Pixar Co-Founder Ed Catmull On The Art & Science Of Creativity, How To Do Your Best Work, Bring Out The Best In Others & Lead

Every once in a while there’s a generational thinker that emerges from the most unlikely of places. Someone capable of straddling the complexities of new industries without losing their grasp on historical and cultural perspectives. A person willing to forge new paths in new ways toward a brighter future for all. Ed Catmull is one such generational thinker. As co-founder of Pixar and later as President of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed played a key role in shaping a unique company culture of collaboration and creativity. He’s a mastermind of innovation, a pioneer of groundbreaking technology, and a leader when it comes to using great storytelling to forge a better world. If you’ve ever been captivated by the beloved films Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, you have Ed to thank for that. Today we discuss the leadership and management principles that built Pixar’s unique and successful studio. More specifically, we talk about the insights that fueled Ed’s career, the workplace practices he leverages to build creative teams, and his personal philosophy of embracing failure as a path to growth. We also dive into his fascinating life journey, one that included both personal and professional relationships with George Lucas and Steve Jobs. There is so much to be learned from Ed's story, including some wild industry insights during his stewardship at Pixar and Disney, where he navigated through the ups and downs of the entertainment industry, all while delivering blockbuster after blockbuster, garnering eighteen Academy Awards along the way. This is the stuff of legend. If you’re a creator or manager of any kind, or if you’re simply looking to glean wisdom from one of the most fascinating and accomplished people alive, then you’re in for a treat. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: Seed.com/RICHROLL On: On.com Ag1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL Faherty Brand: FahertyBrand.com/RICHROLL Athletic Brewing: AthleticBrewing.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  There was something about that unique culmination of people that came together. How do you harness that energy, that desire, of your own people to do something good, wherever you are? I think that's when the best stuff happens.

• 1:19Rich Roll?

  Today, I'm joined by Ed Catmull. As co-founder of Pixar and later as president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed played an absolutely key role in shaping that company's unique culture of collaboration, which has gone on to become the gold standard for creative workplaces worldwide. If you've ever been captivated by a Pixar film, I'm sure you have. Wally is my favorite.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Wally.

• 1:47Rich Roll?

  Well, you got Ed to thank for that. He is a mastermind of innovation. He's a pioneer in both technology and storytelling, and the absolute OG when it comes to creative leadership. It was quite the honor to engage him on the creative principles, the management principles that fuel Pixar's success. We talk about the insights that literally changed workplace practices all across the world to better foster creativity and continuous learning, and how embracing failure creates this beautiful path to growth. Ed also shares incredible stories from his fascinating life, as well as from his close relationship with

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  both George Lucas and Steve Jobs. Now 78, Ed is a profound thinker, and this conversation is action-packed with invaluable lessons on innovation, on leadership, and also on the magic and meaning of living a good life. You're in for a treat, so off we go. This is me and Ed Catmull. It is real, it's real to meet you, and it's an honor to have you here today to share your experience and your wisdom. Everything that's in this book, Creativity, Inc., which is just a wonderful must-read for anybody, whether you're a businessperson or not, because

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  there's a lot of valuable wisdom for not just how to manage people and get the best out of them and operate a creative, innovative business, but it's really a primer for life. And then reflecting on your life, it's a relatively unlikely story on some level. I mean, I know that as a young person, you had this idea that you wanted to be the best in the world at something, and I'd be curious as to what prompted that in you. But you are brought up on a steady diet of physics and engineering, and these aren't the curriculums that one would think would contribute to a leadership position or a position in the creative arts. I think maybe it would be instructive to start a little bit at the

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  beginning and talk about how you got into all of this from the start, as somebody who was immersed in science and had certain heroes and had a vision for the life that you wanted to live.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I was very fortunate to have grown up in the 50s in Salt Lake City. It was a safe environment. It was a supportive environment.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And I did have this feeling I wanted to be the best in the world at something. I actually don't remember where that came from.

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm interested. Like, what were your parents like? Where did that come from?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Uh, my father was one of, uh, there were, there were fourteen children, but only nine of whom survived to adulthood.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  On a, on a farm in Idaho.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  So, so they were, you know, very poor. Um, he, uh, uh, he was in the Marines in, during World War Two. He was, uh, strict, but he was a very nice man. And he was teaching high school as I was growing up, was teaching math. And then later got his doctor's degree and became a principal. Honestly, it was a great environment to grow up in. When, when I left high school, I'd originally wanted to be an animator. Uh, because my childhood heroes were Walt Disney and, uh, obviously influenced by him and, uh, but also Albert Einstein.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  So like, these are the iconic figures of the time.

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  And what is the shared DNA between those two individuals for you?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Well, the shared experience for me was, these were people that were changing the world. And, uh, they did it by creating something new. And I knew that Walt Disney had basically created a company. When he'd made, uh, Snow White, which is the first major animated film, it wasn't the first animated film. There are a couple that were done before that. But, um, that one was the one that changed the way storytelling was done. So he was essentially figuring that out. But in terms of knowing about him and reading about him and studying him, I, I could say, okay, this was a person who figured out how to do the storytelling.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  But then there was a series of films that were impactful for me as a, as a child. Probably two most, most impactful films were Peter Pan and Pinocchio.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  Was it the storytelling? Was it the art of animation? Was it you trying to deconstruct how they actually created these movies? What about it captured your imagination?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  This is what good storytelling does for children. And I think it's very important to have children have these, their imaginations developed and challenged and pushed. That's what I experienced from those films. And I also experienced a childhood in which we played outside a lot, you know, parents read to kids. So there was some combination of all those things, which I thought were good for me when I was growing up. I liked that going forward. It's like, okay, can I do something like that?

• 7:12Rich Roll?

  So you end up at University of Utah, and this is where it gets really interesting, I think, because it was a very specific moment in time at a very particular place in which a group of individuals happened to congregate that end up going in their own unique ways to change the world in all kinds of ways. Like, it was the birthplace of so much. Like, you were involved in ARPA, like, this is the original version of the Internet and on the cutting edge of, you know, what computers could possibly do in animation, yes, but also in other disciplines. And you were surrounded by a lot of kind of amazing

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  young people at that time and also had some pretty significant mentorship. So talk a little bit about that magical period of time that really provided the foundation for everything that followed.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  When I was there, I did know the place, that it was special. I didn't know how special it was, but I knew it was special. It had been founded by Dave Evans and Ivan Sutherland. Ivan Sutherland had actually been one of the leaders at ARPA who was funding these kind of programs around the United States. And Alan Kay was there, who also had a profound influence on computer science. And Alan Kay was one of my first teachers, and he taught this principle, which actually seemed natural to me, but it was that things are going to keep changing at a faster rate.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And it was like, this is what's likely to happen. And it actually stuck. Because I was making decisions throughout my life based upon the fact that the rate of change is going to increase. So that was one major influence. The other one was that Ivan Sutherland was the, essentially the first person to really get computer graphics going. And it was Harvard that he built the first head-mounted display for virtual reality and artificial reality. But the key thing that Ivan had was that you can have a big vision. You don't know exactly where it's going or what's going to get there.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  But you can take some steps to get there. So everything at that program was taking step-by-step developments towards that bigger vision. And as you took those steps, you were also modifying where you thought you could go. So our job as graduate students was to take the next step. Now, the other thing I will notice, this is just an observation, the places that turn out a significant number of impactful people is there is no real curriculum. The people who are doing it are figuring it out as they go. And there's something which is like, this isn't just educational, working on problems. It's actually really educational in that you have to figure out what it is that you should be learning.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And Dave and Ivan set up the program so that we were all helping each other and sharing in the ideas. And we were the ones who were solving the problems. So by the time I graduated, four years after entering, I had made my own contributions. I had friends among these people, but I realized That I loved it there.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  So when you, when you were in school, you, you made your own animated film of your hand, right?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:51Rich Roll?

  By some accounts, that was the first or one of the very first computer animated films, correct?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yes. Now, there was another student who, a student who made a movie of his wife's face.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  We actually showed them together.

