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I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth.
Edwin Catmull -
His method for taking the measure of a room was saying something definitive and outrageous—“These charts are bullshit!” or “This deal is crap!”—and watching people react. If you were brave enough to come back at him, he often respected it—poking at you, then registering your response, was his way of deducing what you thought and whether you had the guts to champion it.
Edwin Catmull
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The way I see it, my job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it. I believe, to my core, that everybody has the potential to be creative—whatever form that creativity takes—and that to encourage such development is a noble thing.
Edwin Catmull -
If you aren't experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it.
Edwin Catmull -
It's pretty popular today to say that everybody should learn to fail and that failure's a good thing. Intellectually, it's an obvious thing. But in fact, it gets conflated with another meaning of failure, so when we grow up as kids, failing in school was a really bad thing.
Edwin Catmull -
But the truth is, I have no way of accounting for all of the factors involved in any given success, and whenever I learn more, I have to revise what I think. That’s not a weakness or a flaw. That’s reality.
Edwin Catmull -
Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening.
Edwin Catmull -
The first principle was “Story Is King,” by which we meant that we would let nothing—not the technology, not the merchandising possibilities—get in the way of our story.
Edwin Catmull
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Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover.
Edwin Catmull -
Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal.
Edwin Catmull -
Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal.
Edwin Catmull -
When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.
Edwin Catmull -
We want people to feel like they can take steps to solve problems without asking permission.
Edwin Catmull -
Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas—pretty far-out ideas—into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn’t play well, he would move on.
Edwin Catmull
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Success hides problems...you don't need to address problems.
Edwin Catmull -
This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.
Edwin Catmull -
Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way.
Edwin Catmull -
For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.
Edwin Catmull -
It isn't enough to pick a path—you must go down it. By doing so, you see things you couldn't possibly see when you started out; you may not like what you see, some of it may be confusing, but at least you will have, as we like to say, "explored the neighborhood." The key point here is that even if you decide you're in the wrong place, there is still time to head toward the right place.
Edwin Catmull -
We are meaning-making creatures who read other people’s subtle clues just as they read ours.
Edwin Catmull
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You can give a great film idea to a mediocre team and they may screw it up, but if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will turn it into a great film.
Edwin Catmull -
But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.
Edwin Catmull -
We realized that our purpose was not merely to build a studio that made hit films but to foster a creative culture that would continually ask questions.
Edwin Catmull -
Good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they’re in.
Edwin Catmull