Seeding and scaling a Creative enterprise

How do you seed a creative culture in an organization and grow it?

From a niche, highly innovative outfit, how do you scale to 1000+ people and retain these core ethos?

How do you balance creative journey with process-driven execution, particularly if your product is highly complex and involves thousands of hours of effort?

Finally, is it realistic to deliver a string of outstanding, brilliant and highly successful products, 10 years at a stretch with each being creatively unique?

If these are questions that resonate with you as much as it has intrigued me, then this post might be of interest to you. I found all these questions and a lot more answered, in the book ‘Creativity Inc’ by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Studios (Toy Story, Cars, Wall-E…) and current President of Walt Disney Animation (Kungfu Panda, Tangled, Frozen..).

Creativity Inc — the book

This book was an immensely satisfying read and I consider this amongst the best books I’ve read on Management. The perspective and approach to the book is so thorough, that it could have been written only by a practitioner who has imbibed the essence and nuances of successfully executing on these principles for decades.

The book has an excellent narrative, perhaps nothing less is expected from the head of Pixar, the studio that redefined endearing story telling. He is also the person credited with saving & reviving Disney Animation after Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney, in what is considered one of the best M&As executed.

As a bonus, there are juicy tales from Pixar studios and tidbits on how the storylines evolved for many of the popular blockbusters. To understand how subtle forces can impact an organization and its culture, and the hawk-eye role that a leader needs to play, consider this interesting story from the Pixar office:

In the opening chapter of his new book, Catmull tells the tale of a long, elegant conference table that hosted Pixar’s production meetings for 13 years. Despite it’s beauty, Catmull grew to hate it. The table exerted too much control over the production team’s dynamics.

In the West One conference room 30 people would sit at the table facing each other in two long lines. The big cheeses — director and producer — who had to be at the center of the conversation always occupied the middle of the table. Everyone else was relegated to the outer ends, and some to the chairs at the end. Sitting on the far ends meant it was harder to hear, difficult to establish eye contact, and impossible to be involved in the conversation.

The table declared, “If you sit in the middle your ideas matter. If you sit at the ends, they don’t.” That’s a lot of power for an inanimate object to wield. Yet no one complained as they assumed the bosses wanted it that way. To make matters worse, place boards were put up which ended up reinforcing the same structure in all meetings. It didn’t matter that Catmull said everyone was free to speak up, because the structure of the meetings proved otherwise.

But once, by accident, a key production meeting moved to a smaller room and a square table. No one was at a disadvantage. What happened? Eye-contact was automatic, ideas flowed freely, everyone felt involved, communication went unhindered.

And then Ed Catmull took the call to dump the table and replace it with a square one, and get rid of the place cards altogether.

Overall, this is a great, practical book on leadership, management & culture. I rarely re-read books, but this is one I’m planning to buy in print to read again. A highly recommended read for leaders and managers, more so if you work with creative folks.

I end this post with 5 quotes that I found powerful in the book.

“Part of our job is to protect the new from people who don’t understand that - in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness.”

“Great teams are more important than great ideas.”

“Lack of trust (candor), if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.”

“To be a truly creative company, you must start things that might fail.”

“Leaders embrace change — There is no growth or success without change.”