77: Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

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1. 00:00:00 and discovered something about setup.
2. 00:00:02 Like.
3. 00:00:03 - Yeah, what's that?
4. 00:00:04 That it's awesome?
5. 00:00:05 - Mind node is a part of setup.
6. 00:00:07 - Yes, it is.
7. 00:00:10 I'm so excited.
8. 00:00:11 I honestly was blown away when they said
9. 00:00:14 that they added that because there was already,
10. 00:00:16 I think I thought it's in there.
11. 00:00:17 - Yeah, it is.
12. 00:00:18 - Which is kind of like the power user one.
13. 00:00:20 And I'm like, there's no way they're gonna add my node
14. 00:00:24 'cause it's too similar.
15. 00:00:25 There's too much overlap there, but they did.
16. 00:00:28 And I am very happy.
17. 00:00:30 - I have an article that I'm working on for my blog.
18. 00:00:35 That's quite long.
19. 00:00:37 Kind of deviates from my normal topics,
20. 00:00:40 but I felt like I just needed to outline
21. 00:00:44 a whole bunch of stuff.
22. 00:00:45 And as I started writing things,
23. 00:00:47 like, well, I wanna move that around
24. 00:00:48 and I wanna move like,
25. 00:00:49 and then it occurred to me,
26. 00:00:50 it's like, come on, Joe.
27. 00:00:51 Mike talks about my node all the time.
28. 00:00:53 I should go buy my node because I don't own it.
29. 00:00:58 And then it occurred to me, like,
30. 00:00:59 wait, before you buy software,
31. 00:01:01 you're supposed to check set app first.
32. 00:01:03 Like, this is what you should do
33. 00:01:05 in the world that we live in today.
34. 00:01:06 So I pulled up set app, typed in,
35. 00:01:09 I think it was like, M-I-N, it pops up my node.
36. 00:01:13 What?
37. 00:01:15 What is this magic?
38. 00:01:16 I click install and I open the app and I go to town.
39. 00:01:20 Like, that was a moment of wizardry for me.
40. 00:01:23 - Yeah, it's awesome.
41. 00:01:25 There's really no reason not to have a set app
42. 00:01:27 subscription anymore.
43. 00:01:28 They keep adding tons of new stuff.
44. 00:01:30 I don't think you could buy a new Mac today
45. 00:01:32 and just use the Apple stuff.
46. 00:01:34 Some people maybe could,
47. 00:01:35 but if you were the type of person
48. 00:01:37 that that would not work for you,
49. 00:01:38 there is a very good chance that you could just buy a new Mac
50. 00:01:41 and a set app subscription and nothing else
51. 00:01:45 because there's so much good stuff in there.
52. 00:01:46 - Good friend of mine recently started a new job.
53. 00:01:49 And as part of that has a Mac
54. 00:01:53 and I told her, sign up for set app,
55. 00:01:58 use everything you can from that.
56. 00:02:01 And if you feel that set app is not filling your needs
57. 00:02:04 on something, shoot me a text.
58. 00:02:07 I have not heard from her since.
59. 00:02:09 (laughing)
60. 00:02:10 - And by the way, shout out to Eugene,
61. 00:02:12 who we met at Mac's back, who is set app.
62. 00:02:17 - Yes.
63. 00:02:19 - Well, he and other people, of course,
64. 00:02:21 but we both got some set app swag when we met him.
65. 00:02:25 - Yeah, I have this really cool set app pin.
66. 00:02:28 I'm super stoked about that.
67. 00:02:30 So, and we should mention set app is not sponsoring this show.
68. 00:02:34 We're just both enamored by it.
69. 00:02:35 - We just both really like it.
70. 00:02:37 And really the tie into Bookworm,
71. 00:02:39 obviously is the Mind Node stuff,
72. 00:02:40 which I talk about all the time
73. 00:02:42 and quick plug, I guess,
74. 00:02:44 for the premium membership,
75. 00:02:45 if you want to download those Mind Node files,
76. 00:02:48 they are in the PDF versions
77. 00:02:50 of the files.
78. 00:02:52 Someone had asked for the Mind Node file
79. 00:02:53 and I didn't experiment,
80. 00:02:56 I don't think it's gonna work
81. 00:02:57 through the cloud links that I use for the PDFs.
82. 00:02:59 - Okay.
83. 00:03:00 - 'Cause it's kind of like a package file
84. 00:03:00 with the images and stuff.
85. 00:03:02 - Right.
86. 00:03:02 - But I did send it via Dropbox public link.
87. 00:03:06 I don't wanna do that for everything.
88. 00:03:08 So, I'll throw it out there for people who are premium members.
89. 00:03:10 If you do want the actual Mind Node files,
90. 00:03:12 you can contact me directly in the Bookworm club
91. 00:03:14 and I'll send them to you.
92. 00:03:15 But I don't wanna just make a habit
93. 00:03:17 of uploading every single Mind Node file
94. 00:03:19 that I do to the club.
95. 00:03:21 It's a bit more work,
96. 00:03:22 but happy to do it if people really want it.
97. 00:03:25 - Sure.
98. 00:03:25 Well, we didn't plan to do plugs for set app in Mind Node,
99. 00:03:30 but that just happened.
100. 00:03:32 So, let's step into outline mode.
101. 00:03:35 Mike, did you try more stuff?
102. 00:03:38 - Oh, did I try stuff?
103. 00:03:40 (laughs)
104. 00:03:42 Okay, so as we're recording this,
105. 00:03:44 earlier this week,
106. 00:03:46 I went to hang out with the rest of the Blanc Media Team.
107. 00:03:50 - Cool.
108. 00:03:51 - And got to hang out for,
109. 00:03:54 well, it was basically Monday late afternoon
110. 00:03:57 through Wednesday, early afternoon.
111. 00:04:00 And one of the things that we did,
112. 00:04:03 which is definitely new stuff for me,
113. 00:04:06 is we went rock climbing.
114. 00:04:08 - Nice.
115. 00:04:09 - So, a little bit of context here.
116. 00:04:12 I have never gone rock climbing.
117. 00:04:14 I have never wanted to go rock climbing.
118. 00:04:16 I am scared of heights.
119. 00:04:18 So, I went along with it
120. 00:04:22 and kind of in the back of my head,
121. 00:04:24 I forgot about this action item,
122. 00:04:25 but kind of the back of my head,
123. 00:04:26 I'm like, it'll be fine,
124. 00:04:27 and I should push myself to try something new.
125. 00:04:29 So, I did.
126. 00:04:30 And we did the tall walls at this place.
127. 00:04:34 And this place, it was a lot bigger
128. 00:04:36 than your average rock climbing gym.
129. 00:04:39 I think they had like 30-something of these tall walls,
130. 00:04:43 and then they had like the bouldering stuff.
131. 00:04:45 And this is all new to me,
132. 00:04:47 but apparently like there's a whole bunch
133. 00:04:48 of different versions of rock climbing,
134. 00:04:50 and they had everything.
135. 00:04:51 - Right.
136. 00:04:52 - So, we did the tall walls,
137. 00:04:53 and they have these auto-bullies.
138. 00:04:55 So, like you hook up, and then you climb,
139. 00:04:58 and then the auto-bullay will,
140. 00:04:59 like when you disconnect from the wall,
141. 00:05:01 it will catch you,
142. 00:05:02 but there's a little bit of a gap before it catches you.
143. 00:05:05 So, I did not test the auto-bullay
144. 00:05:08 before I climbed the first wall.
145. 00:05:10 - Oh, that is awesome.
146. 00:05:11 I love that you didn't test it.
147. 00:05:12 - And I got to the top,
148. 00:05:14 and I'm like trying to test it a little bit,
149. 00:05:16 but I couldn't, while still holding onto the wall,
150. 00:05:19 disconnect enough for it to catch.
151. 00:05:21 So, I got to the top of the first wall,
152. 00:05:22 and I could not let go.
153. 00:05:24 But eventually, I got it,
154. 00:05:29 and then after that, it was awesome.
155. 00:05:32 The last one I did,
156. 00:05:33 I think it was a 40-foot wall,
157. 00:05:35 going back and looking at their website.
158. 00:05:37 It was like the tallest one in there,
159. 00:05:38 and they have obviously different difficulty levels
160. 00:05:41 from 5.6, I think, is the easy level,
161. 00:05:45 and then it goes up to 5.12 or something.
162. 00:05:48 5.11, I think.
163. 00:05:49 Okay.
164. 00:05:50 The last one that I did,
165. 00:05:51 I believe was a 5.8.
166. 00:05:54 So, kind of in the middle,
167. 00:05:56 and definitely pushed my non-existent rock climbing skills
168. 00:06:01 to the limit, but I made it.
169. 00:06:02 And I got home, and I found myself
170. 00:06:06 googling rock climbing gyms
171. 00:06:07 to see if I could find something close by
172. 00:06:10 that I could do it again.
173. 00:06:10 Turns out there's nothing within an hour of me.
174. 00:06:13 Of course.
175. 00:06:14 Which, well, anything good within an hour of me.
176. 00:06:16 But, yeah.
177. 00:06:18 So, I definitely did try more stuff, I guess.
178. 00:06:22 And turns out I liked it.
179. 00:06:25 Nice.
180. 00:06:27 I'm proud of you, Mike.
181. 00:06:28 Well done. Thanks.
182. 00:06:29 Unfortunately, I was too terrified at the time
183. 00:06:33 to even think about having somebody take a picture of me,
184. 00:06:35 so I would have proof of this,
185. 00:06:37 but I did indeed go rock climbing.
186. 00:06:39 Well done, sir.
187. 00:06:40 (laughs)
188. 00:06:41 Thank you.
189. 00:06:42 Well, I will say you succeeded
190. 00:06:44 in trying more stuff then.
191. 00:06:46 I had one follow-up action item,
192. 00:06:49 and that was to set intentions for homeschooling.
193. 00:06:52 Turns out this is a lot harder than we thought.
194. 00:06:54 At least than I thought.
195. 00:06:56 And in the midst of conversations about it with my wife,
196. 00:06:59 we're probably about a third of the way through
197. 00:07:02 that discussion, but it's kind of an ongoing thing.
198. 00:07:05 Every once in a while, we'll stop
199. 00:07:07 and we'll have a conversation about it.
200. 00:07:09 One of those is very likely to happen this afternoon
201. 00:07:11 because we're going mushroom hunting together.
202. 00:07:14 Just the two of us date night in the woods.
203. 00:07:16 That'll be fun.
204. 00:07:17 That sounds like the ultimate habit date night.
205. 00:07:20 It does.
206. 00:07:20 It does.
207. 00:07:21 I posted a picture earlier this morning
208. 00:07:24 about a mushroom that I took a picture of,
209. 00:07:27 and somebody wisely commented that,
210. 00:07:31 hey, that's a brightly colored mushroom.
211. 00:07:33 Aren't brightly colored mushrooms
212. 00:07:34 usually something you want to avoid?
213. 00:07:35 Yes. Yes, in fact, they are.
214. 00:07:37 This one remained where I found it.
215. 00:07:39 It was simply a photo opportunity,
216. 00:07:41 and it was nothing more than that.
217. 00:07:43 That was not a dinner mushroom, by any means.
218. 00:07:46 All right.
219. 00:07:47 So we're in the midst of these homeschooling
220. 00:07:49 intentions conversations.
