Creativity Inc.

✅ "If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. In other words, getting the right people and right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea." ✅ "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, the strategy, trying to avoid failure by overthinking it, dooms you to fail. If you overplan, you'll end up getting attached to an idea that doesn't work, which is very bad." ✅ ”When asked if Ideas or people are more important, look at the false dichotomy. People create ideas, therefore people are more important than ideas.” ✅ "The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Protect the new." ✅ ”The people ultimately responsible for implementing a plan must be empowered to make decisions when things go wrong, even before getting approval. Finding and fixing problems is everybody’s job. Anyone should be able to stop the production line.” ✅ ”The cost of preventing risks is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.” ✅ "If you don't strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill-prepared to lead." The table creates the hierarchy. A long rectangular table creates an instant hierarchy. The closer you sit to the middle, the more important you feel. People at the end speak less. Creativity gets stifled. Fix the room, fix the behavior. Use a square table. Remove place cards with executives' names on them. "Always hire people smarter than you no matter what. They will not replace your position; they will make the company stronger." Price logic can distract you from the real questions. Instead of debating whether it’s easier to lower a price than raise it, ask the fundamental questions: how to meet customer expectations and keep investing in software so customers can use the product better. "The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee from the senior manager to the factory worker. If anyone at any level spotted an error in the production line, Deming believed they should be encouraged and expected to stop the assembly line." Persistence is a negotiation strategy. Explain the problem and solutions, get shut down, think, come back and explain again. Repeat until either you agree, you realize they’re right, or you argue again. Roles fail when people feel temporary. If people think their role is temporary, they won’t voice opinions. If the work is meaningful, they may tolerate bad conditions to avoid complaining. Fix conflict by removing the manager as the messenger. Instead of telling managers about issues with someone, tell that person directly. This turns roles into peers instead of impediments. Pixar's two defining creative principles are "Story is King" and "Trust the Process." These are meaningless if you don't take action on them. Speed can become harm. “Asking this much if our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable.” ”Instead of being honest about everything, we should use the word Candor. There are times when things shouldn’t be said.” ”Create a culture that expects errors instead of fearing them.” "Management's job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover." "Conflict is essential." ”With certain jobs, there isn’t any other way to learn than by doing, putting yourself in the unstable place and then feeling your way.” When everything feels wrong, list what’s wrong. Writing down what’s wrong can prove that not everything is wrong. Trick people into creativity using a "not really" preface. "I'm not actually suggesting this, but go with me for a minute." "This would be a big change if we were really going to do it, but just as a thought exercise, what if…" Occam's Razor. If there are competing explanations, pick the one with the fewest assumptions. ”Don’t treat small and big problems differently. Approach them with the same set of values and emotions.” Fix first, blame later. When something breaks, don’t waste time blaming. Try to fix it right away. "Different viewpoints should be addictive rather than competitive. This is more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse." "Create a culture that acknowledges its own blind spots and is open to new viewpoints that challenge the status quo. Others can see problems you don't and also their solutions." "Our mental models and perspectives aren't reality. They are tools that we can use, but they can be incorrect." ”Don’t cling to what works or fear change. When Disney died, his workers asked, “What would Walt do?” This isn’t good because you’re forcing yourself to think in the past. It might be a good intention but it’s not good in the long run.” Daily meetings force people to show incomplete work. This reduces fear of showing unfinished work and encourages constructive feedback. Copying what’s come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity. Research trips and detailed notes can fight that. Limits can fix organizational conflict. If an oversight layer kills flexibility and feels nitpicky, removing it can solve the problem. "Artists don't learn how to draw in school, they learn how to see." Focusing on what is not the object can help you see the object more clearly. Postmortems should consolidate what’s been learned, teach others, prevent resentments, force reflection, and pay it forward. Vary postmortems or the lessons will be the same. List five things you would do again and five you wouldn’t. Use data, but don’t conclude solely from data. Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, appreciate that you cannot measure most of what you do. Cross-functional learning improves communication. When different departments learn together, communication improves. "When a new company is formed, its founders must have a startup mentality, a beginner's mind, open to everything because, well, what do they have to lose? But when the company becomes successful its leaders often cast off that start mentality because they tell themselves they have figured out what to do. They don't want to be beginners anymore. That may be human nature, but I believe it's part of our nature that should be resisted. By resisting the beginner's mind you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely." "It's better to go fast and fail than to wait. Andrew Stanton believes that leadership is about making your best guess and hurrying up about it so if it's wrong, there's still time to change course. 'If you're sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weathering waves, then why the heck are you sailing? You have to embrace that sailing means that you can't control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that whatever comes you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side. You will not be able to control exactly how you get across. That's the game you've decided to be in. If your goal is to make it easier and simpler then don't get in the boat.'" Tunnel analogy. The worst part is when it’s pitch black and you can’t see the entrance or exit, but the key is to keep going to get to the exit because there always is an exit. Notes Day is a system for listening. Shut down for a day. Collect notes on what to improve and how. Narrow thousands of notes into themes. Implement right away. ”The future is not a destination, it is a direction. To keep a creative culture vibrant, we must not be afraid of constant uncertainty. We must accept that mistakes will be made and we will face problems.” "Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear a path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear. Doing all these things won't necessarily make the job of managing a creative culture easier. But ease isn't the goal; excellence is." ”Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won’t have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.” "It isn't the manager's job to prevent risks. It is the manager's job to make it safe to take them." ”A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.” "Be wary of making too many rules. Rules can simplify life for managers, but they can be demeaning to the 95 percent who behave well. Don't create rules to rein in the other 5 percent; address abuses of common sense individually. This is more work but ultimately healthier." ”An organization as a whole is more conservative and resistant to change than the individuals who comprise it. Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change, it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.” ”Protect the future, not the past.” ”Do not accidentally make stability a goal. Balance is more important than stability.” ”Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on, but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal.”