. We were building schoolrooms. He had made deliveries of bricks and sand and gypsum, had paid weekly cash wages, bought the food our cook prepared for our employees…

Swallowing my panic, I demanded receipts. Abdullah went scurrying around to gather some. Sweating, I pieced together forensics that could tell a semi-coherent tale.

Years later another employee recounted Abdullah’s derisive comments about “Western accounting” and “Afghan accounting” – in which I was obviously unversed. I heard painful stories of suppliers who had never been paid. I reconsidered the probable reasons we’d been forced to leave a school building unfinished for lack of funds.

I had, in other words, been an accessory to fraud….

One way Abdullah kept me in thrall was by cultivating fear: by convincing me that Kandaharis were unabashed murderers and thieves. Himself a transplant from near Kabul, he professed a pious horror of the people among whom he was living. They would, he insisted, dismember me in a second were it not for his watchful protection.

A further technique was to keep me from interacting with anyone else face to face, without his presence in the room. Abdullah could get temperamental. Once when I decided to eat lunch with the rest of the staff, instead of separately with him, he threw a violent tantrum, refusing to speak to me for three days. I put it down to jealousy or made excuses for his psychological fragility. How rational would I be after more than two decades of war? Besides, I needed Abdullah. He got things done. What if he were to quit? What would I do?

Sarah Chayes

Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. W.W.Norton. 2015.

focus on dreams instead of failings

“If everything worked out perfectly in your life, what would you be doing in ten years?”

Such a question opens us up to fresh possibilities, to reflect on what matters most to us, and even what deep values might guide us through life. This approach gives managers a tool for coaching their teams to get better results.

Contrast that mind-opening query with a conversation about what’s wrong with you, and what you need to do to fix yourself.  That line of thinking shuts us down, puts us on the defensive, and narrows our possibilities to rescue operations. Managers should keep this in mind, particularly during performance reviews.

That question about your perfect life in ten years comes from Richard Boyatzis, a professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western, and an old friend and colleague.  His recent research on the best approach to coaching has used brain imaging to analyze how coaching affects the brain differently when you focus on dreams instead of failings. These findings have great implications for how to best help someone – or yourself — improve.

As I quoted Boyatzis in my book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence,  “Talking about your positive goals and dreams activates brain centers that open you up to new possibilities. But if you change the conversation to what you should do to fix yourself, it closes you down.”

Daniel Goleman

"When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change." Harvard Business Review Blog. 12/19/2013

an understanding heart

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee. And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people? And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing.

Old Testament, 1 Kings 3:5-10

As quoted in "Finish With Your Torch Still Lit." by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Ensign. October 2015.

thoughts for managing a creative culture

John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, VES Awards. 2/28/2010

Here are some of the principles we’ve developed over the years to enable and protect a healthy creative culture. I know that when you distill a complex idea into a T-shirt slogan, you risk giving the illusion of understanding – and, in the process, of sapping the idea of its power. An adage worth repeating is also halfway to being irrelevant. You end up with something that is easy to say but not connected to behavior. But while I have been dismissive of reductive truths throughout this book, I do have a point of view, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of the principles that I hold most dear here with you. The trick is to think of each statement as a starting point, as a prompt toward deeper inquiry, and not as a conclusion.

• Give good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. If you get the right team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right.
• When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight

between the known and the unknown

Invention… is an active process that results from the decisions we make; to change the world, we must bring new things into being. But how do we go about creating the unmade future? I believe that all we can do is foster the optimal conditions in which it – whatever “it” is – can emerge and flourish. This is where real confidence comes in. Not the confidence that we know exactly what to do at all times but the confidence that, together, we will figure it out. 

That uncertainty can make us uncomfortable. We humans like to know where we are headed, but creativity demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where. That requires us to step up to the boundary of what we know and what we don’t know. While we all have the potential to be creative, some people hang back, while others forge ahead. What are the tools they use that lead them toward the new? Those with superior talent and the ability to marshal the energies of others have learned from experience that there is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown where originality happens; the key is to be able to linger there without panicking. And that, according to the people who make films at Pixar and Disney Animation, means developing a mental model that sustains you. It might sound silly or woo-woo, this kind of visualization, but I believe it’s crucial. Sometimes – especially at the beginning of a daunting project – our mental models are all we’ve got. 