221. 00:07:52 They will continue.
222. 00:07:53 Can't really say that they're the type of thing
223. 00:07:54 I could report on, but I can say that I am successfully
224. 00:07:57 going through this action item.
225. 00:07:59 Awesome. There you go.
226. 00:08:00 All right.
227. 00:08:01 One more thing, I guess, real quickly,
228. 00:08:03 before we get into the book.
229. 00:08:05 It's been a while since we mentioned the iTunes reviews,
230. 00:08:09 and I want to just call this out because I looked at them
231. 00:08:13 before we started recording.
232. 00:08:15 And I noticed that we did have more reviews
233. 00:08:18 than the last time that I had checked,
234. 00:08:20 which honestly was weeks ago, maybe months ago.
235. 00:08:22 And then I noticed also that the number of one-star reviews
236. 00:08:26 has gone up.
237. 00:08:28 Which, at that point, my thought was, yes, we're winning.
238. 00:08:32 Yeah.
239. 00:08:33 So this is interesting because your initial reaction is,
240. 00:08:35 oh, people don't like my thing.
241. 00:08:37 But then I thought about it a little bit,
242. 00:08:41 and I realized that the reason that we typically
243. 00:08:44 get those one-star reviews is because you or I either
244. 00:08:47 rail on a book that somebody else has recommended.
245. 00:08:50 Yep.
246. 00:08:51 It probably happened with the four-hour work week,
247. 00:08:53 to be honest.
248. 00:08:54 It was probably either the four-hour work week
249. 00:08:57 or getting results the agile one.
250. 00:08:58 Yeah, true.
251. 00:08:59 It could have been getting results.
252. 00:09:00 It was probably one of those, too.
253. 00:09:01 Yeah.
254. 00:09:02 But I also know, interestingly, that when we rail on books,
255. 00:09:07 it's also when the download numbers tend to go up.
256. 00:09:10 Yep.
257. 00:09:11 So people want us to pick on books.
258. 00:09:14 People don't want us to pick on books.
259. 00:09:16 I mean, make up your mind.
260. 00:09:17 I figure we just pick the ones we want to read.
261. 00:09:19 The takeaway here is just, you know,
262. 00:09:22 we're going to keep doing what we do.
263. 00:09:23 But I do want to say thank you to the people who do take time
264. 00:09:26 to leave a review.
265. 00:09:28 It does help us out.
266. 00:09:29 And I don't want to--
267. 00:09:31 I don't want to make it sound like we're completely
268. 00:09:33 dependent on those types of things.
269. 00:09:35 But the truth of the matter is that there
270. 00:09:37 is a mystery algorithm that iTunes uses.
271. 00:09:39 And iTunes is where most people listen to podcasts.
272. 00:09:43 So if you go leave a review that works the algorithm,
273. 00:09:47 and there's a better chance that people can find it.
274. 00:09:49 And likewise, on Overcast, which is actually
275. 00:09:52 like a surprisingly large percentage of our users,
276. 00:09:57 Libson tells us just basically what app they use
277. 00:09:59 to listen to it.
278. 00:10:00 And a lot of people use Overcast.
279. 00:10:02 I do this for all the podcasts that I listen to.
280. 00:10:05 If I really like an episode, I just hit the star icon
281. 00:10:07 at the bottom.
282. 00:10:08 I don't even know how Marco computes it anymore.
283. 00:10:11 But I do know that Overcast is a really great job
284. 00:10:14 of showing me recommended episodes based on people
285. 00:10:18 that I used to follow on Twitter.
286. 00:10:19 It's not how he does it anymore.
287. 00:10:21 But basically, like people who listen to this sort of thing
288. 00:10:23 helps them find other stuff.
289. 00:10:24 So not just Bookworm, but if you really enjoy a podcast,
290. 00:10:28 you know, there's little things you can do
291. 00:10:30 to help the producers of said podcasts.
292. 00:10:32 So.
293. 00:10:33 Right.
294. 00:10:34 Right.
295. 00:10:34 There you go.
296. 00:10:35 Awesome.
297. 00:10:36 Well, that said, let's step into today's book,
298. 00:10:39 which is Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull,
299. 00:10:43 who was the president, is the president of Pixar still is?
300. 00:10:49 To be honest, I don't know.
301. 00:10:51 I was under the assumption that he was, but I haven't looked.
302. 00:10:54 Yeah.
303. 00:10:55 That came out of my mouth and then I realized,
304. 00:10:57 wait, I'm not actually certain of that.
305. 00:10:59 I'm pretty sure he's still the president of Pixar
306. 00:11:04 and now head of Disney animation as well.
307. 00:11:09 So this book is quite different than what we would normally do
308. 00:11:14 for Bookworm.
309. 00:11:16 Its primary purpose is a story of Pixar
310. 00:11:19 and how it became what it is.
311. 00:11:22 But in order to tell that story,
312. 00:11:24 he has to share the business principles
313. 00:11:28 and the relationship principles and the creativity
314. 00:11:32 principles that they had to follow and develop over 10, 20,
315. 00:11:37 what is it, 20 years now, almost 20 years, somewhere in that range.
316. 00:11:41 Over that amount of time, they've had to develop a lot of just
317. 00:11:45 general ways of operating as a company in order
318. 00:11:47 to protect the creativity that they have with their films.
319. 00:11:52 And this, I feel, is a very fascinating journey to go on
320. 00:11:57 because if you can extract those principles
321. 00:12:01 and learn how to apply those, I feel that it would be extremely helpful.
322. 00:12:05 But it's also just a fascinating history of the journey
323. 00:12:09 that Ed and John Lasseter and the team at Pixar have gone through
324. 00:12:15 to continually hit number one in the box office over and over and over again.
325. 00:12:22 Everybody has their favorite Pixar movie, and it's a thing in and of itself.
326. 00:12:26 They just continue to have hit after hit.
327. 00:12:30 And this explains why to a large degree.
328. 00:12:33 So I really enjoyed this book.
329. 00:12:35 It was a good read, even though it is quite a bit different.
330. 00:12:38 I have no idea how I'm going to rate this,
331. 00:12:39 so I got to figure that out while we talk.
332. 00:12:42 Yeah, when I read the first chapter,
333. 00:12:45 it starts with a story of how they picked a different format
334. 00:12:50 for the conference table in one of their rooms.
335. 00:12:53 And then it kind of goes into the Ed Catmull story.
336. 00:12:56 And at that point, I was thinking to myself,
337. 00:12:58 "Joe, what did you get us into?"
338. 00:13:01 Yeah, I had the same thoughts, like, "What did I do?"
339. 00:13:03 Yeah, I'm not sure if I would say that
340. 00:13:09 I wish that hadn't been there.
341. 00:13:11 Like, I guess, you know, when we read books,
342. 00:13:13 the tendency based on our bookworm perspective
343. 00:13:16 is to nitpick all the little things that we would change
344. 00:13:19 or we didn't really like.
345. 00:13:21 And while the Ed Catmull story really felt like,
346. 00:13:24 at the beginning anyways, like, we were a little bit duped.
347. 00:13:26 Like, this isn't what I was signed up for.
348. 00:13:29 And maybe in that context, it's a little bit dry
349. 00:13:34 or not interesting, not saying that Ed Catmull
350. 00:13:36 is not interesting, but like, it's the kind of thing
351. 00:13:38 you would find in a biography.
352. 00:13:40 And I picked up this book, "Not Expecting a Biography."
353. 00:13:45 So it was a little bit of a shock
354. 00:13:48 through the first couple chapters this season,
355. 00:13:50 basically telling his life story.
356. 00:13:53 There are some interesting anecdotes in here.
357. 00:13:55 I really don't care who Ed Catmull's two childhood heroes were.
358. 00:13:59 You know, that kind of stuff is like, "Well, okay."
359. 00:14:03 But it is kind of cool to know that he was the one behind
360. 00:14:06 really the first computer animation,
361. 00:14:08 that hand thing that he made in 1973.
362. 00:14:11 Yep.
363. 00:14:12 And that kind of sets the stage for like,
364. 00:14:14 what his interests and passions really are.
365. 00:14:17 I don't think we need to get into a whole lot of the details here.
366. 00:14:20 I'll try to summarize this.
367. 00:14:21 So basically, he grew up wanting to do computer animation.
368. 00:14:26 Really liked the concept of animation,
369. 00:14:30 really liked technology, tried to combine those things
370. 00:14:32 in a time when it really wasn't a thing
371. 00:14:35 and went to University of Utah, I believe,
372. 00:14:40 which I thought was interesting.
373. 00:14:41 Like, that doesn't seem like the cutting edge technology
374. 00:14:44 powerhouse, but basically that's the program
375. 00:14:47 there kind of was.
376. 00:14:49 From there, he went and joined this agency in New York,
377. 00:14:52 then worked with George Lucas.
378. 00:14:55 And while he was there, some Disney animators showed up.
379. 00:14:58 One of them was John Lasseter.
380. 00:14:59 He ended up getting fired by Disney a little bit later.
381. 00:15:01 They stayed in touch and then they started working
382. 00:15:06 with Pixar and eventually Steve Jobs.
383. 00:15:09 Which kind of leads into the other thing
384. 00:15:12 that I think people might expect from this book
385. 00:15:16 is a description, a very long detailed description
386. 00:15:21 of what it was like to work with Steve Jobs.
387. 00:15:23 And while there is some of that stuff in there,
388. 00:15:26 the majority of this book, I think, is talking about
389. 00:15:28 their systems and their processes, the things
390. 00:15:31 that they did right and also some of the mistakes
391. 00:15:33 that they made, the things that they learned
392. 00:15:35 and how they tried to fix them.
393. 00:15:36 So it's more of a Pixar management biography
394. 00:15:41 than anything else if that makes any sense.
395. 00:15:44 - Right, yeah, no, and I think it makes a lot of sense
396. 00:15:46 to do it that way because I'm with you.
397. 00:15:48 I don't really, the beginnings of Pixar
398. 00:15:53 through Ed Catmull's story.
399. 00:15:55 I struggled with that side of it.
400. 00:16:00 But at the same time, I think you have a tendency
401. 00:16:03 to start criticizing books earlier in the reading process
402. 00:16:08 than I do. - I do.
403. 00:16:09 - That's something I've noticed whenever I talk
404. 00:16:12 to people who are in the middle of reading a book,
405. 00:16:14 do they have a tendency to try to figure out
406. 00:16:18 what they think about it in the midst of the introduction?
407. 00:16:22 Or do they wait until after chapter one?
408. 00:16:25 I'm more of a like wait till chapter two
409. 00:16:28 or maybe even three type of person.
410. 00:16:31 And correct me if I'm wrong, Mike,
411. 00:16:34 but I feel like you start doing that in the introduction,
412. 00:16:36 which I'm not sure there's a right or wrong
413. 00:16:38 on that process, but is that fair?
414. 00:16:40 - Well, the red flag went up in the introduction
415. 00:16:43 and then chapters one and two just confirmed it.
416. 00:16:48 - Yeah, yeah.
417. 00:16:49 - And then even chapter three,
418. 00:16:53 we're starting to get into the Pixar stuff.
419. 00:16:56 And again, I'm not sure that you could remove any of this
420. 00:17:01 because it kind of is foundational
421. 00:17:03 for some of the stuff that he alludes to later.