• 11:06Rich Roll?

  Okay, so you two together. But basically, if not the first, like, one of the very first ever computer generated.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:14Rich Roll?

  Films. You created that. You had this ambition of creating a feature computer animated film. Pixar is sort of organized around that principle. So, a big part of the Pixar success equation is, is this idea of, of developing talent in-house, bringing in these people with potential, nurturing them, surrounding themselves with, surrounding them with really competent people. And then, on top of that, establishing this culture of feedback and permissiveness in,

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  in which ideas could be shared and, and, and done in a way in which it wasn't about judgment or about, you know, the value or the self-worth of the, the individual, but really about the ideas themselves. This notion of people over ideas.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And the question is, how do you get people to think that way? And every time we made a film, every time we made a mistake, we would do some self-assessment. Is, okay, what was working, what wasn't working, and what was the value? And often realizing that our assumptions that we made in the past actually were the wrong assumptions. But because everybody was thinking this way, then we could challenge ourselves fairly early. So, an example of that would be that we did recognize the value Disney provided us for Toy Story. So what we had was an outside force that had a vested

• 13:00Speaker 01

  interest in our success, and they weren't sort of lost in what we were doing. And that was very valuable.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And that lasted through the first few films. It was Tom Schumacher was the president. And we respected him because he was really very creative. And he knew what we were doing. And when he said something, it was, you know, objective. But objective as a person who understood making films. But we also realized that as our films started to become successful. And he was going to move over to the theatrical in New York for making Broadway musicals. That we were going to lose that outside force.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  So Andrew Stanton brought this up and which was that let's have a brain trust to serve that role for the other directors that were developing. So this is an idea. We put it into play and it originally had like six people in it. Now it turns out this thing called the brain trust actually did not serve the roles in outside. The original intent of this did not succeed for which it was intended in the way it was intended. But we found that when he did this, that it was extremely good at giving feedback to people and in helping them. So at this point, we sort of dropped the original thing for it.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  The original idea and said, okay, let's develop this group as a great feedback mechanism. Now we had a new question. How do we have this group work? What are the rules that make it work? So then we're learning from each film. Because what you see sometimes is people do have egos that get in the way. Or they don't want to embarrass somebody. Or they don't want to embarrass themselves. So these are not real human emotions that are in the way. And then we recognize also that if you're doing something new and you're presenting it to people who are very good at what they're doing. You can feel a little nervous about it or vulnerable.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  And so it's to recognize, okay, uh, if they're vulnerable, then how do we actually understand that and appreciate it and not threaten that? We also learned if a person with a powerful voice or with actually power, with actual power, started the discussion, started to talk, that it distorted the room. Because then people would respond to what the powerful person said.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  And so what it meant was that the person with power needed to shut up for the first fifteen minutes. And then enter the discussion, because if they enter, that's an entirely different thing than setting the tone. I asked Steve Jobs to never come to one of the meetings.

• 15:59Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Of course, he's dying, he's curious, like, what's going, like, he, it's a kind of, he wants to be there, right?

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  Sure, the minute he walks in, everybody's gonna, you know, the sphincter's tightened, and everybody wants to make a good impression on him, it changes the dynamic completely. And I would suspect even yourself, at some point, walking into these meetings, tilts the scales in a certain way.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Well, actually, I don't, because I'm, I have a very different personality. And I don't impose myself in the room. And while it's fun to give a note, I've only made one note in all these years that I was there that had an influence on the film.

• 16:36Rich Roll?

  Hmm, but that says more about your unique kind of energy and sensibility around these sorts of things. Because for the most part, in any other organization, any time a, a boss or a leadership authority enters one of these rooms, it's gonna have that kind of negative impact.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  It screws things up.

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  So, the boss has to realize their impact on the room. And sometimes you just don't want to set the tone. Now, the interesting thing was with Steve is that it wouldn't matter, uh, when he spoke, even if he shut up for ten minutes, uh, when he did, uh, talk, he's so powerful, it would be overwhelming. And he understood that, so he didn't come to the meetings.

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  However, because at this point, we're now a public company. The films were shown to the board of directors. And the board of directors is when he would give some notes. And what Steve would do, the morning of any board of directors meeting, because we were shown the current film. And then we'd have a session where the board of directors would talk with the director and the producer, just to give some feedback. In the morning, Steve would call me. And he would say, these are very short discussions. He said, Ed, how's it going on the film? And I would say, it's going well.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Great. End of discussion. Or, we have a problem. Okay. But I wouldn't tell him what to do, because I never told Steve how to think. So if he knew there was a problem, he would then come and he would start, you know, when he got to this part of the discussion, he'd start off by saying to the director, you can ignore everything I'm going to say, because I'm not a director. And you guys know things that I don't know. So these are just my comments from seeing it. He would then give some, I would say, very insightful notes about the film that he would see.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Now, the interesting thing to me was that the directors would say that Steve had an insight about the films that nobody else had, and they heard things from him they'd never heard before. Except that I'm in all of these meetings. I've heard everybody give all their notes. There was never, ever, anything that Steve said about a film that had not been said by somebody else before, one of their colleagues. Right. So what it meant was that people that work together often also learn how to ignore each other. That's a problem.

• 19:28Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  That's why you need an outside force.

• 19:32Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  But Steve understood it. And so for many years, he was the outside force.

• 19:38Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And he recognized by this time his impact on people. So sometimes, because he was, I would say, became very empathetic after this 91 to 95 period. If he thought, if he thought he had too large of an impact, he would take them for a walk to calm them down.

• 19:56Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, that's a great level of self-awareness around your own power.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  He knew it.

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. There's a certain kind of interesting, you know, perhaps somewhat ironic kind of veneer to this in that your original motivation into rethinking management and leadership and on some level, the impetus of the book was trying to figure out why great companies, when they reach a certain level of scale, suddenly no longer are great, right?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  For me, it's a fascinating thing because I see it just happened in company after company is what is actually going on? What are people thinking? One of the difficulties that companies have is that because of underlying changes that take place, and this in particular, it's true with computer-related companies, but now it's happening everywhere is there are fundamental changes that are taking place, not only in the technology, but in its applications and now because of the use of more computers and cell phones and the whole web system of transforming information, but also societal

• 21:14Speaker 01

  changes, environmental changes. A lot of things are happening pretty rapidly and people have difficulty conceiving of what it means to change their business plan.

• 21:27Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Let alone other things they need to do in their lives. But it's very hard for them to conceive of it. And Steve was unusual in that his focus on is was on what is the right thing to do when they were working on the.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  The iPhone, but when it was secret. Yeah. So we went up to the secret lab to see it. And what he said was, we're reaching the point where there isn't really any, you know, a lot more growth in the laptop computers, including the portable computers. So we're going to need to have a different business model going forward. Now that in itself is very unusual. Right. So that's one thing that I found interesting, just that sort of sets him apart from other people. And the second one, and this is one that's difficult for people to see because they've got

• 22:31Speaker 01

  a pretty deep understanding of the arc of Steve's life. There was a reason for that misunderstanding, and that was he started off, he had behaviors, he had those behaviors when I first knew him and he first acquired Pixar. And it was not easy to work with when he was that way. But he changed over time because his story is more like the hero's journey. And he's got his own kingdom, which is Apple. He's cast out for some reason. And in this case, it's a fairly public humiliation. And so he started Next, he bought Pixar.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And frankly, neither company was working out very well. Yeah. And in the case of Next, he made a brilliant software choice, brilliant software decisions, some questionable hardware design decisions, and some poor business decisions.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  But he's really smart. He could recognize them for what they were. And he learned from them. And I would say that in from the years around ninety one to ninety five, there was a dramatic change in Steve's life. And after he went through that change, the people who were with him stayed with him for the rest of his life.

• 24:00Rich Roll?

