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This is the second of a two-part series about running your business like Pixar with 5 key lessons from the book Creativity Inc. written by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace.
This episode covers:
- Being wrong as fast as you can
- Making sure everyone is responsible for improvement
Podcast Transcript:
Joshua MacLeod:
Modeling failure in front of a team is one of the best ways to establish your leadership. If you fail well, you will have loyal followers. If you fail poorly, people are going to jump ship.
Podcast Announcer:
Welcome to The Growability Podcast, teaching business and nonprofit leaders a more excellent way to run a business. Visit growability.com for your leadership, coaching consultation and business collaboration needs. This is the second of a two part series about how to run your business like Pixar. Let’s listen as Joshua and Bernie discuss points four and five of the key lessons from the book, Creativity, Inc., written by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace. Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson.
Joshua MacLeod:
The third point in creating leaders who create leaders as seen through the lens of Creativity, Inc. If you’re going to be wrong, be wrong as fast as you can. Mistakes are the inevitable consequence of doing something new. If you’re going to do something that is really amazing, you’re going to have to add creativity. If you’re going to add creativity, mistakes are inevitable. One of my favorite quotes from the Creativity, Inc. book was, “In Pixar, early on all of our movies sucked.” So the whole concept was, hey, we’re going to try this creative thing. But they hadn’t figured out the creative playbook yet because they threw it out there fast. We’re going to try it like this and this and this. They were able to make adjustments. Some of the notes I have here, “Make your best guess and hurry up about it so that if you’re wrong, you still have time to change course.”
Bernie Anderson:
I tend to be a pretty like bulldog as far as, all right, I’m going to do this and I’m going to persevere. Perseverance is everything. I sometimes have a hard time trying to figure out, all right, is this something I really should continue persevering on? Or is this something that I just need to let go as a failure? And it’s fine. Let’s start with the next thing. How do I differentiate between failure of concept and failure of strategy?
Joshua MacLeod:
So that leads perfectly into the fourth point, which is change directions when enlightened.
Bernie Anderson:
Got it.
Joshua MacLeod:
If you are going to be a leader who makes leaders, you have to model changing direction when you have more information. One of the best ways for a leader to gain trust with his team or her team is to respond well to failure. Modeling failure in front of a team is one of the best ways to establish your leadership. If you fail well, you will have loyal followers. If you fail poorly, people are going to jump ship. I remember at the beginning of COVID, I realized, okay, everybody’s going to start doing video streaming. And so I got on Google and I spent two hours looking at what video streaming service should I use. So I looked at all the options and I chose GoToMeeting. So then I’m like, well, let me get a deal. So I’m going to buy a year’s worth of GoToMeeting up front. Here we go.
Joshua MacLeod:
I drop $300, GoToMeeting. In the next week, I had three people say, “Hey, can you come to my Zoom meeting?” And then I heard they started calling it Zoom meetings on the news. Nobody’s saying, “GoToMeeting meetings.” Everybody is saying, “Zoom meetings.” So I had to make a decision, what am I going to do? So you know what I did? I bought Zoom. I bought a year’s worth of Zoom. I was like everybody’s going to use Zoom. I don’t want to be stuck with GoToMeeting. When you get enlightened, change direction.
Joshua MacLeod:
So Steve Jobs is known for changing his mind instantly in light of new facts. What they did at Pixar is every single time that they made a movie, every single time they made an edit, every single time they did a round of revisions, they had this process of reviewing what they learned. There’s a five step process. Number one, schedule a time to talk and review. The second thing is they would consolidate what they learned. Here’s what we learned. The tools that we picked up. These are the strategies that we picked up. Number three, anybody who wasn’t there, somebody couldn’t make the meeting, they were hunted down. If you didn’t make the meeting, you still had to get the education. Number four is to talk about any resentment. So for two minutes you get to talk about how you feel, what you don’t like, why this went south. And then number five is to ask a list of questions for what are we going to do next time. Ask yourself, “What did we learn at the end of every project, every activity, every new thing that you do?”
Bernie Anderson:
“What are you learning right now?” is such a valuable question. Calling your team together and saying, “Team, what are we learning right now?” is so powerful. Because if you can get your team to articulate what it is that they’re learning, to get it out loud, out of their heads and even better on a whiteboard or something where you actually write down, “Here’s what our team is learning right now.” Just to have that there for them to see and to process. A super powerful thing, I think, for teams and team building and really moving your organization forward.