422. 00:17:07 But at the time, I'm thinking like,
423. 00:17:11 when is this gonna get rolling
424. 00:17:12 and it really wasn't until chapter four in my opinion,
425. 00:17:15 with the story of the Toy Story 2 disaster,
426. 00:17:19 which is my terminology, not theirs,
427. 00:17:22 but it was kind of a crisis moment.
428. 00:17:25 And if that had gone the other way,
429. 00:17:27 Pixar probably doesn't exist.
430. 00:17:30 - Right, well, going back,
431. 00:17:31 like the Ed Catmull story,
432. 00:17:34 because it took a while to tell that story,
433. 00:17:37 I had started judging it somewhat
434. 00:17:40 by the time I got to the end of it.
435. 00:17:41 And although I understand his story is,
436. 00:17:46 it's an interesting story,
437. 00:17:48 but I couldn't quite figure out why it was there.
438. 00:17:51 You know, there's, he essentially has a journey of
439. 00:17:56 wanting to create the first 100% animated,
440. 00:18:00 computer animated film, feature length film.
441. 00:18:03 That was the goal.
442. 00:18:04 Toy Story, the original Pixar film,
443. 00:18:08 was the culmination of that 20 year journey of Ed Catmull.
444. 00:18:13 Post Toy Story though, he has a crisis
445. 00:18:17 because now he has succeeded in his 20 year goal
446. 00:18:21 and wants to figure out what comes next.
447. 00:18:23 And it takes him a year to realize that
448. 00:18:26 the development of the creativity culture in Pixar
449. 00:18:30 is his next mission and protecting that.
450. 00:18:34 - Yep.
451. 00:18:35 - So that's really what he goes through.
452. 00:18:38 And is, I think, this is my speculation,
453. 00:18:43 I think the reason he shared that was to point out
454. 00:18:46 the purpose of the book and show that yes,
455. 00:18:49 this is something that he is passionate about
456. 00:18:51 in the development of the company of Pixar.
457. 00:18:55 And I think there's a lot of credibility to give to him
458. 00:18:59 as a result of that story,
459. 00:19:00 even though it felt a little out of place when it happened.
460. 00:19:04 - Yeah.
461. 00:19:05 - I think it did advise the rest of the book
462. 00:19:07 without it being explicit.
463. 00:19:10 - Well, I get it, once you've read through it,
464. 00:19:13 you can understand why it's there,
465. 00:19:15 but when you're going through it,
466. 00:19:16 your perspective is a little bit different
467. 00:19:18 because he's basically telling you all the cool stuff
468. 00:19:22 that he did.
469. 00:19:23 - Right.
470. 00:19:24 - And if you were sitting down with somebody in a room,
471. 00:19:27 meeting them for coffee, dinner, whatever,
472. 00:19:29 and they just talk for the first 30 minutes
473. 00:19:33 about all of the things that they've done,
474. 00:19:35 your initial impression is,
475. 00:19:37 well, this guy's full of himself, right?
476. 00:19:39 - Yeah.
477. 00:19:40 - Yeah.
478. 00:19:40 - And what he does is he,
479. 00:19:44 I don't think that anymore after going through it,
480. 00:19:46 but the first time that you're going through it,
481. 00:19:47 you're like, well, what is this?
482. 00:19:50 This isn't what I signed up for,
483. 00:19:52 and you're looking for an opportunity to leave
484. 00:19:54 and with Bookworm, there is no opportunity,
485. 00:19:56 you just push through when you talk about it.
486. 00:19:58 - Yep.
487. 00:19:59 (laughs)
488. 00:20:00 - But the average person,
489. 00:20:00 I could totally see them saying like,
490. 00:20:02 well, this had Catmul guy,
491. 00:20:04 I don't wanna, I don't really care.
492. 00:20:06 Like, these are the kinds of things
493. 00:20:07 that maybe your family is really interested in.
494. 00:20:10 You know, I've been in those situations,
495. 00:20:12 those conversations with people who can tell a good story,
496. 00:20:17 and sometimes they're sharing all these details,
497. 00:20:19 and they're necessary to the story,
498. 00:20:21 they come back and they touch on them later.
499. 00:20:23 And in the moment, it's like, okay,
500. 00:20:25 when are you gonna get to the part
501. 00:20:26 that I really wanna hear?
502. 00:20:27 That's kind of what this is like.
503. 00:20:29 Sometimes they just never get there.
504. 00:20:30 Sometimes you leave the conversation and you're like,
505. 00:20:33 well, this person just like talking about themselves.
506. 00:20:36 I kind of had an experience that a couple of weeks ago.
507. 00:20:40 So I don't wanna go into the details here,
508. 00:20:42 but I walked away from it,
509. 00:20:44 and I was just in a terrible mood, and my wife is like,
510. 00:20:47 what's your deal?
511. 00:20:48 I was like, well, I didn't even realize
512. 00:20:52 that it impacted me this much,
513. 00:20:53 but really I just can't stand being around this person
514. 00:20:55 because they don't pay attention.
515. 00:20:58 It's all about them.
516. 00:21:00 And I realize that like,
517. 00:21:01 I just don't like being around people like that.
518. 00:21:03 So as I said reading this book,
519. 00:21:04 I'm like, I don't like being around you, Ed.
520. 00:21:07 But it's an unfair characterization
521. 00:21:10 because the rest of the book,
522. 00:21:13 he shared basically what he needed to.
523. 00:21:15 I don't feel like now that it was longer than it needed to be,
524. 00:21:19 but it did definitely take a little bit to get rolling.
525. 00:21:21 - Yeah, and that's fair.
526. 00:21:23 Now, one thing I want to point out about this book
527. 00:21:27 is it is not a three part book.
528. 00:21:28 It's a four part book, Mike.
529. 00:21:31 - Yep.
530. 00:21:32 As weird as it is made me happy.
531. 00:21:35 It's like, thank you for being abnormal.
532. 00:21:37 I guess that's the story of Pixar, do things different.
533. 00:21:40 - Yeah.
534. 00:21:41 - But the whole thing kicks off with part one,
535. 00:21:44 getting started, and he tells a brief history of Pixar.
536. 00:21:49 Now this is-
537. 00:21:50 - Yeah, it's just kind of what we were talking about already.
538. 00:21:52 - Yeah, it is kind of what we were talking about.
539. 00:21:54 It does delve into where Ed Catmull was working for,
540. 00:22:00 Lucasfilm for a period,
541. 00:22:03 like where his whole beginnings
542. 00:22:06 of developing an animation company came for him
543. 00:22:10 and how it moved from owner to owner
544. 00:22:13 and how I ended up in the hands of Steve Jobs.
545. 00:22:16 And the part that kind of got me in the midst of that
546. 00:22:19 was that at one point, Pixar,
547. 00:22:21 I got the number right, it was either 54 or 56 million dollars
548. 00:22:25 in the hole, in the red.
549. 00:22:27 - Yeah.
550. 00:22:28 - That dumbfounded me and Steve Jobs bankrolled that personally.
551. 00:22:33 Jeez, I like that.
552. 00:22:36 Talk about a big hole to dig out of.
553. 00:22:39 - Right, and it wasn't the first time
554. 00:22:42 that he tried to acquire the company either.
555. 00:22:45 Because before he got let go by Apple
556. 00:22:50 and founded Next, he was trying to buy them.
557. 00:22:54 And then after he got let go,
558. 00:22:58 basically they lost contact with him.
559. 00:23:00 Eventually he contacted them again
560. 00:23:02 and wanted their technology
561. 00:23:05 'cause he wanted to build a killer personal computer
562. 00:23:09 and they're like, no, that's not what we wanted to do.
563. 00:23:11 And then later on, he comes back to Apple
564. 00:23:14 and they get reconnected again.
565. 00:23:16 He's like, how are things going?
566. 00:23:17 Well, not so great.
567. 00:23:18 56 million dollars in the hole.
568. 00:23:20 - Right.
569. 00:23:21 - And that's when he buys them,
570. 00:23:22 but at each step in the process,
571. 00:23:25 they're basically putting their flag in the ground
572. 00:23:27 and they're saying, no, we are dedicated
573. 00:23:29 to computer animation.
574. 00:23:30 That's what we are.
575. 00:23:31 - Right.
576. 00:23:32 - And there are 56 million reasons
577. 00:23:33 for you not to hold that position.
578. 00:23:36 - Right.
579. 00:23:37 - You know, so I'm trying to put myself in their shoes
580. 00:23:40 and it's a little bit different maybe
581. 00:23:42 because of my family dynamic,
582. 00:23:44 but I'm thinking to myself,
583. 00:23:46 would I really be willing to fight for this thing
584. 00:23:50 after I had lost 56 million dollars in 1980 money?
585. 00:23:55 Like, I don't even know what that is worth
586. 00:23:58 with the inflation rate adjusted for today,
587. 00:24:01 but that is a really, really big hole
588. 00:24:05 that you don't know if you're gonna be able to climb out of.
589. 00:24:08 So I don't know.
590. 00:24:09 I don't think I could be that sure
591. 00:24:12 that this is the thing it's going to take off.
592. 00:24:15 A lot of people have their passion projects,
593. 00:24:18 but at some point you have to come to the reality
594. 00:24:21 that your passion project may not be financially sustainable.
595. 00:24:25 You know, fortunately for us and all the other Pixar fans,
596. 00:24:27 like they did stick with it and it did turn out okay,
597. 00:24:29 but there's definitely an alternate path here.
598. 00:24:33 - I can't say that whenever I crossed the 10 million
599. 00:24:35 in the hole mark that I would have kept going.
600. 00:24:38 - Yeah, exactly.
601. 00:24:39 - Even the, you know, 400,000 in the hole.
602. 00:24:43 Wow, 50 plus million in the hole.
603. 00:24:46 Obviously that struck a chord with me.
604. 00:24:48 And I appreciate that they continued working on it
605. 00:24:53 and I appreciate that they made it work,
606. 00:24:56 but holy buckets, they had a rough road getting there.
607. 00:25:00 - Yep.
608. 00:25:01 - Obviously if you want to know this whole story,
609. 00:25:03 pick up the book and read it.
610. 00:25:04 He goes through a lot of detail.
611. 00:25:06 We're skipping a lot.
612. 00:25:07 - Yes.
613. 00:25:08 - But there is a large amount of passion
614. 00:25:13 that went into the building of Pixar,
615. 00:25:15 especially that went into the development of Toy Story,
616. 00:25:19 the very first.
617. 00:25:20 And they do tell the entire story behind Toy Story
618. 00:25:24 and how it came about and how Steve Jobs actually positioned
619. 00:25:29 their IPO for a week after Toy Story was to release
620. 00:25:35 and game to the whole business side of things perfectly.
621. 00:25:39 - Yeah.
622. 00:25:39 - Like that's classic Steve.
623. 00:25:41 - Smart dude.
624. 00:25:41 And he basically made the company as a result of that move.
625. 00:25:46 So it's a fascinating history,
626. 00:25:51 but what happens then is after Toy Story,
627. 00:25:56 they released, I just blanked on the name of the film.
628. 00:26:00 What was number two?
629. 00:26:01 - A Bug's Life.
630. 00:26:02 - A Bug's Life.
631. 00:26:03 Yep.