  Hmm. And what was the nature of that change? Was it a result of, you know, kind of the excavation of the soul that came with getting cast out in in this hero's journey? Or what did he do specifically that you're aware of that created a different growth trajectory for him?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  The underlying thing Steve did understand was that you have to find out what the truth is and adapt to it. If something wasn't right, he would switch. Uh, so I could see that happening. So as he was going through these things at both companies, he was changing things. Now, what started ninety one is ninety one when was when he got married.

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Uh, he had a son, Reed. Um, Pixar entered into a relationship with Disney, the contract to make Toy Story. And the whole industry went through this massive transformation from ninety one to ninety five, which had big implications, bigger than most people are aware of. And ninety five Pixar went public. So Pixar going public was the first actual real business success for Steve since he left Apple.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  It was a real stroke of genius also. And and to your point about his uncanny ability to cast his gaze into the future and understand how things would would play out. The decision to IPO Pixar on the cusp of releasing its very first movie seems rather novel and must have struck all of you as as somewhat strange, thinking, why would we do this now? We have one movie. Let's establish ourselves. Let's make a couple of movies before we do that. But explain. Why Steve made that decision and how that played out because I think it's a great test case or a very kind of instructive lens into the way that this guy thought and

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  what made him unique and different and special.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  The it it we did think that this was pushing too fast. All of us thought that this is like, okay, this is nuts to go public court after the movie came out.

• 26:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, you had this deal with Disney. You had Toy Story, which was completed and about to be released, but nobody knew how that was going to do. Right. Like the like, paint a little bit of a picture of of the nature of Pixar at that time.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Well, because basically we were failing as a company and he'd put like $50 million into it, which was a substantial portion of his net worth.

• 26:39Rich Roll?

  And you almost sold to GM at some point, right? Like you were going to be a 3D modeling company.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Well, this is before then. This is when we were spinning out of Lucasfilm. So General Motors and Philips Medical were going to buy us. And it fell apart at the last minute because of an internal conflict within General Motors between the EDS people and the and the car making people. So it's a it's an obscure thing, but we were caught up in that. And so it all fell apart. So we kept going through this difficult process of getting somebody to buy us. And we finally got General Motors and EDS to agree. And then after they'd agreed within a week of signing, they get into this argument and it all fell apart.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Then I ran into Steve and Steve said, how's it going? And I said, no, actually, it's not going well at all. But he had formed Next Computer.

• 27:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  In the in the meantime, so now he had his computer company. Now he was willing to buy us on our terms, which was that we wanted to do computer graphics and make computer animation. And he saw the value of graphics for the future. When George hired me in, this is 1979.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  He was the first person in the film industry with credibility, willing to put money into this.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  So basically, he was the only person in this industry that had any value. There was still nobody in the film industry that wanted to, or that believed in technology, with one other exception, and that was Roy Disney Jr.,

• 28:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Walt's nephew. And he understood something that, that was not part of, of Disney at that time, or any other company, and that was Walt believed that technology brought some energy into the artistic process. It was an unusual thing. And when he died, that spirit didn't survive in the company. It was at Roy's insistence that Disney entered into a contract with us to write software for coloring cells. And their analysis of it was that it didn't make any sense to do that. But Roy said, this isn't about the money. It was about bringing in the energy.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  A very unusual thought process.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  And an investment in, in the future potentiality and possibilities that that, that that might reap once the technology, you know, continued to advance and mature.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  So, we entered into the contract. Roy was an advocate. We, the whole thing, again, was another educational process, but we worked very hard to make sure that we did not let Disney down. From Steve's point of view is like, okay, this is our big opportunity. So, we entered into a contract. None of us had made a, a computer animated film. None of us had made an animated film, or a film of any kind. So, we were all beginners. We had to figure everything out in the process. But as we got near the end of it, Steve realized, this is going to change the industry.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And our deal actually isn't a very good deal. So we just aren't getting much from it. And also, Michael Eisner will realize that when the three pictures are up, that he delivered the three per the contract, that he will have then just created his worst nightmare.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  Right. The idea being Toy Story is going to come out. It's going to be a huge hit. Steve could see this. There was a lot of excitement around that. And you would be stuck in this three-picture deal with unfavorable terms. And Steve's brilliance was let's figure out a way to renegotiate this deal. And the best way to do that is to IPO and stockpile a bunch of cash so that when Michael Eisner inevitably calls and says, I want to renegotiate this deal to tie you up, you then have leverage by dint of all this money to go back to him and push for different terms. Basically, an output deal, right?

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Where you would share, you're using Disney as a distribution arm in a partnership in which the revenue share was going to be on parity, like 50/50, as opposed to the typical deal where you're getting a small slice of Disney's gigantic take on a project.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yes. And the interesting thing about this was that once he was at Next, he had some, he'd made some deals which on the surface looked great for him, but in the end, they were bad deals. He'd made some, essentially, he'd made some bad business decisions in the past. But he was smart and he learned from them. So he approached this one as saying, we need to be 50/50 partners. I'm not trying to rake him over the coals. I don't want us to get raked over. It's like, we need to approach this as partners. So for me, this is the maturation that's coming out of the lessons he'd learned from the past.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  So he approached this of saying, we want to be partners with each other. And think of it this way, which meant that we have to have the money. To be able to say, yes, we're both investing equally in this.

• 32:41Rich Roll?

  It's an unbelievable story of foresight. Steve was a person who wasn't rigorous about whatever the business plan was, but was always looking forward and anticipating where the business should go, which requires not just a level of maturity and perhaps some, you know, level of genius as well, but the ability to hold loosely and remain really strident about your values and your conviction about moving the company in the direction of the future. So that you don't get out innovated and you don't end up like Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics or Kodak.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Steve saw in the directors of our films what he believed was necessary for anybody that was going to do something new. And that was you commit to something with passion. And when you're wrong, you change. And that's hard for people to hold on to their head. Because you think if I'm committed, then I'm committed. I'm not going to listen to things that's going to change my course because I'm committed to the course. But if I'm not committed, then I change course too easily. So what does it mean to both be committed and at the same time say, oh, I've just realized I'm wrong, we're going to change. That's very hard.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And I'd say the best leaders and the best filmmakers, that's what they do. We're going to go down this path. Okay, it's not working, we're going to change.

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So how do you do both at the same time? And it is possible. But that's when the, I think that's when the best stuff happens.

• 34:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, the way that it's possible is through these many kind of systems and philosophies that you end up implementing at Pixar that creates this unbelievable run of extraordinary movies over the tenure of your leadership there.

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  On this idea of the brain trust, though, the overarching idea here is how do we get the most compelling, innovative, creative work out of this group of people? And what is the environment that we need to cultivate in order to facilitate that? The brain trust is just one of many things that I think you implemented during your tenure at Pixar. But before we move on to the others, like what? So what became the rules of this brain trust? Like, how was it organized and deployed to its maximum effect?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Well, there are a few basic principles that went into running it. One of them is that it really needed to be a room of filmmakers who knew about film. So it wasn't for gawkers or others who want to see, because a lot of people wanted to see what was going on in the room. But that's not what it was for.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  So it was peer talking to peer. The other one was that, which was important, is that that room and the people in the room could not override the director, like the creative team. And that was very important. And we also didn't do anything significant. Like, if we knew there was a serious problem, we didn't actually make any moves before or within two weeks, roughly, after the brain trust meeting, because we didn't want the meeting overloaded. Like, if this doesn't go right, you know, it's an utter disaster. We're just trying to make it so we can focus on the room and not be too worried about other things.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  The other rule is that you just have to be honest with each other. And but I would say, because people have done this for years, and they know each other, that we've actually reached, they have a good state of being honest with each other. But part of that's a learned behavior. And as we bring in new people, they would observe it and they'd realize, "Oh, it's okay to say something which doesn't work." And every once in a while, magic would happen. And by magic, I mean that eagles left the room. That is, when I say eagles left the room is people could say something, they weren't attached to their ideas.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  If they worked, great. If they didn't work, that's okay, too. I'm not attached to it. And for me, that's the ideal state to be in. It's probably like flow, as you've heard in a number of areas. But it's like, when a room gets into that state, then it's pretty amazing to watch.