For example, one of our producers, John Walker, stays calm by imagining his very taxing job as holding a giant upside-down pyramid in his palm by its pointy tip. “I’m always looking up, trying to balance it,” he says. “Are there too many people on this side or that side? In my job, I do two things, fundamentally: artist management and cost control. Both depend on hundreds of interactions that are happening above me, up in the fat end of the pyramid. And I have to be okay with the fact that I don’t understand a freaking thing that’s going on half the time – and that that is the magic. The trick, always, is keeping the pyramid in balance.”

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

the role of accidental events

When I look back on Pixar’s history, I have to recognize that so many of the good things that happened could easily have gone a different way. Steve could have sold us – he tried more than once. Toy Story 2 could have been deleted for good, bringing the company down. For years, Disney was trying to steal John back, and they could have succeeded. I am distinctly aware that Disney Animation’s success in the 1990s gave Pixar its chance with Toy Story and also that their later struggles enabled us to join together and ultimately merge.

I know that a lot of our successes came because we had pure intentions and great talent, and we did a lot of things right, but I also believe that attributing our successes solely to our own intelligence, without acknowledging the role of accidental events, diminishes us. We must acknowledge the random events that went our way, because acknowledging our good fortune – and not telling ourselves that everything we did was some stroke of genius – lets us make more realistic assessments and decisions. The existence of luck also reminds us that our activities are less repeatable. Since change is inevitable, the question is: Do you act to stop it and try to protect yourself from it, or do you become the master of change by accepting it and being open to it? My view, of course, is that working with change is what creativity is about.

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

mentally compartmentalizing

A theme [Dominic] Barton identified from talking with CEOs is the importance of mentally compartmentalizing. “You get so many issues coming at you, and some of them can paralyze you.” He related a story from a Liberty Mutual CEO who told him, “‘In my first three weeks of my job, I would have kicked you out of my office.'” The CEO explained that at that time, he had been told by his general counsel that the company was being sued for $6 billion, and that everywhere he looked, all he could see was $6 billion. “Now, he said, ‘I’m talking to you, and I have six of those [issues going on right now], but I’m focused on you.'”

"McKinsey’s Dominic Barton on Leadership — and His Three Tries to Make Partner." Knowledge@Wharton. 9/9/2015

failure: a manifestation of learning

Left to their own devices, most people don’t want to fail. But Andrew Stanton isn’t most people. As I’ve mentioned, he’s known around Pixar for repeating the phrases “fail early and fail fast” and “be wrong as fast as you can.” He thinks of failure like learning to ride a bike; it isn’t conceivable that you would learn to do this without making mistakes – without toppling over a few times. “Get a bike that’s as low to the ground as you can find. Put on elbow and knee pads so you’re not afraid of falling, and go,” he says. If you apply this mindset to everything new you attempt, you can begin to subvert the negative connotation associated with making mistakes. Says Andrew: “You wouldn’t say to somebody who is first learning to play the guitar, ‘You better think really hard about where you put your fingers on the guitar neck before you strum, because you only get to strum once, and that’s it. And if you get that wrong, we’re going to move on.’ That’s no way to learn, is it?”

This doesn't mean that Andrew enjoys it when he puts his work up for others to judge, and it is found wanting. But he deals with the possibility of failure by addressing it head on – searching for mechanisms that turn pain into progress. To be wrong as fast as you can is to sign up for aggressive, rapid learning. Andrew does this without hesitation.  Even though people in our offices have heard Andrew say this repeatedly – many still miss the point. They think it means accept failure with dignity and move on. The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy — trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it — dooms you to fail.

As Andrew puts it, “Moving things forward allows the team you are leading to feel like – “Oh I’m on a boat that’s actually moving towards land!” as opposed to having a leader that says, “I’m still not sure. I’m going to look at the map a little bit more and we’re just going to float here and all of you stop rowing until I figure this out.” And then weeks go by, and morale plummets, and failure becomes self-fulfilling. People begin to treat the captain with doubt and trepidation. Even if their doubts aren’t fully justified, you’ve become what they see you as because of your inability to move.”

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.

allow more people to solve problems

There is a crucial yet hard-to-understand concept here. Most people grasp the need to set priorities; they put the biggest problems at the top, with smaller problems beneath them. There are simply too many small problems to consider them all. So they draw a horizontal line beneath which they will not tread, directing all their energies to those above the line. I believe there is another approach: If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario it causes no panic because the threat of failure has been defanged. The individual and the organization responds with its best thinking because the organization is not frozen with fear – waiting for approval. Mistakes will still be made – but in my experience they are fewer and farther between – and they are caught at an earlier stage. 

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.