632. 00:26:04 So they released Toy Story, huge success of course.
633. 00:26:07 They release a Bug's Life
634. 00:26:09 and they had some bumps in the road,
635. 00:26:12 but they had a lot of success with that as well,
636. 00:26:15 which brings us to what Mike has termed
637. 00:26:17 the Toy Story 2 disaster.
638. 00:26:20 And I don't think it's a misnomer to call it that
639. 00:26:24 because I think Ed Catmull would call it that
640. 00:26:27 given his brutal honesty with the way that he phrases things.
641. 00:26:32 Like he's like, you know that failed.
642. 00:26:34 Like we had to, you know,
643. 00:26:36 it completely fell off the tracks.
644. 00:26:38 We had to straighten it out.
645. 00:26:40 But they tried, correct me if I'm wrong on this, Mike,
646. 00:26:45 they tried to bring in new directors and some new people.
647. 00:26:50 They thought they had the process figured out.
648. 00:26:53 One of their mantras was trust the process.
649. 00:26:57 They had that nailed down and they handed it over
650. 00:26:59 to some new folks.
651. 00:27:02 And in the midst of them doing a screening of it,
652. 00:27:07 they realized this is a disaster of a film.
653. 00:27:12 And they had to fire the folks in charge
654. 00:27:17 of it, the directors working on it
655. 00:27:19 and bring in the original team that had worked
656. 00:27:21 on Toy Story, the original,
657. 00:27:23 in order to hustle, hustle, hustle
658. 00:27:27 and hit their deadlines and have any success with it.
659. 00:27:30 - Yeah.
660. 00:27:31 - They get all that right?
661. 00:27:32 - Yes.
662. 00:27:32 So I'll add a little bit more detail.
663. 00:27:36 Basically, Toy Story 2 originally started as an idea
664. 00:27:41 from Disney and they wanted to make a direct to video,
665. 00:27:46 lower quality release of Toy Story 2.
666. 00:27:50 They started working on it in a couple of months in,
667. 00:27:53 they came back and said,
668. 00:27:55 "Our standards are higher than that.
669. 00:27:56 "We can't do this."
670. 00:27:57 They wanted to do a theatrical release.
671. 00:28:00 The problem at that point was that they were already
672. 00:28:03 working on a Bug's Life, which was John Lasseter's baby.
673. 00:28:06 So they had no experienced directors on Toy Story 2.
674. 00:28:11 They did have an experienced team
675. 00:28:17 and they thought that the experienced team would be able
676. 00:28:19 to make up for the lack of experience from the directors.
677. 00:28:23 So John Lasseter and the A team are working on a Bug's Life.
678. 00:28:28 That gets shipped.
679. 00:28:29 John checks in on Toy Story 2
680. 00:28:32 and he's basically like, "This is garbage."
681. 00:28:36 So he calls together the company and he says,
682. 00:28:41 "Starting January 2nd,
683. 00:28:43 "we're gonna work really hard on this
684. 00:28:45 "because we've only got at that point
685. 00:28:46 "nine months to save the film."
686. 00:28:48 And they kind of had to start over.
687. 00:28:51 Everyone ended up pushing really hard
688. 00:28:53 and they came to the realization afterwards,
689. 00:28:56 even though the whole industry is kind of built on this,
690. 00:28:59 where there's these ebbs and flows of like,
691. 00:29:01 you have to work really hard for these periods.
692. 00:29:04 And Katmall tells this story,
693. 00:29:06 which was kind of the clarifying point to him
694. 00:29:08 that this is absolutely not okay
695. 00:29:10 and this is a sign that we were pushing people too hard
696. 00:29:13 when one of their employees came in, overtired,
697. 00:29:17 forgot to drop their kid off at daycare,
698. 00:29:20 their wife called them at work.
699. 00:29:22 He realized he had left the kid in the car
700. 00:29:24 and it was really hot and the baby ended up being okay,
701. 00:29:28 but like not a good situation.
702. 00:29:31 Obviously something like that will scare you
703. 00:29:34 into thinking like things that aren't okay.
704. 00:29:36 Like that's kind of a wake up call.
705. 00:29:39 So they pushed "Toy Story 2" out the door.
706. 00:29:41 They were able to actually release a sequel
707. 00:29:44 that did well and was not a garbage film.
708. 00:29:47 But then they kind of realized that they need to,
709. 00:29:52 they need to do things a little bit differently.
710. 00:29:54 - So I think that the piece in all of this that they learned
711. 00:30:00 was that you really need feedback
712. 00:30:04 and they had to change that whole system
713. 00:30:06 to allow brutal feedback to directors and folks
714. 00:30:11 who are building those films
715. 00:30:14 so that they don't fall off the rails like that.
716. 00:30:18 They learned a lot in the making of "Toy Story 2"
717. 00:30:23 which led them into, which in the book is now part two,
718. 00:30:29 "Protecting the New",
719. 00:30:30 they built out this team
720. 00:30:35 which they refer to as the brain trust
721. 00:30:38 and I love the concept of what they do with this,
722. 00:30:43 but this comes out in a chapter on honesty and candor
723. 00:30:47 and what they do,
724. 00:30:51 see if I can get this right,
725. 00:30:52 'cause this is, it sounds like an intense meeting
726. 00:30:55 that I don't really wanna be a part of,
727. 00:30:57 but it sounds amazing given the results
728. 00:30:58 that they have from it.
729. 00:30:59 - Oh, I wanna be there.
730. 00:31:01 - I know, I know, it's one of those,
731. 00:31:02 I wanna be on a fly on the wall,
732. 00:31:03 but I feel like I really don't wanna participate.
733. 00:31:05 (laughing)
734. 00:31:06 - I would love to participate.
735. 00:31:08 I feel like this is right up my alley.
736. 00:31:10 (laughing)
737. 00:31:12 - So the idea here is that they have a rough form of the film.
738. 00:31:17 The group, which could be 10, 15, sometimes 20 people,
739. 00:31:24 other directors, other producers, other storytellers,
740. 00:31:29 they watch this and then they go into a room,
741. 00:31:33 they grab something to eat,
742. 00:31:35 the director of the film pitches the idea to them,
743. 00:31:40 explains what they're doing,
744. 00:31:42 mentions the areas that they're struggling with,
745. 00:31:44 the ones they're excited about,
746. 00:31:46 the ones they feel they've nailed,
747. 00:31:48 and then John Lasseter typically kicks off
748. 00:31:52 with his thoughts on what worked and what didn't,
749. 00:31:55 and that starts a whole conversation
750. 00:31:57 that they just let go,
751. 00:31:59 indefinitely until it's done,
752. 00:32:00 about what they saw did and didn't work in the film.
753. 00:32:06 And the key here is that they have 100% candor
754. 00:32:10 in the process, as opposed to honesty,
755. 00:32:14 which I get his difference in terms,
756. 00:32:18 I think the idea is just be real until the truth,
757. 00:32:22 (laughing)
758. 00:32:23 was his point, but the thing that they would do is say,
759. 00:32:27 this area didn't work,
760. 00:32:29 and I'm not really sure why, or they knew why,
761. 00:32:32 this was too harsh, that he was too hard on that character,
762. 00:32:36 this one wasn't working, that guy was too small in the scene,
763. 00:32:40 I didn't believe you on your main storyline,
764. 00:32:43 and they would do all of this back and forth,
765. 00:32:46 share a lot of thoughts with each other on it,
766. 00:32:49 and then it was up to the director to decide
767. 00:32:52 if they should accept or reject any and all of these ideas.
768. 00:32:56 And because of this brain trust meeting,
769. 00:32:59 they are able to continually iterate and develop
770. 00:33:03 and build out a story that really rings true,
771. 00:33:06 as we can see with the huge amount of success
772. 00:33:10 with all the Pixar films that have come out.
773. 00:33:12 So, again, I think this brain trust meeting
774. 00:33:16 is really interesting, I'm not really sure how to apply it
775. 00:33:18 to my life, other than, how does this,
776. 00:33:21 I can try to think through how does this apply to our church,
777. 00:33:25 to some degree, but I'm not really,
778. 00:33:28 we're not in a creative endeavor really,
779. 00:33:30 so I don't really see how that could apply,
780. 00:33:32 but the concept behind the brain trust
781. 00:33:34 is incredibly intriguing to me.
782. 00:33:36 - Well, I think the way to apply this
783. 00:33:38 is something like a mastermind group,
784. 00:33:40 and I actually had a meeting
785. 00:33:42 with my mastermind group this morning,
786. 00:33:43 so I think that the honesty versus candor,
787. 00:33:48 the difference there is most clearly seen
788. 00:33:51 in that sort of setting.
789. 00:33:54 - Okay. - I guess just real briefly
790. 00:33:56 for people who aren't familiar
791. 00:33:58 with the concept of a mastermind group,
792. 00:33:59 it's a bunch of people that you allow
793. 00:34:03 to tell you the truth even if it hurts.
794. 00:34:05 So, honesty, for example, every single person would say,
795. 00:34:10 "Yes, honesty is a good thing, you should be honest."
796. 00:34:13 Okay, so how do you honestly answer
797. 00:34:16 when your wife says, "Does this dress make me look fat?"
798. 00:34:19 Okay, that's the problem.
799. 00:34:22 The candor is honesty with fewer moral connotations.
800. 00:34:26 It's forthrightness or frankness.
801. 00:34:28 So, candor is just cutting to the quick,
802. 00:34:32 saying the thing and not really caring
803. 00:34:36 what impact it's going to have on your other person
804. 00:34:38 because they've signed up for this.
805. 00:34:40 That's, does that make sense?
806. 00:34:43 - Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
807. 00:34:44 - Okay.
808. 00:34:45 So, the brain trust is kind of like this mastermind group
809. 00:34:48 of people who are there to help you
810. 00:34:51 make your thing better.
811. 00:34:52 There is no selfish agenda here.
812. 00:34:54 So, that's another thing that I think is kind of important
813. 00:34:57 to making this whole concept work.
814. 00:35:00 The people in the brain trust initially
815. 00:35:02 were John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor.
816. 00:35:05 That was the guy who did like up
817. 00:35:07 and monsters, Inc, I believe, Lee Onkrich and Joe Ramphed.
818. 00:35:12 And they were made up of people who specifically,
819. 00:35:15 Ed Catmull says, "Had a deep understanding of storytelling
820. 00:35:18 "and no authority."
821. 00:35:20 The goal was to put all of these smart, passionate people
822. 00:35:23 in a room together and then charge them
823. 00:35:25 with identifying and solving problems
824. 00:35:27 and encouraging them to be candid with each other.
825. 00:35:30 I also think, I don't remember if I wrote this down,
826. 00:35:33 but the thing about this brain trust
827. 00:35:38 and the notes that came from this was that
828. 00:35:41 the director had to change something.
829. 00:35:44 They didn't have to follow the advice
830. 00:35:47 that people had given them,
831. 00:35:49 but they had to make sure that their movie
832. 00:35:51 didn't stay the same because the theme
833. 00:35:55 that he talks about in this chapter
834. 00:35:57 is that all Pixar movies suck at the beginning.
835. 00:36:00 The goal is to get them from suck to not suck.
836. 00:36:02 So, that's gonna require a lot of revisions,
837. 00:36:05 a lot of changes.
838. 00:36:07 - Right.