• 37:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine. I think that creativity isn't something that you can just summon. It's not, you know, a product of a board meeting. There's a ethereal quality to it, right? And creating an environment that's conducive to the sparks and the flow and getting the best and brightest minds to collide with each other, to have something emerge that's greater than the sum of its parts, is real art.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's the job.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Is to get that done right.

• 38:09Rich Roll?

  I'm sure people ask you this all the time. They come to you, maybe they run a small business or a large organization, or they're a manager of a department at a company. And they say, "Ed, how do I get the best out of my people? I just, everyone's operating suboptimally. I don't know how to motivate my people. The work that's coming out of my department just is stale. It's not creative. What is the advice that you give to that person who's looking to instill that creative flair and a permissive environment in which new ideas and, you know, the opportunity to fail and fail fast can be part of the, you know, the environment

• 38:54Rich Roll?

  to make something new and better and different?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Well, there are two things that sort of popped in my mind on that. One of them is, I talked about failure in the book and the meaning of it. And then I realized, actually, we don't use the term failure very much inside of Pixar.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Now, if we actually have something fails, we say that it fails, we're not trying to avoid it. But the word's too loaded.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Because, you know, starting at school, if you fail in a class, then that's a bad thing, because it means you weren't smart enough, or you didn't work hard enough. But also, when you get out, and bridges fail, relationships fail, companies fail, and in business and politics, failure is a bludgeon with which you beat opponents. So there's a real and palpable aura of danger around failure. While we also would say that we learn a lot from our failures, because we have, we all recognize that,

• 40:04Speaker 01

  is that meaning of failure is actually sort of overridden by the danger part of failure.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  And so, okay, it's just true, it doesn't matter what we say about it. We don't have the luxury of calling a failure of education until after it happens, not before it happens. If we recognize that, then I'd say, well, okay, there are a lot of times when we should be using a somewhat different terminology, which is that we're trying to make something work, let's try this, although it didn't work, let's try this. We don't need to overload it. So I try to be very careful about the words and how they're used.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  It's a terrible word, there should be a different neutral word that encourages people to extend themselves irrespective of whether it works out or not, without, you know, fear of losing their job, or, you know, the kind of internal shame or guilt system that happens when, you know, you quote-unquote fail. It's so loaded, and I think it, you know, it paralyzes people.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you say, okay, why do people get paralyzed? So our terminology does it sometimes. It's one of the reasons I try to use in general, not always, but I try to use candor instead of honesty, because honesty is sort of like the opposite, where you say, well, of course, I'm an honest person, when, actually, that isn't the right word, because the opposite of honest is dishonest.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  But there are times when you may not be candid for a variety of reasons. The opposite of candid is not candid. It's not as loaded. So these words have these subtle effects on people. And failure is one that has an effect on how people think. It's like, I think it should be used for things which are, where you really do have a major problem. And the other one is people get stuck for different reasons. So in the case of, of making films, if you assign somebody, like you say, this person can be a director. Then we came up with something which was very effective, which was, and this just, all this was recognizing

• 42:20Speaker 01

  that when people are trying to solve a problem, that they get stuck. We all do this. You're trying to work on something, bang your head on the wall. And I remember this, you know, from like, just doing homework or in school, right?

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Sometimes you're trying to do it, you gotta do it, you gotta schedule. My, I'm sorry, my brain is fried, I'm stuck. So the issue for us was, how do we keep people from getting stuck? So the thing we tried, which is, was quite effective, was to have people pitch three ideas for movies. Now, there are a couple of people who don't work that way. They've got the idea and they're gonna make it, that's fine. We're just, we're just trying to help people keep from getting stuck. And when we ask somebody to come up with the, the ideas for a film, and we say three, then what that lets them do is bounce back and forth between them.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  And they do this over a period of a year, because if we're gonna do a film, we've got a director, typically a writer, and a, and a couple of creative people supporting them. Like, it's a really tiny team. And this rather amazing phenomenon happens, and that is, every time somebody produce, or pitches the film, they start off by saying, "I love all three ideas equally."

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  And now they, they don't.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a lack of candor.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  And it said, but it's also, you say, okay, that's what it means to be vulnerable, right? It's what if I'm wrong? What if they see something I don't see? So you're, essentially, you're signaling the other people, it's like, you won't hurt my feelings if you pick one of the other things. So you're like, that's a self-protection mechanism. But actually, what we want to know is, which is the one that they want to do? And we know completely that, that if they, if we pick one of them, it's going to change dramatically in any case. So my favorite story was with Leon Kretsch on, on Coco.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  The story, an idea would be presented, and there's artwork they'd picked up or drawn or, or whatever to convey the idea. Very rough, we all know that, it's not a final movie idea, it's a pitch for a start of an idea. Discuss it, 20, 25 minutes is what we'd take on this, and then we'd switch to the other story. And then with Leon Kretsch, after we did this, we went into the other room, opened up the door, the table, the back wall, both walls, the ceilings are covered with Mexican artwork. So, without a word being said, everybody knows which film we're going to make.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Now, the thing about this is, the film that was made in the end was actually radically different than what was pitched at that point. Sorry, but we didn't care. What we knew is, he wanted to make a movie in, in that front. In fact, originally, he wanted to be a musical. And, you know, but a musical isn't in his DNA, so the very first song he had, which was Remember Me, then became a sort of a core theme that's built into the movie. Through the nature of the change that happens. But it's an example of we put something in place to help someone actually solve their problems because they could always switch and then come back to when they felt like

• 46:03Speaker 01

  they had.

• 46:04Rich Roll?

  But the really important thing there was the excitement that this person had for that concept. Like, that seemed to be one of the more, kind of, you know, important aspects of all the pitches. Like, this guy's on to something, super motivated, he clearly, you know, wants to do this, and that's something that we, as a company that supports people over ideas, can get behind and marshal our resources to support. And over time, it will become something very different, but let's pay attention to what he's saying to us now, which is less about the pitch and more about the energy that he's gonna bring to what might be, you know, two years of, of working on something. Is that, is that?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. Energy is contagious. And then, and then he knows that the people around him are gonna bring something. And in this case, because it's about the Mexican holiday, then they went, they visited the, uh, uh, still in Mexico, in the villages, to what's it really like? Uh, and they went several times, and they had advisors, because they didn't want to operate off of their biases. Now, there was, we all know something about various things, just like we know something about cooking and so forth, but in the case of Ratatouille, you actually need to go into

• 47:31Speaker 01

  a high-end restaurant to see what it's really like. And with each one of those cases, as an audience, we don't really know.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  And and the and the directors, when they start, they don't really know what it's like in these places. But if you get it right, if you actually bring something from the culture or from the place or what you're doing and you put it in the film, the audience senses that is correct.

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Even if they don't know it's true.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  There's a sense that comes.

• 48:03Rich Roll?

  They they can feel that energy, right, and that attention to detail.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think that's what it is with, it's like actually with with any company or with any product that's out there, it's like, do people care about it? Are they paying attention to the detail? And are they just slapping it out? You want people to care, wherever, whatever field they're in.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  And so how do you do that? How do you get the people working within your organization to care on the level that's required for that to get transmitted into the product, whatever it is, and give the consumer or the customer that feeling?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Well, I, for me, the big step is, is that when you see that there's a problem, you have to ask why. And you, it isn't one of those things that you can force on them. You say, you need to do this, you need to fix it this way, which is a natural thing for people to do. I think it's the right thing to do, though. It's like, okay, this isn't going the way I would hope it is going. Why isn't it going this way? What's getting in their way? And what can I do to solve the thing that's getting in their way? Because they may not see it. And if they don't see it, and I'm not paying attention, then we all miss it.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And then it sits, it sits there and it festers and it affects people. But we can ask and figure out what actually happened. Why did it happen? And what we, what can we do about it?

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  Pixar's in the business of taking creative ideas and putting them into a story, crafting a story and sharing that story with the world. By its very definition, it is a creative business.

