Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull With Amy Wallace

This book is great for: Storytelling, Positive Leadership, Innovation

I gravitated towards this book in a lineup of managerial book choices immediately when I saw the silhouette of Buzz Lightyear on the cover. This book was truly a joy to read! As a lifelong fan of PIXAR movies, I could absolutely believe all of their processes and how difficult as artists it must have been for them to sell and merge their company to Disney. It must have felt like an indie artist signing to a major label, mixed with a modern architect working on a corporate office building.

One thing I really liked about this book was how they admitted perfection is unsustainable and toxic. Some anecdotes they highlighted were of watching a single frame thousands of times to “get it right”, and even missing Christmas with their families to finish a deliverable on time.

The most dramatic part of the book, and their turning point, was how one of their developers got so little sleep and became disoriented from working so hard on their project, that they forgot their child was still in the backseat and drove straight to work instead of the daycare. This child was then discovered in a hot car in Pixar's parking lot. (The child was thankfully all right when found).

After this event, they stopped development to focus on the people again. Time and time again throughout the book, they came back to emphasizing that in order to be successful, they needed healthy people that got their sleep and felt confident in themselves to give powerful feedback, ideas, and their best work.

Failure was another recurring topic. You hear now of Linkedin lunatics proclaiming how failing is the greatest thing ever, like you have to lay off your entire workforce and close up shop a few times to become the next Google. Failing was different for them. Failing could be not being able to meet an expectation or a deadline, or having to jump ship when their values were impacted. Failing could mean failing their families for not having enough meaningful time to spend with them. Again, humans, and their humanity, was the driving force of their success.

And of course, there were the wins! I really loved reading about how they worked with Disney’s creative team of animators and artists to teach them how to find the soul of the story. In sports, competitors learning from one another is a sign of high intelligence, (mental and physical). To be able to say, here let’s get you on track, even as corporate rivals, really speaks to their first and foremost love of making movies and writing stories.

This book is also great at treating the story itself like the big picture and encouraging the writers and animators, (or in CTG's case, our development team), to restrain themselves from scope creep or remove unnecessary details and additional work to better serve the story, (or product). To bring audiences into the theater for Pixar, or to keep our clients satisfied with the work CTG puts out, we need a story worth investing in. A story must end with a learning moment or character redemption to satisfy the viewer. For development teams, that means solve a user problem decisively to get to the definition of done.

This book is great for opening anyone’s mind to the amount of work it takes to deliver an hour-and-a-half movie, and all the moving pieces that must align to make it happen. That process can easily be compared to the mechanisms development teams use to deliver a product. It’s a wonderful testament to what you can create and achieve in a healthy, open environment where teammates are able to thrive. It also encourages you to think more critically about what hustle culture really means, and how much of it should be applied to do your best work.

To unlock your creativity, be human and make mistakes.