839. 00:36:07 - They also outlawed Steve Jobs
840. 00:36:09 from these brain trust meetings
841. 00:36:10 because they thought he would change the video.
842. 00:36:11 - Yes, that's true.
843. 00:36:13 I forgot that point.
844. 00:36:14 - I thought it was really interesting
845. 00:36:15 because they recognize right away
846. 00:36:17 that you get the wrong person in the room
847. 00:36:19 and the whole thing breaks.
848. 00:36:21 So, I too thought about how can I create
849. 00:36:26 this sort of atmosphere in the different arenas
850. 00:36:32 that I'm involved in?
851. 00:36:34 And I think he talks about creating a brain trust here
852. 00:36:37 and there's a couple of things I wanted to call out.
853. 00:36:40 He makes a point that it takes a while
854. 00:36:43 for any group to become,
855. 00:36:47 or to mature to the point where they could become
856. 00:36:49 a brain trust because it takes a while
857. 00:36:51 for any group to develop the level of trust
858. 00:36:54 which is necessary in order to really be candid.
859. 00:36:57 Also, the people in a brain trust,
860. 00:37:01 and I would argue to people in a mastermind group
861. 00:37:02 that supplies to them as well,
862. 00:37:04 that they can't help people who don't understand
863. 00:37:11 the philosophies, so people who aren't willing
864. 00:37:13 to learn and grow,
865. 00:37:14 people who refuse to hear criticism
866. 00:37:18 without getting defensive,
867. 00:37:20 or maybe they just don't have the ability
868. 00:37:23 to digest the feedback and then make adjustments
869. 00:37:26 and start again.
870. 00:37:27 That is kind of a lot,
871. 00:37:30 but basically if you're gonna walk into a mastermind
872. 00:37:35 or a brain trust type meeting like this,
873. 00:37:37 you gotta know that it's gonna hurt a little bit,
874. 00:37:40 you gotta recognize that it's gonna benefit you
875. 00:37:43 in the long run, no pain, no gain.
876. 00:37:46 And then the other thing I wanna call out about this,
877. 00:37:48 and again, I think this applies to mastermind groups as well,
878. 00:37:50 is that they evolve over time,
879. 00:37:52 so the brain trust, even if it's the same people
880. 00:37:55 at the beginning is going to be different
881. 00:37:57 three years from now when you start this thing.
882. 00:38:00 And I think that's an interesting observation
883. 00:38:03 that can be scary to some people,
884. 00:38:05 but for growth minded people, it shouldn't be
885. 00:38:09 because you're gonna be changing too,
886. 00:38:11 and as long as the goal of the group is to grow
887. 00:38:15 and your goal is to grow,
888. 00:38:16 that's really the thing that matters,
889. 00:38:18 there's gonna be synergy there.
890. 00:38:19 - I think it was important for him to point out
891. 00:38:22 that these brain trust meetings, this team,
892. 00:38:27 it wasn't something that you could set up
893. 00:38:30 and walk away from.
894. 00:38:32 It wasn't something that you can say,
895. 00:38:35 okay, every three months we're gonna get together,
896. 00:38:37 have this meeting,
897. 00:38:38 this is the people who's gonna be a part of it,
898. 00:38:40 and this is the format of how it's gonna go,
899. 00:38:43 turn it loose.
900. 00:38:44 He made it very clear that this setup is one
901. 00:38:49 that requires constant moderation and constant observation
902. 00:38:54 and leadership.
903. 00:38:58 You have to continually work at making sure
904. 00:39:01 people feel free enough to share their ideas,
905. 00:39:05 and that others aren't taking offense at critique
906. 00:39:10 of the story.
907. 00:39:12 At one point he called out that human,
908. 00:39:15 I forget the exact phrasing, I'll have to look it up,
909. 00:39:18 but he mentions that it's great for you to have ideas,
910. 00:39:22 but don't let your ideas become you.
911. 00:39:24 - Yes, you are not your ideas.
912. 00:39:26 If you identify it too closely with your ideas,
913. 00:39:28 you will take offense when they are challenged.
914. 00:39:30 - Yes, that.
915. 00:39:31 - Which is why the one star reviews don't bother me
916. 00:39:34 because I am not bookworm.
917. 00:39:36 Bookworm is my idea,
918. 00:39:38 and I would like people to like it,
919. 00:39:40 but ultimately that one star review
920. 00:39:42 is not a judge on my character.
921. 00:39:43 - Yes.
922. 00:39:44 - It's not my identity.
923. 00:39:45 The other thing here is that the candor
924. 00:39:48 is not something that is optional, I believe.
925. 00:39:53 I think that, 'cause he makes a point
926. 00:39:57 that lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.
927. 00:40:01 I have been in those places where
928. 00:40:05 I know what I should say, but I know I can't say it
929. 00:40:11 because the people who are there
930. 00:40:13 are not going to receive it well.
931. 00:40:16 - Right.
932. 00:40:16 - And the goal of candor is to essentially remove
933. 00:40:21 the emotion from the statement,
934. 00:40:24 but it's hard to do that in a lot of contexts,
935. 00:40:30 and if it's gonna work, the feedback that you give
936. 00:40:33 has to be not emotionally charged.
937. 00:40:38 And that's one piece of it, so I can make sure
938. 00:40:40 that what I say is not emotionally charged,
939. 00:40:42 but kind of what I've learned the hard way
940. 00:40:44 is that it doesn't mean that the person
941. 00:40:47 I am communicating it to is not going to receive it
942. 00:40:50 as emotionally charged.
943. 00:40:52 And ultimately that is my responsibility
944. 00:40:55 to make sure that they receive it correctly.
945. 00:40:58 Now, sometimes there's things you just can't do anything about,
946. 00:41:03 no matter what you're gonna say,
947. 00:41:05 people are gonna receive it wrong.
948. 00:41:06 So in those situations, I just don't say anything.
949. 00:41:08 (laughing)
950. 00:41:10 - Mama always told me, can't say something nice,
951. 00:41:13 don't say anything at all.
952. 00:41:14 - Yep, yep.
953. 00:41:15 - Like that's really the truth principle here,
954. 00:41:18 but I am finding myself also looking for
955. 00:41:21 situations, organizations, really everything that I do,
956. 00:41:27 I want to facilitate this.
957. 00:41:29 And I want this to be the goal.
958. 00:41:34 Now, some things have the potential to grow to the point
959. 00:41:39 where you can have candor.
960. 00:41:42 And like I said, it just takes time to get to that point.
961. 00:41:46 But if you're further down the food chain in a company
962. 00:41:51 where candor is not welcomed,
963. 00:41:55 like that's a red flag in my opinion,
964. 00:41:57 because it's just gonna compound over time.
965. 00:42:01 And eventually it's going to have a negative impact
966. 00:42:05 when the thing that needs to be said is finally said
967. 00:42:08 and people blow up.
968. 00:42:10 Or the company or organization continues to be ineffective
969. 00:42:14 because no one's willing to deal with the real problems
970. 00:42:17 that are there, 'cause they don't want
971. 00:42:18 to hurt people's feelings.
972. 00:42:19 Both of those situations are not good.
973. 00:42:21 So I guess my takeaway is try to align myself
974. 00:42:25 with people who prioritize candor.
975. 00:42:27 - Right.
976. 00:42:28 And I think there's a lot of benefit to being aware
977. 00:42:32 of the other person's ability to accept that feedback.
978. 00:42:37 It's, we all know people who, if you were to share,
979. 00:42:41 you're making a terrible choice in your life,
980. 00:42:44 they're gonna flip over backwards and just lash out.
981. 00:42:48 Everybody knows someone like that.
982. 00:42:50 But I think that if you are conscientious of that
983. 00:42:55 and aware of how people can react to your feedback
984. 00:43:00 and you convey the idea that you're open
985. 00:43:04 to people critiquing you,
986. 00:43:06 to me that's a key component that made these
987. 00:43:10 brain trust meetings successful,
988. 00:43:12 is that the director who was in charge of that film
989. 00:43:17 was open to the feedback.
990. 00:43:18 If he had not been open to the feedback,
991. 00:43:21 the whole thing could have fallen apart.
992. 00:43:23 And that was a very key component to the whole thing.
993. 00:43:25 So in the midst of conversations with people
994. 00:43:27 in the process of giving constructive criticism,
995. 00:43:32 if the recipient is open to that,
996. 00:43:37 that's where a lot of the value can come from.
997. 00:43:39 And that's what I think, as long as you and I are open
998. 00:43:41 to that, we're totally cool with people giving us
999. 00:43:43 one star reviews.
1000. 00:43:45 Do I want that?
1001. 00:43:46 No, of course not.
1002. 00:43:48 But at the same time,
1003. 00:43:51 I would much rather know that people don't care for it
1004. 00:43:54 and would really honestly like to know why.
1005. 00:43:56 Yep.
1006. 00:43:57 If you don't like it, why don't you like it?
1007. 00:44:00 Don't just tell me, oh, that's terrible.
1008. 00:44:03 And really, if I could refer,
1009. 00:44:04 is that don't tell me why you don't like it,
1010. 00:44:07 but tell me what can make it better.
1011. 00:44:09 Correct.
1012. 00:44:10 What can we do differently?
1013. 00:44:12 Not just to change so that we're more in line
1014. 00:44:16 with somebody's preferences,
1015. 00:44:17 but is there an underlying actual problem
1016. 00:44:21 with how we are doing things?
1017. 00:44:22 And is there a better way to accomplish our goals?
1018. 00:44:25 That's the kind of thing that's valuable.
1019. 00:44:28 And you have to tease out because a lot of the,
1020. 00:44:30 'cause a lot of people will just complain
1021. 00:44:32 and they'll say, I don't like that.
1022. 00:44:33 Correct.
1023. 00:44:34 Well, okay, I probably won't be able to fix that.
1024. 00:44:38 For the person who says,
1025. 00:44:39 you guys have too much religious undertones,
1026. 00:44:42 it is who I am.
1027. 00:44:43 I'm sorry, but it's a big part of my story.
1028. 00:44:46 And I realized that you and I,
1029. 00:44:49 one star reviewer guy,
1030. 00:44:50 because of that reason,
1031. 00:44:51 like we probably won't be able to reconcile that.
1032. 00:44:54 I would if I could,
1033. 00:44:56 but there's just no way that I can make an authentic podcast
1034. 00:44:59 and talk about these things in a meaningful way
1035. 00:45:01 without being phony.
1036. 00:45:03 And that feels phony to me
1037. 00:45:04 because it is so ingrained in my identity.
1038. 00:45:08 You know, that's way more part of my identity
1039. 00:45:10 than bookworm is.
1040. 00:45:11 So I'm not gonna flip those.
1041. 00:45:14 Yep.
1042. 00:45:14 All right, that said,
1043. 00:45:16 he has a whole chapter here.
1044. 00:45:18 We are skipping some chapters here, by the way.
1045. 00:45:21 There's a lot.
1046. 00:45:22 It was, how long is this, Mike?
1047. 00:45:23 Little over 300 pages.
1048. 00:45:25 Just under,
1049. 00:45:27 but there are 13 chapters.
1050. 00:45:29 We could have tried to nail every chapter,
1051. 00:45:31 but I felt like the four sections
1052. 00:45:34 kind of lend themselves
1053. 00:45:35 to tying a couple of these ideas together.