• 49:51Rich Roll?

  But is there not an argument that every business is a creative business? Like, how do you define creativity? And what is the role that creativity plays in an organization or a business or an industry that people don't typically think of as being creative? With quote marks around it.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Well, it's clear that people would consider the arts and film and writings for it to be creative. So that's clear. I think most would say it's that if you're designing products, that's creative. Or if you're in the sciences or certain things, that's creative. But they kind of stop around there. And personally, I believe solving problems is creative. So if you've got problems in your family or in your neighborhood and you're able to work them out with people, that's a creative act. And for me, solving problems is a creative act. And I think that creating an organization that is better for people

• 50:54Speaker 01

  and that brings the best out of them is a creative act also. And I, it's, because I look at a lot of what I've done, it's like trying to solve the problems. And so I'd say, oh, that's, you know, that's actually the bigger contribution I've had. Because the original thing that I did, it's like, you know, that was gonna happen anyway. But trying to create a culture, well, that applies everywhere.

• 51:22Rich Roll?

  And because people are so incomprehensible, the problem of trying to create a culture that motivates people and creates a sustainable output of innovation and creative ideas that trickle into the products that it makes, or whatever it is that it does, is a creative act in and of itself. Like, I think that creativity is at the core and is of the essence of anybody who's trying to do anything, either individually or as a collective, as a group. Call it a corporation, a school, whatever it is. And I think appreciating the power of the creative impulse

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  and understanding how to initiate that and cultivate that and respect that in the people that you're working with and in yourself really feels to me like... Super important, if not the most important thing that you're trying to kind of instill in the people around you who have a collective goal that you're all kind of working towards.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  Is that overstating it to you?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 52:32Rich Roll?

  But it seems like that's really the, the kind of heart and soul of what your book is about and what you were trying to do at Pixar.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  It is. It's how those people do it together. What's our responsibility in enabling it, making it safe? How do we send messages to people?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  You know, in a, a room where things are sort of rushed, is, is it safe for the least powerful person in the room to talk?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Like, is like a message? In fact, there's one example that took place. It's one I loved at Pixar because usually we've got these really tight schedules until you've got a group of people who are working on it and they're very good at what they do, but they never have enough time. So when they have their meetings, there's a lot, they're under a lot of pressure. So we had one of the leaders in one of these groups where they're, you know, really smart and high-powered people. This leader said he wanted to make sure that every person in the room could talk. But in the room, they're production assistants. So these are people that are hired because of high potential, but actually they don't

• 53:50Speaker 01

  have any experience and they don't know anything about the particular problem in any case. So he told them, he told the people, this is the way he wanted to work. And the other people who were objected only on the grounds that they didn't have enough time. They didn't have anything against the person. They thought they, the others were nice, they were good people, they had high potential. All those things they had agree on is we literally don't have the time. So he said, no, this is the way we're going to work. Now, the interesting thing was by the end of the film, everybody thought it was the right thing to do. Because when he did that...

• 54:29Speaker 01

  They knew they were sending a message to the person who was a production assistant. They were valued. But for the people who were supposed to be in the discussion, it was a message to them that we value everybody. And they ended up feeling a lot better about it also.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  It's one of those things where he was trying to do one thing, but he actually got two. Because it's basically giving a signal about a value.

• 54:57Rich Roll?

  There's a quote that's super interesting to me in which he said, "If you don't try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill-prepared to lead." And your story reminds me of this quote, but I thought I'd give you an opportunity to explain what you mean by that.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  I do feel like there are so many things that we can't see in the world or we don't know what's going to happen.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  It's just the nature of reality. And we tend to hold on to things that we can see or grab on to the experiences that we've got because they're solid. They may be good experiences, but they think that's, you know, if we just repeat that. I don't know what the right terminology for it is. I mean, I've used the term the unknown. I don't. The thing was, I haven't found a word that works well because it's unknown. It's, you know, you can't see what it is. It's obscure. It's, for some people, conceptually, it's like a, you know, a two-by-two chart. You know, it's like, you know, you fall into one of these categories.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  The problem is, it doesn't give any notion of the size of each of them. So the stuff that we know, we know, like that's one piece. But we also acknowledge, I think clearly, that there are physicians or physicists or experts in these fields. And the total amount of stuff that we don't know, that we kind of have a sense of, like, so that's a bigger thing. We can kind of get our head around it. But the stuff that we don't know that we don't know. It's like, that's gigantic. It's huge. So, how do you actually operate in a world in which there's so many possibilities of things? And in this case, you're actually working off of

• 56:47Speaker 01

  the way you think about change or opportunity or your value system. Because you don't know what's going to happen. You know, positive or negative coming in your life. And you just accept it. Okay, I don't know a lot. That's why I can't be right a lot. And if I can accept the fact that I really don't know, then I think it opens us up to say, oh, I really do need help from anybody at any level. So if they come in and say there's a problem, then I damn well better listen. Because they are seeing things that I can't see. And it would be actually very foolish of me

• 57:30Speaker 01

  to assume that I know more than I do. And you know, in a lot of companies, there's this notion of there's a prep meeting before the meeting. Because if the leader, in a lot of places, if the manager or the leader gets surprised in a meeting, they're not happy they got surprised. Basically, it's disrespectful. It's the way it's treated. What's the purpose of the meeting if you have to know ahead of time what it is?

• 58:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, there's a, you know, people are complicated and there's politics and there's ego. I mean, essentially, what I'm getting from what you're sharing is is a sense of humility and a almost beginner's mind of curiosity. To lead not from a place of, I know all the answers and I'm going to tell you what to do, but in appreciation that you don't have all the answers and to, you know, kind of come to a meeting with a spirit of, tell me more about what I don't know, that then percolates down and gives everyone else permission beneath that leader to have that same kind of vibe about themselves.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Yes. There are times when I've made serious mistakes and people have come to me afterwards to tell me that I made a serious mistake. And I'm grateful I felt like they could do it.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  And for me, that's one of the most important things. It's like if I make a mistake and somebody tells me I screwed up,

• 59:05Speaker 01

  that they could come without fear doing that. And it's like, for me, that's like, I feel good about that. It makes me actually feel better. Even I feel bad about the mistake I made.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  But there's probably a lot of leaders or bosses out there who will tell their, you know, the people beneath them, like, I want you to tell me the truth. I want you to come to me if I'm getting it wrong. But something about their energy or some other aspect of how they're leading

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  creates a situation in which that underling still doesn't feel comfortable doing that.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, what are the consequences to them if they say something that you don't like?

• 59:43Rich Roll?

  Right. The leader says they want that, but do they really want that?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Usually, when you have something like that, something happened that you don't want.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And it's just like, it's the nature of things like, oh, you know, it's a bad thing. But, okay, what does it mean to the person who told you this? Whether it's something you did personally,

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  or even something you disagree with. Often, people have disagreements about things. And they're valid disagreements. And somewhere, you have to make a choice. It's not like everything is done by committee. It's not.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  And the person who's on the losing end of that argument has to still feel respected.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yes, they need to feel like they were listened to. In fact, I, for me, it's clear that it was more, it's more important for people to feel they're listened to than it is for them to believe that they were correct. Or that they want some argument or whatever. Is they need the respect of being listened to.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  When I think about all of these principles that you instilled at Pixar and the way it's laid out in the book, which on some level, on a surface level, I think, you know, reads like a management book, like this is how to run a creative business, whether it's the brain trust or reframing failure or the...

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  The rigorous testing that Pixar would do and this understanding that every project at the beginning was terrible and it was only made better through, you know, this process of, of, of, you know, bringing that brain trust to all the big creative decisions to make it better. Is it too bold to suggest that these ideas that you're proposing to get the best out of people and to promote a culture of creativity has a broader universality beyond business and in applicability as to how to kind of comport yourself in the world, as to how to live?