Joshua MacLeod:
It’s such a beautiful thing. Companies become exceptional by realizing those areas in which they are not exceptional. So if you know where you’re not exceptional, it allows you to say, “Okay, well, we don’t have to be. I don’t have to do that.” That’s an enlightenment in itself that is huge for decisions. If I learn, hey, we’re not exceptional about onboarding. So we might need somebody else to help us onboard. We’re not exceptional about reporting. Well, we might need to bring in a team member that can help us with reporting. What an opportunity to change directions when you’re enlightened. Ask the question, “Hey, what did we learn?” Model failure in a beautiful way and then realize where you’re not exceptional and make adjustments.
Joshua MacLeod:
So the fifth thing, this is the final thing. The fifth thing in Creativity, Inc., distilled, is to make sure that everyone on the team is responsible for improvement. Continual improvement is not the job of the boss or the manager or the team leader or the secretary or the whatever. Continual improvement in the organization is the job of everyone. The reason why Japan went from a fundamentally decimated economy after World War II to grow to become the number two super economic superpower in the world. Deming goes over to Japan and is helping with the reconstruction of the automotive industry. He said, “Look, we are going to work on improving, not just as the leaders, but we’re going to work on improving everybody.” The guy that’s on the shop floor working on the car handle. And then there’s the person that’s up in the surveying booth that’s working on the financials for the organization.” And what would happen in the society is that this person that’s up in the box was making all the decisions when the person who’s actually on the assembly line didn’t have any input into that.
Joshua MacLeod:
So Deming just convinced the leaders, “What if it wasn’t just the job of the overseer to make the improvement plan? What if it was the job of the person on the line to make the improvement?” And when those two people started having really good conversations, well, now you have Toyota and now you have Honda and now you have Nissan. When everybody is responsible for the solution that is critical because now there’s information flow from decision makers and people doing the work. There’s this constant flow back and forth.
Joshua MacLeod:
But the other thing is, don’t see your limitation as a weakness, see your limitation as an opportunity. Creativity thrives in limitation. I need to figure out how to outfit this room and make it look really great with $200. I’ve got a blank room. I’ve got to figure out how am I going to make this thing look great with $200. Well, guess what? You can do it. There are creative ways to do that. We have only been getting six units out the door on Thursdays. We have got to figure out how to get 30 units out on Thursdays and we only have this fork, $16 and a small shrub. So we’ve got to figure out how to make this happen. But limitation actually fuels creativity.
Bernie Anderson:
Another way to put this is to MacGyver everything.
Joshua MacLeod:
MacGyver everything, that’s exactly right. If you can figure out how to MacGyver situations, you’re going to thrive. An organization that learns to accomplish more with less creates what we call profit. So your limitations fuel your profitability. Limitations are actually good, that’s one of the things, everybody’s responsible for improvement and open communication. Even if people are not responsible for the same things, everybody should be communicating about everything else in the organization. If I only have this conversation, I’m hiding this bit of information from everybody else in the organization, then I’m losing like 60% better idea of potential. Joe on the shop floor might have the $10 billion idea just sitting there but only if Joe actually has access to have communication with the president of the organization with his idea. That’s why I like companies like Google and Apple, they set up these totally open areas because you could just walk over to the booth and talk to that person. They’re the CEO, yeah but they’re available. So open communication really makes a huge difference in everybody being responsible for improvement.
Bernie Anderson:
I think that goes back to some of the culture things we were talking about early on in the workplace because open communication is going to mean that it’s okay to mess up. If you mess up, own it and it’s fine. And I think having an organization where everybody just is, hey, this is who I am. I’m comfortable in my shoes. Oh yeah, we messed up here. Great, now we can go do it right. Having that kind of culture is really something to strive for, isn’t it?
Joshua MacLeod:
It’s what I want, Bernie. And I’m excited about being able to surround myself with people who are smarter than me, who are not intimidated by challenging ideas and who are comfortable failing fast, improving steady. It’s really cool. It’s really, really cool. Maybe we should start making animated films. What do you think? Maybe we could invent the next
Bernie Anderson:
I think that goes back to the thing about failing fast, as fast as you can and realizing that maybe this isn’t our space.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah. Realizing where you cannot be exceptional.
Bernie Anderson:
Maybe we can excel in helping somebody else who makes animated films so or something? I don’t know.
Joshua MacLeod:
So Bernie, what do we want to remind everybody here at the conclusion of our podcast?
Bernie Anderson:
We want to remind everybody you are doing much better than you think, you have more potential than you know and we appreciate all of you who have joined us today, growing with Growability. And we’ll see everyone next week.
Joshua MacLeod:
See you next week everybody.
Podcast Announcer:
Thank you for listening to The Growability Podcast. The mission of Growability is to equip leaders to flourish in their life and work by developing vision, rhythm and community. To discover if there is a more excellent way to run your business, visit growability.com and speak with a certified Growability coach. Bernie and Joshua are also available for speaking engagements, workshops and conferences. Subscribing to this podcast helps Growability equip leaders throughout the world and we appreciate your support.