1054. 00:45:37 And there's no need to go into every single chapter.
1055. 00:45:40 The next chapter though, is fear and failure.
1056. 00:45:43 And it does tie into this honesty and candor piece.
1057. 00:45:46 And the reason being that this whole idea
1058. 00:45:49 of the brain trust and the candor and the honesty,
1059. 00:45:51 I feel like one of the ways to really facilitate that
1060. 00:45:56 is to talk about your own mistakes
1061. 00:46:00 and your own failures as a leader
1062. 00:46:03 because it makes it safe for other people to do the same.
1063. 00:46:07 And when everybody's talking about
1064. 00:46:08 all the things that they've messed up,
1065. 00:46:11 now to have something that's messed up
1066. 00:46:13 is no longer a rarity.
1067. 00:46:16 And the truth is that there's lots of stuff
1068. 00:46:18 that we work on that's messed up.
1069. 00:46:20 But if we pretend that it's perfect,
1070. 00:46:23 then we can't fix it.
1071. 00:46:25 - Yeah, he goes through a process about,
1072. 00:46:28 like he explains the general knowledge and wisdom
1073. 00:46:34 that people share around failure where,
1074. 00:46:37 fail fast and get your failures out of the way
1075. 00:46:40 so you can get to the successes.
1076. 00:46:42 That mentality is especially common
1077. 00:46:45 in the world of software.
1078. 00:46:47 And it's one that I think has permeated
1079. 00:46:49 a lot of the business world at this point.
1080. 00:46:52 But he also says, sure, those are fun maxims,
1081. 00:46:56 but what do you want me to do about it?
1082. 00:46:58 Like, I'm not gonna go out and try to fail.
1083. 00:47:02 - Yeah.
1084. 00:47:03 - Like that's obviously not what I'm going to do.
1085. 00:47:06 But at the same time, he does call out that
1086. 00:47:10 as you're trying to build something big and successful,
1087. 00:47:14 you can simply make a decision about what you think is best
1088. 00:47:17 and move quickly and move towards it quickly.
1089. 00:47:21 And if you learn that it's not the right path,
1090. 00:47:25 change course and go elsewhere.
1091. 00:47:27 It's not necessarily a good or bad thing.
1092. 00:47:31 It's just a learning and move on
1093. 00:47:34 and head to what you think is the right direction.
1094. 00:47:37 That was my main takeaway from it.
1095. 00:47:40 But he does try to spell out like,
1096. 00:47:43 failure isn't all negative, but it is negative.
1097. 00:47:47 So I did at least appreciate that.
1098. 00:47:50 - The best analogy I have ever heard
1099. 00:47:54 or about this topic comes from this section.
1100. 00:47:56 He's talking about Andrew Stanton,
1101. 00:47:58 who's the guy who says,
1102. 00:47:59 "fail early, fail fast, be as wrong as you can."
1103. 00:48:01 And he's not the one who originally came up with those ideas,
1104. 00:48:03 but he's the one who he attributed some to in this book.
1105. 00:48:07 But he also mentions that Andrew views failure
1106. 00:48:10 like playing the guitar and he says,
1107. 00:48:13 "You don't think real hard about where to put your fingers
1108. 00:48:17 because you only get one chance to strum."
1109. 00:48:19 I thought that was kind of brilliant the way
1110. 00:48:23 that they described that as a guitar player.
1111. 00:48:25 I mean, it's true.
1112. 00:48:26 And I kind of fall into that mode naturally
1113. 00:48:31 where I even with my limited ability
1114. 00:48:36 to play the instrument,
1115. 00:48:38 I can find myself not wanting to make a mistake,
1116. 00:48:41 trying to avoid errors.
1117. 00:48:43 And that's really what they're defining
1118. 00:48:45 as like the negative view of failure.
1119. 00:48:47 And it is something that they have to deal with
1120. 00:48:50 after they merge with Disney down the road in section four.
1121. 00:48:55 But what really intrigued me about this section here
1122. 00:48:59 is how to know if the company or organization
1123. 00:49:04 that you're involved with has embraced
1124. 00:49:07 a negative view of failure.
1125. 00:49:10 He's got a couple of different steps here.
1126. 00:49:11 He says, "Ask yourself first,
1127. 00:49:13 what happened the last time an error was discovered?
1128. 00:49:16 Do people shut down and go inward
1129. 00:49:18 or do they come together to untangle a cause of the problem
1130. 00:49:21 that it might be avoided going forward?"
1131. 00:49:24 And the acid test is,
1132. 00:49:27 if the question asked is,
1133. 00:49:30 "Who's fault is this?"
1134. 00:49:32 then your culture vilifies failure.
1135. 00:49:35 And if we're honest with ourselves,
1136. 00:49:38 that probably applies in a lot of the cultures
1137. 00:49:40 that we're associated with.
1138. 00:49:42 - Yep.
1139. 00:49:43 - And this is one of the lessons I learned
1140. 00:49:45 in when I was working with the Asian efficiency team,
1141. 00:49:48 I think I've told this story before.
1142. 00:49:49 So I'll just reel briefly,
1143. 00:49:51 like a podcast episode got published early.
1144. 00:49:54 And I was trying to dive in and figure out,
1145. 00:49:56 like, who did this?
1146. 00:49:58 Tans like, doesn't matter.
1147. 00:49:59 How do we figure it out so that doesn't happen again?
1148. 00:50:02 And that was a tipping point for me.
1149. 00:50:05 And I want to continue to build that mentality
1150. 00:50:09 in the different groups, companies, organizations
1151. 00:50:12 that I'm involved with.
1152. 00:50:14 But some of them have gotten it, some of them not.
1153. 00:50:17 And I can't tell you that it's very refreshing
1154. 00:50:20 for the ones that do understand this.
1155. 00:50:23 It does feel very different.
1156. 00:50:25 You know, he talks about how also how fear
1157. 00:50:28 can be created quickly, but trust can't.
1158. 00:50:31 I think this is really the key way that fear gets built,
1159. 00:50:34 is if you have this mentality that if I make a mistake,
1160. 00:50:39 people are going to blame me,
1161. 00:50:41 there's gonna be negative repercussions for this.
1162. 00:50:44 People are gonna feel obviously,
1163. 00:50:45 like they cannot afford to make a mistake.
1164. 00:50:49 But trust is not assuming that somebody
1165. 00:50:54 is not going to make a mistake.
1166. 00:50:57 Trusting people means that when they make a mistake,
1167. 00:51:01 you trust that they will act to also help solve it.
1168. 00:51:04 They're not just going to walk away from it
1169. 00:51:06 and leave a mess in your lap.
1170. 00:51:08 That was interesting, that whole perspective,
1171. 00:51:12 as he defined it, because you can be building trust
1172. 00:51:17 and that takes a long time to do.
1173. 00:51:21 And it only takes one instance of this is your fault
1174. 00:51:27 and that trust is broken and now fear has taken its place.
1175. 00:51:31 And I don't have a specific action item associated with this,
1176. 00:51:34 but what it did show me is that I have to be very careful
1177. 00:51:39 about building trust because it only takes one slip up
1178. 00:51:45 to destroy that thing that you've been trying to build.
1179. 00:51:47 - Absolutely.
1180. 00:51:48 I think there's, you know, I noticed you wrote down
1181. 00:51:51 an action item around this.
1182. 00:51:53 The thing that I think is the most important with this
1183. 00:51:56 is that, and you see this, I see it a lot in nonprofits,
1184. 00:52:00 if you don't discuss the things you screwed up,
1185. 00:52:05 people have a tendency to put you on a pedestal.
1186. 00:52:10 They may still put you on a pedestal,
1187. 00:52:12 but if you don't talk about your failures,
1188. 00:52:15 you borderline become idolized in a way
1189. 00:52:19 because they see you as larger than life.
1190. 00:52:22 And then if someone learns of a mistake
1191. 00:52:25 or something that you didn't own up to,
1192. 00:52:27 a failure that was hidden,
1193. 00:52:29 now your entire character is at stake,
1194. 00:52:32 not just that one thing.
1195. 00:52:34 - Yeah.
1196. 00:52:35 - So it's super important to talk about,
1197. 00:52:38 I screwed this up or this is something that I'm seeing
1198. 00:52:41 that's not working well in our organization
1199. 00:52:45 and talk about it because it can easily create long-term
1200. 00:52:49 issues or completely destroy people or organizations
1201. 00:52:53 if it's not talked about.
1202. 00:52:54 - Yeah, and the action item that you're alluding to
1203. 00:52:56 was simply to talk about my failures.
1204. 00:52:59 There's a couple of reasons for this.
1205. 00:53:01 Number one, obviously we're talking about
1206. 00:53:04 how I can change the culture of the different organizations
1207. 00:53:07 that I'm involved with,
1208. 00:53:09 and I do think that that is an important thing
1209. 00:53:12 that I can do in different situations,
1210. 00:53:15 but I also think that with the platforms
1211. 00:53:19 that we have online being fairly visible,
1212. 00:53:22 especially in the productivity space,
1213. 00:53:25 there is so much emphasis on the gold standard, I guess.
1214. 00:53:30 I don't know another way to describe it,
1215. 00:53:31 but people are sharing all the things that go right
1216. 00:53:35 and they don't share any of the things that go wrong.
1217. 00:53:38 And so, if you just follow these people,
1218. 00:53:43 you can feel really bad about your situation
1219. 00:53:46 because you're not getting an accurate picture
1220. 00:53:48 of what their life is really like.
1221. 00:53:50 - Right.
1222. 00:53:51 - All you're seeing is all the cool places that they travel
1223. 00:53:54 and working from the beach,
1224. 00:53:55 like the entrepreneurs dream sort of a thing.
1225. 00:53:58 You don't see the long hours that they've got to put in.
1226. 00:54:01 Before they get to that point,
1227. 00:54:03 you don't see all the sacrifices that they made,
1228. 00:54:05 and not that even those sacrifices
1229. 00:54:08 have a direct correlation to you getting to that point.
1230. 00:54:11 Like, just be real. (laughs)
1231. 00:54:14 Let's all just talk about what's really going on,
1232. 00:54:17 and not try to paint this picture
1233. 00:54:19 so that we can sell something, you know?
1234. 00:54:23 Which, I feel like Bookworm,
1235. 00:54:25 we've done a pretty decent job with that
1236. 00:54:27 'cause that's kind of been my ethos the whole time.
1237. 00:54:31 Right or wrong, you know,
1238. 00:54:32 people who listen to this can judge for themselves,
1239. 00:54:34 but that's at least been my goal
1240. 00:54:36 as we have done this podcast,
1241. 00:54:39 is I want to give people a realistic picture
1242. 00:54:43 of the struggles and the things that we go through.
1243. 00:54:46 But as I'm going through this section,
1244. 00:54:49 I'm realizing that now more than ever,
1245. 00:54:51 that is needed online. (laughs)
1246. 00:54:53 Yeah, yeah, for sure.
1247. 00:54:56 All right, so let's step into part three.
1248. 00:54:59 Building and sustaining,
1249. 00:55:01 and there's two points here we're gonna jump into.
1250. 00:55:06 One of which is research trips and post mortems,
1251. 00:55:09 but this is a part of a broader list.
1252. 00:55:12 What is it, nine parts on that list, Mike?