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  It's almost like a primer for how you can interact with people and engage with people and get together with people to create things. These are, in many ways, not necessarily just principles for business, but they are principles for life.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  I think the principles of treating people well and learning from them and growing and helping them,

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  you know, they're, I think they're unified. It's always messy, it's always hard and it keeps changing. You don't actually reach the point where everything is static and it's gonna stay that way forever.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  So it is a statement of life. I do think, like I've seen this, people get lost in their goals to be in charge or to make a lot of money.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Those things do happen, they get in the way. But I don't think it's the way we should be, you know, living as people, as humans, with each other, is to let those other aspirations get in the way of how we treat people.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking we can tease out any one of these ideas or principles. Like, take the brain trust. Like, everybody should have their version of a brain trust in their life. We think about friends who give us feedback, or seeing a therapist, or finding a mentor. But what you're suggesting is a committee of trusted people who contribute to the betterment of a project, or, in the case of my example, the individual. Like, everybody should sort of go out into their community and find people who can give them that kind of trusted feedback, and create a structure around that as a vehicle for,

• 1:03:43Rich Roll?

  you know, improving your decisions and, you know, basically, living your life at a higher level of quality. But it doesn't seem like we think that way.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  It should be a continual searching process for us. And, you know, because for some people, I think, they're looking for, what is the right thing to do, you know, give me the answer.

• 1:04:04Rich Roll?

  And maybe they'll call one guy, or, and that guy will say, do this, or don't do that. Or maybe they'll just decide themselves without any kind of feedback. Or they'll call their therapist.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:17Rich Roll?

  But what if there were 12 people that were weighing in on that? Each with their own unique set of life experiences, who, you know, you could weigh their input, and then, you know, make a decision based on that. I mean, I have this in my life. I have different groups that I go to, for various reasons, that really have been invaluable in, in my life. And I just, I want everyone to have their version of that. And it's obviously something that we're trying to instill in our, you know, in our office here, with our little media company, as students of, of, you know, what you advocate. And we've been, you know, with great effect, been able to kind of put that into, into practice.

• 1:05:00Rich Roll?

  And I just think there's so much value in...

• 1:05:05Rich Roll?

  Doing that, not just as professionals, but as individuals for the quality of one's life.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so then the, the, the interesting part is, okay, how do you then think about it to, to get there? Like, it becomes part of the search, so it's, it isn't just having a group that does that, but it's, okay, if it's not working, how do I get it to work? What's, what's not working? Why doesn't it work? And, uh, to me, it's part of the, the discovery, the continual discovery. Because it's not stable, whatever, it's not stable. But there's still, there's, there's that underlying value that we have. And if, if we build on that value, which is, is really a trust in people.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Assume that everybody is well-meaning, is, assume they've got it. They might do something to lose it, but they don't have to earn it.

• 1:06:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How can you be open? How can you hold your ideas loosely? How can you be a champion for your colleagues and the best idea? How can you be a better, more active listener? And also, how can you ask better questions? Like, if you want better solutions, you have to learn how to ask better questions. And I know this is something you've thought about and have written about. How does one figure out how to ask better questions?

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  It's a good question. How do you figure this out? But for me, it was always, you pay attention, and if it's not working, then you say, why is it not working? For me, that's the question, it's like, why isn't something going the way I want? So if you, you essentially start with a question. You don't, you don't, you don't want to start with an answer, because if you start with the answer, then you've already figured it out. Well, that's not, that's not a start, that's an ending point.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Uh, and it's one of the reasons why I have, I have some problem with mission statements. I mean, I recognize in some cases, the mission statement actually helps people get some alignment.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  So it's not that I'm black and white about it, but the problem with a lot of mission statements is that it actually is starting with an answer. And that doesn't generate new discussion. So we never had anything like our goal is to make the best films or anything like that. Our mission statement is to make the best films. I'd rather be in a position where people say, well, what are we doing here? What is our goal?

• 1:07:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  What are we trying to do? Because, you know, what every time they ask that question, then they're thinking about it. So.

• 1:07:54Rich Roll?

  And it's fluid.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  It's fluid. You should always be fluid because the world is fluid. If the world's fluid, then we should be able to respond fluidly. And one of the reasons I added to the book was that some people thought somehow after doing all this, we had sort of reached the point where we had solved the problem of how we run a creative environment. Once that isn't actually what I meant. What I meant was we have a way of thinking about it so we can continue to adapt and change and ask questions and figure things out because the problems keep changing.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Is that one of the reasons why you decided to update the book?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yes, there were things I had learned in the intervening years because that was eight, eight, nine years ago.

• 1:08:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  That I wrote it. Well, there were, there were events that took place after that. And the other one was like rethinking certain things. I felt I needed to be a little clearer about the brain trust and its development rather than like there's just a brain trust. It's like this is something that was a special purpose adaptation of the way we were doing things. And if you're in a different environment or in any company, it's like, okay, how do you think about adapting it or building something for yourself? What's your mechanism for getting really good feedback, but also good camaraderie with people for helping each other?

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  But that's really the point of it. So that was one of the things. The other one was the realization that the failure thing was actually, I don't think I fully was talking, was explaining well the notion that there's a human psychology coming behind failure, which is actually getting in the way. I know what's meant by it. People say, you learn from us, so just do it and get it over with. And we've said the same thing too, but it's not actually what we're doing. What we're trying to do is make it possible for us to learn things, try things quickly, and then if they don't work, we move on to something else.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  So trying to explain this concept of holding on to something and having a core of what you're holding on to, but at the same time, change what you do. Each person's different in the way they do that. I mean, the way Steve does that was very different than the way I did it. And I never, ever thought that I wanted to be like him, and he didn't want to be like me either. It's like, why would you do that? I'm not him.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  You said that you want people to fail the elevator pitch test. What does that mean?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  What I really said was, is a certain percentage of what we're doing should fail the elevator test. Not everything does. It's like, I'm not trying to make another rule. It's that if you have a certain percentage of films that fail the elevator test, then that says something about your ability to take risks and do something that's risky. So, the concept of the elevator pitch is that you have an idea and you want to pitch the idea to somebody who's got the authority to make it happen. An executive or whoever it is. And you can convey the idea so succinctly and clearly

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  that in a short period of time, hence the elevator test, in a short period of time, you can do something which gets their interest so that they would want to do it. Now, the problem with it is that the way to always pass that elevator test is to do something that's derivative. Right? Because if you can explain it quickly, you're essentially using examples of things that they get. They pretty much understand. And so, all you do that is you end up actually becoming a fairly derivative company.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Now, that being said, sometimes you have a great idea and when you hear it, it's like, oh, yes, we want to do that. So there are examples of that. Pete Docter, you know, saying, I want to do this. Although he would typically do the three pitch test too. But in the case of one film we had where he said, since we're starting over, I've got an idea that takes place inside the head of a little girl and deals with her emotions. And we all thought, oh, that's a great idea. So boom, we're done.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  Right. But actually playing, like, to actually explain what that movie's about is, there's no way you're going to be able to do that.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  No, yeah, so, but the notion was, okay, what piques your interest that that's worth doing? So some things you actually, you get it, okay, let's go off and try that. It's still nothing more than just like this really rough idea. And you go through just as long as any other film and just working out even what that means. That's all we had was, you know, inside they have a little girl. And then there are some films like Up and Ratatouille, where, okay, you say a movie, I want to make a movie about a rat that cooks. Well, you know, you can't explain why that's a good idea in one minute.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  You can't explain why it's a good idea in a week. You can't explain why it's a good idea in three months, right? It actually sounds like a bad idea.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Well, it's all about the execution.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and, and the thing is, when you do something that's really hard, and some of these ideas are really hard ideas, that once you've said, I'm going to solve it, you have to become more creative. You have to do something which is unexpected to make it work. Ratatouille was probably one of the more extreme ones. But Up was, okay, you know, what does that even mean? You know, it's sort of an odd idea. I want to tell a story about this old, this man that is with his, starting off with his girlfriend,

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  and then they get married, and then they learn they can have children, and so they want to go on a trip around the world, but then she dies, and he's depressed, he blows away into the stowaway. That doesn't sound like a good idea. But you know, when you take something like that, and you're willing to change it, and you have the group that's working really well together, then as long as the group is working well together, and you say, okay, they'll figure something out, they'll do it.

• 1:15:02Rich Roll?

  How do you know when you've got it? You've got an idea, you're iterating on the idea, you want it to be innovative, you want it to be at the highest level of your creative capacities, you're stress testing it, you're failing, you're improving upon it. On some level, at some point, you have to say, this is the script, or this is what the character looks like, or we've all signed on that this is the way that it's going to be. And I would assume some of those decisions are more democratic than others, but there has to be a sense of, this is it. And that's another kind of ephemeral, mystical thing, like, how do you know when you've

• 1:15:45Rich Roll?

  chosen the right path, decided on the right project, you know, approved of this, or approved of that? Like, there's a billion decisions that go into a movie getting made, or a product ending up on a shelf, and you have to have some conviction as a leader to say, this is what we're doing, and on other occasions to say, it's not quite there yet.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  There are two parts to that. One of them is, just in supporting people, and trying to solve the problem, or supporting them as they try to solve the problem, is that we support them all along the way, but there's one thing that the creative leader can't do, and that is they can't lose the confidence of their crew. And at that point, we will stop it, or we'll pull the plug, or we'll replace it. And we have done that. And these are good people. They're put in position because they're talented. We like them. But if they've lost the confidence of the crew, then we have, we have to make a big change.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  And Ratatouille was one of those, to be honest, where the, we started with an idea that was an unlikely idea. The truth is, the final movie was actually, if you looked at it, that it was the fruition of that original pitch.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  More than some.

• 1:17:11Rich Roll?

  You just had to go all the way around the planet to come back to the same place?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Well, no, not, not that. In the case of, of Up, for instance, kind of wandered around in different places and ended up in an unpredictable place from where it was. But in the case of Ratatouille, the concept of what it was actually was there all along. But it had a couple of serious, difficult problems, and they kept trying to solve it. And it went through a variety of things, but they couldn't actually lick the problem, and it wasn't working. And so when it wasn't working, we lost the confidence of the crew. Then at that point, we brought in Brad Bird to take it over.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  And Brad resonated with the idea of the film. Now, the difference is, as a filmmaker, he, he was able to solve the problem. Because it was, it was essentially a storytelling problem, and figuring out what was getting in the way. So, some of the things that were in there were actually blocking the film. I'll, I'll give an example, and that is, in the first version, there was this chef, Gusteau. Only in that first version, Chef Gusteau was alive.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  And then there was Remy, the rat, who had these aspirations to be a great chef. So part of the problem was, whose story is this? Is it a redemption story for Gusteau? Or is it an aspirational story for Remy? Back and forth. So, and there were complications as a result of that. And so we go on, it's like, okay, we like the idea of this artistic aspiration, but it isn't working. So we brought in Brad Bird. He talked with a friend of his who was a writer,

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  just, you know, part of his group of people that he trusts, and came back and said, "We're going to kill the chef. The chef is dead." So now all of a sudden, boom, things clicked. And then the question was also, how do you actually capture the essence of what takes place inside of a kitchen? So Brad, being a great filmmaker, came in and put in those pieces with this, the woman chef, who essentially was, you know, talking about the right ways of doing it in an abrupt way, but it's very funny, but it was very informative.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  It was short, but it told you a lot. So in the end, you end up with something that had the design, because the first director was the one who just had the, who led the design of the characters, the look of the film. That was all the first one. In the end, the intent was there of what it was all along, it's just that he was able to do it. Now I'm kind of telling you, you know, stories on the inside about how it is, because it was hard. It was painful, it was very painful for the person who couldn't do it.

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I would imagine many moments of, you know, kind of gnashing of teeth and is this ever gonna work and, you know, this is terrible and it's not working and we've made a huge mistake and how are we gonna fix this?

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:20:48Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's like all of it, right? Like, I think, you know, there's this idea that every, you know, Pixar movie is this perfect jewel box and, you know, it was divinely inspired and, you know, crafted by geniuses and ends up on the screen and it's a long and arduous process, but relatively conflict-free and failure-free. And that's just not the case. Like, you have said many times, every single Pixar movie was an absolute disaster before it was good. They were bad, like, truly bad before they got good and certainly before they became great. And I think there's a lot of wisdom to extract from that in how we think about how we approach

• 1:21:31Rich Roll?

  challenges and, and, and projects in our own life and how we, you know, think about that terrible word, "failure" and, and how it inhibits us from, you know, doing the grappling and the kind of having the patience and the diligence and the hard work to see it through and get to the other side of it.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, and it's still true today. And they haven't gotten any easier. They're not supposed to get easier. They're all supposed to be hard.

• 1:21:58Rich Roll?

  And you can't, there's, no matter what, you could take your engineer brain and your physics mind and try to apply a template on top of this that's gonna create a hit every time and we're just gonna check these boxes and, and move down this assembly line and create something that people are going to enjoy. But creativity doesn't work that way. No matter how much you try to impose that, it's not gonna work. Was there a moment where you thought, "Maybe it would work"?

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yes. So... [laughing]

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  So here's the funny thing is because if you look at what we're doing, because it was, you know, we can be more expensive. And we knew that, that part of the problem is we kept redoing things. And we thought, well, if we could just get it right or closer at the beginning, it wouldn't cost as much money. The truth was, if you brought in any MBA to examine what we were doing, they would come to the same conclusion. Quit changing things so much and it'd be a lot cheaper to make. Well, we knew that. It's like a duh. We finally had a film that was pitched to us by Andrew Stanton, where the first pitch was brilliant.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  This was for Finding Nemo. You know, he pitched this thing. He's actually probably one of the best people at pitching I've ever seen. It's glorious, entertaining. It's like, okay, this is a no-brainer. We're gonna do this. And I thought, okay, since this is so good, this is probably the one where we get it right up front and it's gonna be easier and cheaper to make. It turned out it was, had just as many problems, just as much drama, costs just as much. No, actually, if we couldn't do it on that one, to even think it as a, as the goal is the wrong thing to do. The goal is to make a good movie.

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  Well, you're just creating additional suffering for yourself by having an expectation that, that somehow you screwed up because you still can't figure out how to avoid all of these issues that come up with every single project.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  This, it's just gonna happen. Now, I know, we all know that, you know, if, if, if films cost too much to make, then we have a problem. So everybody's realistic about it. It's like, okay, it does cost too much. We have to do things to try to address it. But we shouldn't start off by solving the problem with the illusion that we aren't going to have problems. So it's how do we keep the cost down within the reality that we're gonna hit with surprises that are unexpected? Well, that's what a surprise is, is unexpected. So it's just you accept the fact that that's the way it is. How do we do the best that we can within that?

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  And then you're faced with different challenges, you know, like with costs, when do things run away? Why do they run away? What can we do? And we did a lot of things to bring that back in. But we didn't solve it by trying to find some illusion, by just dealing with the realities that we had and want people to do things.

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Being in acceptance that this is just the nature of the beast, these things come up.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  And your attempt to solve it might actually, you know, sometimes trying to solve a problem can screw things up. What you can't do is let go of the fact that you have to do something which is good.

• 1:25:30Rich Roll?

  Right. If I were to ask you, of all the things that you've done and everything that you've learned over the course of your career, what, what to your mind made Pixar special? And what can I learn from what you learned running that company that could improve my life?

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Well, I, I mean, to be honest, it's, it is somewhat difficult to answer that because there was something about that unique culmination of people that came together. Again, this happened because Steve and Andrew and Pete and John, that, that group that came together, but also people that others wouldn't know about in terms of the ones who developed the technology, like Bill Rees and Evan Osby and some rather remarkable people there. So how did they come together? I do think that, first of all, there was some serendipity involved, because I don't

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  believe I should take credit for having thought of things or just got it on myself because I didn't. But I also believe that if you recognize that serendipity happens, you can also lose serendipity because you don't do something with it.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  So I, there was that element of it. I think there was something about the fact that we were all trying to figure it out. And that none of us, like, you know, like, neither Steve nor I were also interested in sort of not developing that as a way of thinking.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  Not developing what?