1253. 00:55:17 There are eight, yeah.
1254. 00:55:20 And I wrote them all down in my mind, notefile.
1255. 00:55:22 So if you're a premium member, you can get these.
1256. 00:55:24 (laughs)
1257. 00:55:25 Good job, Mike.
1258. 00:55:26 The things I do for the Bookworm Premium Club members.
1259. 00:55:30 No.
1260. 00:55:32 So the whole list is really interesting,
1261. 00:55:34 and the chapter that this comes from
1262. 00:55:36 is chapter 10, broadening our view.
1263. 00:55:38 This list is the methods that they use
1264. 00:55:40 to put their collective heads
1265. 00:55:42 into a different state of mind.
1266. 00:55:45 This is kind of building on a concept
1267. 00:55:47 that we cut from the previous section for sake of time.
1268. 00:55:51 I'll just real, really talk about it.
1269. 00:55:53 They've got this concept of the beast,
1270. 00:55:55 which is kind of the thing you alluded to earlier
1271. 00:55:59 where they keep pumping out number one hits.
1272. 00:56:00 And so the beast is basically how you keep this thing going.
1273. 00:56:03 No one wants to make a mistake and publish a movie
1274. 00:56:05 that doesn't end up at number one.
1275. 00:56:08 And then the ugly babies, that's the belief
1276. 00:56:10 that everything that you first created, it is an ugly baby.
1277. 00:56:14 And you have to fight to protect that thing
1278. 00:56:16 at the beginning until it kind of finds its legs
1279. 00:56:18 and evolves into the thing that it really can be,
1280. 00:56:20 the potential there.
1281. 00:56:22 And all of the movies that Pixar produces
1282. 00:56:26 all start out as these ugly babies,
1283. 00:56:28 the most interesting story I found was the story
1284. 00:56:30 of how up came to be.
1285. 00:56:32 So up is a really, it's a really great movie.
1286. 00:56:36 And I guess there are people who haven't seen it.
1287. 00:56:39 There's this old guy who his wife passes away.
1288. 00:56:42 He made a promise to take her to Paradise Falls.
1289. 00:56:45 And then the whole house lifts up
1290. 00:56:47 and he goes to this South American country
1291. 00:56:49 with a whole bunch of helium filled balloons.
1292. 00:56:50 Pretty ridiculous, right?
1293. 00:56:52 But the story originated as this kingdom
1294. 00:56:57 that was floating in the sky.
1295. 00:57:00 And there were two princes who were very different
1296. 00:57:03 and always fighting with each other.
1297. 00:57:04 And they fell to the earth and they're trying to figure out
1298. 00:57:06 how to get back up to this castle in the sky.
1299. 00:57:09 Very, very different movie, right?
1300. 00:57:11 The only thing that made it from the original
1301. 00:57:16 to the new one was there was this bird, Kevin,
1302. 00:57:19 which is kind of like a minor character.
1303. 00:57:22 - Right, right.
1304. 00:57:23 - So yeah, so as that transformation is taking place,
1305. 00:57:28 it requires a perspective shift
1306. 00:57:31 and it requires that you look at things differently,
1307. 00:57:33 which is where these eight different things
1308. 00:57:37 that they do kind of fall into play for me anyways.
1309. 00:57:41 So research trips, this is basically,
1310. 00:57:44 if they're going to do a movie in a setting or on a topic,
1311. 00:57:49 they will send a bunch of the crew to go do that thing
1312. 00:57:53 or be in that environment.
1313. 00:57:55 It ends up being very expensive, but the net result
1314. 00:57:59 is that they catch a lot via osmosis
1315. 00:58:03 just because they're there.
1316. 00:58:04 So for example, Monsters University takes place
1317. 00:58:09 at this prestigious university.
1318. 00:58:11 So they sent their teams to Harvard and Yale
1319. 00:58:14 so they could be in these prestigious universities.
1320. 00:58:17 And even the sounds that are in the library
1321. 00:58:21 are influenced by being in that environment.
1322. 00:58:24 So you may not have notes of,
1323. 00:58:26 I noticed this thing while you're there,
1324. 00:58:29 but then when you're back home
1325. 00:58:31 and you're building this thing,
1326. 00:58:33 you can tell if it feels right.
1327. 00:58:35 And the interesting thing to me about this
1328. 00:58:37 was that there really is no way to quantify the value of this
1329. 00:58:41 because when you do this
1330. 00:58:44 and you present it to an audience member
1331. 00:58:45 who maybe or maybe doesn't, most likely doesn't,
1332. 00:58:49 understand that domain or that environment very well.
1333. 00:58:54 Like they can't tell if that sound
1334. 00:58:58 or that thing that you drew is accurate.
1335. 00:59:02 But if you don't nail it, it doesn't feel right.
1336. 00:59:07 It's almost like they can intuitively tell,
1337. 00:59:09 even if they have no idea what's actually wrong
1338. 00:59:11 when something is wrong.
1339. 00:59:13 And so he basically says that the net result is that
1340. 00:59:17 when the team can nail this,
1341. 00:59:20 the audience knows it and they're more engaged with the film,
1342. 00:59:23 which was really interesting to me.
1343. 00:59:26 - I think these are really important.
1344. 00:59:28 But at the same time, you gotta try to translate it
1345. 00:59:30 'cause I'm not going to write an article
1346. 00:59:34 about how awesome it is in Africa and not go there.
1347. 00:59:39 That doesn't make sense.
1348. 00:59:42 I wouldn't do that,
1349. 00:59:43 but I'm probably not going to write that article either.
1350. 00:59:46 But granted, they're also dealing with much, much bigger
1351. 00:59:49 budgets and much higher margins on the return.
1352. 00:59:53 So I get it, but I think there's a potential learning here
1353. 00:59:58 in that if you are going to do a creative endeavor,
1354. 01:00:04 do your research.
1355. 01:00:05 - Right. - Yep.
1356. 01:00:07 - Watch videos on it, watch documentaries on it.
1357. 01:00:10 Research it to no end.
1358. 01:00:11 If you can go there, go there.
1359. 01:00:13 If you can find people who work in a given sector
1360. 01:00:16 and you need to know more about it,
1361. 01:00:18 talk to them, read books about it.
1362. 01:00:21 This is the classic collect dots concept
1363. 01:00:24 before you can connect them later.
1364. 01:00:26 And the more dots you collect,
1365. 01:00:28 the better off your creative endeavor is going to be.
1366. 01:00:31 To me, that's the real takeaway here,
1367. 01:00:34 is if you're going to do something with high impact
1368. 01:00:36 and with a lot of quality,
1369. 01:00:38 do the background legwork.
1370. 01:00:41 Don't just make guesses and speculate.
1371. 01:00:46 Get detailed about it.
1372. 01:00:48 Because as Pixar has shown,
1373. 01:00:50 that does have a huge impact in the long run.
1374. 01:00:53 - Yep.
1375. 01:00:54 And it's interesting because part of the problem
1376. 01:00:57 that comes with that is that they spend too much time
1377. 01:01:02 on the details.
1378. 01:01:05 So for example, the next one here,
1379. 01:01:07 which isn't in the list we were going to talk about,
1380. 01:01:09 but it's power of limits,
1381. 01:01:10 they talk about the beautifully shaded penny.
1382. 01:01:14 And the problem with this is that Pixar employees
1383. 01:01:17 will spend a crazy amount of time on little details
1384. 01:01:20 for the actual films,
1385. 01:01:21 but they don't understand whether that thing
1386. 01:01:25 is going to have any significant impact in the movie.
1387. 01:01:27 So for example, there's a scene that they share
1388. 01:01:30 from Monster Zinc,
1389. 01:01:32 where the little girl knocks Mike Wazowski's CDs off
1390. 01:01:36 of the case.
1391. 01:01:37 Do you remember that scene?
1392. 01:01:38 - I do.
1393. 01:01:39 - Okay.
1394. 01:01:40 So he says, oh, those were alphabetized.
1395. 01:01:43 The whole scene is like three seconds, right?
1396. 01:01:45 Each CD on that case,
1397. 01:01:47 a Pixar employee created an album cover for.
1398. 01:01:52 Even though there's only a couple of them
1399. 01:01:53 that you will see on the floor in Mike's apartment.
1400. 01:01:56 - Yeah.
1401. 01:01:57 - And so they're looking at that and they're saying,
1402. 01:01:58 well, that was a waste.
1403. 01:01:59 We didn't need that many covers made.
1404. 01:02:02 On one level, it's kind of cool
1405. 01:02:03 that they put that much attention detail into things,
1406. 01:02:05 but also obviously that makes the amount of effort
1407. 01:02:08 to create the film much higher
1408. 01:02:10 and they're kind of always pushing up against these deadlines.
1409. 01:02:13 So if you're looking for something to cut,
1410. 01:02:15 that would be a great thing to cut.
1411. 01:02:16 Let's just design the three we need instead of all of them,
1412. 01:02:19 but they don't know how those things
1413. 01:02:20 are going to be pieced together.
1414. 01:02:21 - Right.
1415. 01:02:22 - And being able to see the limits of usefulness
1416. 01:02:27 helps them conserve their energy
1417. 01:02:29 and put it in the appropriate place.
1418. 01:02:31 - Absolutely.
1419. 01:02:32 But they also do post-mortems, Mike.
1420. 01:02:34 - Yeah, post-mortems are cool.
1421. 01:02:36 I love the idea of post-mortems.
1422. 01:02:38 I've done some of these
1423. 01:02:40 and they're always really valuable.
1424. 01:02:42 Basically, a post-mortem is a short meeting
1425. 01:02:45 and it could be after a project,
1426. 01:02:46 but at Pixar specifically, it's after a film was released
1427. 01:02:49 where they explore what worked and what didn't work
1428. 01:02:51 and they attempt to consolidate all of the lessons
1429. 01:02:53 that they learned from it.
1430. 01:02:55 There's a couple of reasons that they do this.
1431. 01:02:57 Number one is, like I said,
1432. 01:03:00 they want to consolidate what they learned
1433. 01:03:02 in making this film.
1434. 01:03:04 They also want to teach other people
1435. 01:03:06 who maybe weren't there
1436. 01:03:08 so they can avoid some of the mistakes maybe that they made.
1437. 01:03:11 And the thing that was interesting to me
1438. 01:03:13 is they don't want to let resentments fester.
1439. 01:03:16 I think this is probably the most important piece to this
1440. 01:03:20 because if you are on a team that is pushing
1441. 01:03:23 and you get this thing out the door
1442. 01:03:27 and then the initial reaction,
1443. 01:03:30 if it's a successful film,
1444. 01:03:31 which almost all Pixar films are,
1445. 01:03:33 is like, hooray, we did a good thing.
1446. 01:03:35 But you may resent the fact that this thing,
1447. 01:03:38 or your piece of it didn't really go
1448. 01:03:40 the way that you wanted it to.
1449. 01:03:42 You're caught up in the celebration
1450. 01:03:44 because it was a monetary success
1451. 01:03:46 and then the next film that you work on,
1452. 01:03:48 the same thing happens.
1453. 01:03:50 Right?
1454. 01:03:51 And then you're like, oh, that's right.
1455. 01:03:52 I was mad about this before.
1456. 01:03:53 Now I'm even more mad that it's happening again.