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  In other words, here we had a group that was trying to, to figure things out. But it was the group that did it, but, but what I'm saying is that Steve didn't ever say he was the one that was doing that. So he wasn't trying to take credit for it. Now, he was, you know, the one that was funding it, and he was obviously a key protector of what we were doing. But he also didn't impose on us what we did. And I wasn't trying to impose on other people what they did. And likewise, when we start up each production, we try to think of each one as trying to do something like that, like they have to figure it out.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Because there is something about figuring something out, which makes a group special. And I know it's hard to describe.

• 1:28:10Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  But whenever I've seen a group work together to figure things out, then some rather remarkable things happen.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  And so then the question is, how do you set it up, wherever you are? So that people feel like they own it, they own the culture, they have the, that it's their problem to solve?

• 1:28:31Rich Roll?

  You're a avid meditator, right?

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  Which is not surprising, because I think, you know, my view on this, or, or, you know, kind of how I interpret this is... An elevation of consciousness, like I see somebody who went into an organization, tried to look at what was happening objectively, tried to think of a creative solution that would help create a better environment for people to do their best work. And you deployed certain strategies towards that end, but ultimately, to me, they're all a reflection of this desire to elevate the collective consciousness of an organization. Like if

• 1:29:22Rich Roll?

  you can, if you can create an environment where pettiness and politics and judgment and backstabbing and all of that fades into the background because there's a higher purpose and a shared sort of sense of togetherness around that that comes with a mindful approach to, you know, being present with the people that you work with and finding a conscious way to lead them. Everything else is, is, is a product or a reflection of that practice.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I believe very strongly in that. I almost made a mistake once too, and that's why I want to add this in is that after we went public in the year afterwards, I did ask this question of myself was, was how much of it was me? And, and at the end of the year, I realized, oh, actually, trying to answer the question is a bad thing to do because it's

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  You're thinking about yourself.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's separating myself from others. And so part of meditation, which, you know, came later was like, I think sort of, and the weird thing is like you're, it's something you're by yourself, but one of the things that comes out of it is like a genuine connection and the appreciation of what other people do, and that we're not separate. We really aren't separate. And

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  To try to, you know, think that we are, that it's all by ourselves like that. It's actually not good. It's not healthy to think that way.

• 1:31:00Rich Roll?

  Did that come to you as a result, like over time, as a result of your meditation practice, or was that?

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  No, I said at the end of that year.

• 1:31:10Rich Roll?

  A lightning bolt?

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  No, it was actually in the year of 1996, in which I was wrestling with two personal things. One of them was, okay, I had this goal for many years, which was one of my driving forces. Well, we just did it. Now what?

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:31:33Rich Roll?

  Right, a loss of purpose after achieving your goal of creating a computer animated film, that goal being realized, and then suddenly having a now what moment?

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Yes, and part of it was, well, okay, just repeating it actually doesn't feel creative. So, okay, we do a film again, let's just repeating what we've done. So we've stopped. So, no, actually, there's a big problem. The big problem is, how does a group do? Because as a group, we do something rather special, but I know that groups are fragile. So now the question is, how do you keep doing it? And it was one of the things Steve said before we did this. He said, the thing that happens to all companies is, right after they get their first product, they come out with a dud. So, that's like a, I mean, he's

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  just making a comment, right? I mean, other people said this, similar sort of thing. But for me, it was like an internal challenge. Okay, how do we not do that? So that's a special kind of challenge.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  So that was like the next 10 years, like addressing this thing. How does this group work? And so for me personally, that's the thing to do. But the other one was the realization that, that whatever that is, it isn't something I do by myself. And that to try to say, okay, how much is me is actually a bad question. And the reason I even brought it up was, although it's a little embarrassing to say that I was saying something, which is obviously a fairly self-oriented thing to do.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  But it's, I recognize that other people say the same thing, except they think they need to answer the question. And if they work to answer the question, then that actually means they separate themselves from the group. And I did hear, this is from a director of one of our short films. And after he made the short film, it was a nice short film, but then he left. Because he said, "I want to know what I can do without the safety net." The safety net? This group of people is a safety net? No, they're not. They're the integral fabric in which we're working. These are our friends and they're like, we're all helping each other.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's just how you think about these things, I think, matters.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  And the genuine appreciation of what others do is critical.

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  Where is your head in terms of the direction that technology is headed and how that's going to impact storytelling? In other words, you were witness to the first, you know, VR headsets 50 years ago. We're seeing rapid developments in AR, VR, AI. How is this going to impact how we tell stories and how people are going to enjoy stories? Like, it almost feels like the first computer-generated graphics and animation, which you were integral in, has matured to the point where those tools on some level are going to reach some kind of tech singularity with all these other tools that are out there,

• 1:34:56Rich Roll?

  where the effects that you see in a live-action motion picture and the computer animation for animated films, there's going to be a blurring of the lines and these two genres are going to start. Overlapping more and more.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  It affects every industry now, but it is true because we've had this underlying exponential activity that's been driving this. And the interaction between graphics and the games world. So it was actually the funding that came out of selling things into the games world, which enabled the chips to be fast enough to enable machine learning, neural networks, an idea that was first written about in 1948. The thing about exponential growth is it can't continue forever.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  So what happens is it either runs out or it morphs into something else. Now, it's pretty unpredictable, except that it can't continue like it's doing forever, so it's going to have dramatic changes. Dramatic changes are more difficult to predict. The important thing is to know that it is going to change and that it's unpredictable. And that's a hard concept for people to get, just as rapid change is hard to get. So we're definitely at one of those points in the next while where something fairly dramatic will happen just because of all the changes are going on.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  So just in terms of storytelling, the way we communicate with each other is through stories. If you hold a child in your lap, then you're communicating something to them. If you hand them a pad, then that's also communicating something to them. And so it's telling a story, but it's not the same kind of story. All these things are at play at the same time, and storytelling is one of the major components of this.

• 1:36:58Rich Roll?

  But would you say that overall you're a tech optimist? Or are you fearing what some of these powerful technologies portend?

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Well, I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I've always felt like.

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  You're a neutralist.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  And just like I am with, you know, politics or whatever, it's like, okay, we're not, we don't get swayed too far because we've got to, this is all very complicated. We have to wander our way through it and not get derailed because the problems are hard. And since the problems are hard, we're thinking, okay, how do we solve it? Who solves it? What are the consequences? And so we, you get opinions, as you know, you can get all sorts of opinions written on all sides of it. I like to know what the opinions are because they're seeing things that I can't see. I want to know what they see.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  And it also helps inform us in terms of what we do, how we behave, how we marshal the resources that we have. Most people at companies want to do good in the world. That's a force of, of, a source of energy. So how do, how do you harness the energy of your own people to do something good?

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  And so that's the, always the big question. How do you harness that energy, that desire in a way that they feel good about it and you feel good about it? And you actually end up with something that has a positive impact.

• 1:38:29Rich Roll?

  That's a pretty good mission question, isn't it?

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Yes, and, and for me personally, because it isn't really part of a mission statement, it's like, okay, what kind of impact we make? What's, what's a positive impact that we can make in the world?

• 1:38:43Rich Roll?

  I think that's a beautiful question to end this. Thank you, Ed.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  My pleasure. I really enjoyed talking with you.

• 1:38:49Rich Roll?

  It was great to talk to you. I just, you know, I adore the book Creativity, Inc. I think the work that you're doing is, is really vital and important work. And I just have a tremendous amount of respect for what you've built and how you comport yourself in the world and what you represent. So it was an honor to spend time with you today. Thank you.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's been a true joy. You're, as a conversationalist, you were wonderful.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, I appreciate that. Thanks. Come back sometime.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Thank you. Thanks.

• 1:39:23Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  My books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.