1457. 01:03:55 This is totally unjust.
1458. 01:03:58 So here we go again.
1459. 01:03:59 So just document that stuff, get it out there.
1460. 01:04:01 And yeah, maybe it'll happen again,
1461. 01:04:03 but I feel like if you have the ability
1462. 01:04:06 and the avenue to share those things,
1463. 01:04:09 you can release those things.
1464. 01:04:11 So even if it does keep happening again,
1465. 01:04:14 as long as you are able to express your frustration
1466. 01:04:16 with the thing, you feel better about it.
1467. 01:04:19 It's no longer something that you're holding onto
1468. 01:04:22 and it continues to make you more and more bitter.
1469. 01:04:24 You're able to let go and do your best creative work.
1470. 01:04:26 I think that's a really important aspect
1471. 01:04:28 to these post-mortem's.
1472. 01:04:30 - Yeah, I mostly wanted to see,
1473. 01:04:34 and again, as I go through listeners, you know this,
1474. 01:04:38 I have a tendency to try to extrapolate things out
1475. 01:04:41 and go to like, how do I apply this elsewhere?
1476. 01:04:44 This is the same thing.
1477. 01:04:45 How do I apply this to events at the church?
1478. 01:04:49 How do I apply it to projects that I complete online
1479. 01:04:52 or even articles that I write?
1480. 01:04:55 How do each of those instances,
1481. 01:04:59 what does a post-mortem look like?
1482. 01:05:02 I don't know that I have an action item around this one, Mike,
1483. 01:05:04 or really what to do with it,
1484. 01:05:06 other than I know these are good things to do
1485. 01:05:09 and I know they're valuable,
1486. 01:05:11 but I haven't quite figured out what to do yet.
1487. 01:05:13 - Well, I'll give you an example,
1488. 01:05:14 a church example even.
1489. 01:05:16 So my wife and I lead the outreach team at our church
1490. 01:05:20 and we do a big outreach, basically once a quarter.
1491. 01:05:24 And after the outreach, we have a meeting
1492. 01:05:28 with the rest of the church staff to do a post-mortem
1493. 01:05:31 and we talk about what went well, what didn't go well,
1494. 01:05:33 and we make a bunch of notes on things
1495. 01:05:34 that we want to change for next time
1496. 01:05:36 because there's a good chance we're doing the same event
1497. 01:05:38 a year from now and we don't want to repeat the same mistakes.
1498. 01:05:42 And all of those things get documented in a Google Doc
1499. 01:05:44 and when we're planning the next one,
1500. 01:05:46 we look at that Google Doc and we say,
1501. 01:05:47 "Oh yeah, we didn't want to have fruit in the summer
1502. 01:05:51 because it just attracts the flies and the bees."
1503. 01:05:53 So we're not gonna do that when we cook up all the hot dogs
1504. 01:05:57 and the brats and have the big community block party
1505. 01:06:00 sort of a thing.
1506. 01:06:01 So that's one place where that can be valuable.
1507. 01:06:04 But I think again, it comes back to the candor piece.
1508. 01:06:08 Like you have to take an honest look at the event itself
1509. 01:06:12 and you have to disconnect yourself from the event.
1510. 01:06:16 You know, if the event is a total bust,
1511. 01:06:17 it does not mean that Mike and Rachel Schmitz
1512. 01:06:20 are a total bust and we have to be able and willing
1513. 01:06:24 to hear the things that could have gone better.
1514. 01:06:27 - You have a point in the outline, creativity and skiing.
1515. 01:06:31 I don't know where you want to go with this one.
1516. 01:06:33 - Sure, so chapter 11 is the Unmade Future
1517. 01:06:36 and it basically talks about creativity.
1518. 01:06:40 And there's an analogy in here that I really liked
1519. 01:06:43 of creativity and skiing.
1520. 01:06:46 The point being that if you are skiing
1521. 01:06:49 and you tighten up and think about it too much,
1522. 01:06:51 you are going to crash.
1523. 01:06:53 So in essence, trying not to crash actually makes you crash.
1524. 01:06:58 So how does this apply to creativity?
1525. 01:07:02 I think if you were to sit down and be like,
1526. 01:07:03 I really need to be creative now.
1527. 01:07:05 You're not going to be creative.
1528. 01:07:07 You're going to crash.
1529. 01:07:09 But when you can learn to relax,
1530. 01:07:11 you can go faster and you can enjoy it.
1531. 01:07:13 The phrase that they use for this is,
1532. 01:07:15 if you think you stink, (laughs)
1533. 01:07:18 which I am a thinker.
1534. 01:07:19 So this definitely applies to me.
1535. 01:07:21 I don't necessarily have an action I'm associated with this,
1536. 01:07:25 but basically what I want to do is just let go
1537. 01:07:29 and trust the process, kind of what they were talking about.
1538. 01:07:32 One of the big main picks are values at the very beginning.
1539. 01:07:35 The other one, by the way,
1540. 01:07:36 I don't think we mentioned this is that story is king.
1541. 01:07:39 So obviously that applies specifically to Pixar
1542. 01:07:42 'cause they're telling stories,
1543. 01:07:44 but you could apply that a lot of different situations as well.
1544. 01:07:48 But specifically the trusting the process,
1545. 01:07:50 I have long believed that everybody is creative.
1546. 01:07:55 You may not think you're creative
1547. 01:07:57 and then you would be right,
1548. 01:07:58 but you have the ability to be creative.
1549. 01:08:02 And if you try to force it, you may have trouble with it
1550. 01:08:06 and then you use that as reinforcement for the idea
1551. 01:08:09 that you are not creative, if that makes any sense.
1552. 01:08:13 He says on page 223 that in his experience,
1553. 01:08:16 creative people discover and realize their visions over time
1554. 01:08:18 and through dedicated, protracted struggles.
1555. 01:08:20 So the fact that you are struggling
1556. 01:08:22 does not mean that you are not creative.
1557. 01:08:24 In fact, it's actually evidence that you are creative
1558. 01:08:26 because all creatives struggle with this stuff.
1559. 01:08:29 You have to show up and you have to put in the effort
1560. 01:08:32 and really the big thing that made a difference for me
1561. 01:08:36 was not judging my work afterwards.
1562. 01:08:40 I made the decision I was gonna show up
1563. 01:08:41 and I was gonna write for an hour every day.
1564. 01:08:44 That's how my book got published initially,
1565. 01:08:47 or self published initially,
1566. 01:08:49 was that I just showed up and wrote.
1567. 01:08:51 And at the end of the day, I published it.
1568. 01:08:53 I wasn't gonna sit there and edit it until it was perfect.
1569. 01:08:57 Some days I sat down, I only typed out 100 words
1570. 01:09:00 instead of 1000, didn't view that as a bad day
1571. 01:09:03 because at least I showed up.
1572. 01:09:05 And I think that's the key piece here is just show up,
1573. 01:09:08 relax, let it go, and then whatever happens happens
1574. 01:09:13 and that's okay.
1575. 01:09:14 - Which is similar to how we both got started
1576. 01:09:17 with Bookworm in that we both wanted to read more
1577. 01:09:22 so we figured let's start a podcast so that we read more.
1578. 01:09:25 And it's what I'm slowly coming to.
1579. 01:09:27 It's like just start reading.
1580. 01:09:29 But with creative endeavors, it's very similar.
1581. 01:09:32 If you're going to read an entire book
1582. 01:09:35 or you're going to write an entire book,
1583. 01:09:38 the principles are the same.
1584. 01:09:39 Show up every single day, preferably at the same time,
1585. 01:09:43 and do the work.
1586. 01:09:44 Like whether it's 10 minutes, 10 hours,
1587. 01:09:47 like show up and do the work.
1588. 01:09:49 And that's something I've slowly been developing
1589. 01:09:52 with my writings, like I show up every day,
1590. 01:09:55 write it at the same time.
1591. 01:09:56 Same thing with the reading practice,
1592. 01:09:57 like these become habitual rituals
1593. 01:10:01 that I go through on a daily basis.
1594. 01:10:04 This is very similar in that if you give yourself the space,
1595. 01:10:08 you don't put any restrictions on what you're creating
1596. 01:10:13 or how much to create or how amazing it is.
1597. 01:10:18 You're just giving yourself the space
1598. 01:10:19 to do the creative work itself.
1599. 01:10:23 - Yep.
1600. 01:10:23 - Now, I forget if it was Hemingway
1601. 01:10:26 or somebody else that said,
1602. 01:10:28 I only write when the muse strikes, thankfully,
1603. 01:10:31 it shows up every morning at 8 a.m.
1604. 01:10:34 I think that's Hemingway.
1605. 01:10:35 - Right.
1606. 01:10:35 - Somebody like that.
1607. 01:10:36 Like that's it.
1608. 01:10:39 You know, show up.
1609. 01:10:40 And if you show up every single day,
1610. 01:10:41 it's slowly that mental state becomes normal.
1611. 01:10:45 - This reminded me a lot of James Clear
1612. 01:10:47 and atomic habits.
1613. 01:10:48 - Absolutely.
1614. 01:10:49 - 'Cause he, and it's not,
1615. 01:10:51 he's not the one who came up with this,
1616. 01:10:53 but he really hammers this idea of,
1617. 01:10:56 so you wanna be a writer, you gotta write.
1618. 01:10:58 What does a writer do?
1619. 01:10:59 They write.
1620. 01:10:59 What does a reader do?
1621. 01:11:00 They read.
1622. 01:11:01 What does a runner do?
1623. 01:11:02 They run.
1624. 01:11:03 So if you don't run, if you don't read, if you don't write,
1625. 01:11:07 you cannot say that that is an identity that you've embraced.
1626. 01:11:11 But if you show up and you run poorly,
1627. 01:11:14 you can say, I am a runner.
1628. 01:11:16 And you can continue to get better.
1629. 01:11:18 If you show up and you read one page,
1630. 01:11:21 every day you can say, I am a reader.
1631. 01:11:23 If you show up and you write for one hour,
1632. 01:11:26 even if it's only a hundred words,
1633. 01:11:28 you can say you are a writer.
1634. 01:11:30 And the more that you do it,
1635. 01:11:31 the better that you get at that specific thing.
1636. 01:11:33 The thing that paralyzes a lot of people
1637. 01:11:36 is making a value judgment on the thing right away.
1638. 01:11:39 And I totally get that.
1639. 01:11:41 You have to be able to view yourself as a beginner
1640. 01:11:45 when you are a beginner.
1641. 01:11:47 If I approached my running with the goal
1642. 01:11:51 of running a half marathon, which I did,
1643. 01:11:52 and then the very first time I ran,
1644. 01:11:54 I could really go two miles
1645. 01:11:56 and I was like a 10 minute pace,
1646. 01:11:57 I would have quit right there and be like,
1647. 01:11:59 you're never gonna be able to do this.
1648. 01:12:00 Look at you, you're pathetic.
1649. 01:12:02 But that's not how it works.
1650. 01:12:05 You just do it over and over and over again.
1651. 01:12:07 And it gets easier.
1652. 01:12:09 And I believe that applies to your creativity as well.
1653. 01:12:11 Now part four, testing what we know,
1654. 01:12:15 this goes back to some history in Pixar
1655. 01:12:21 and a period of time when Disney,
1656. 01:12:25 now keep in mind, I don't know if we've talked
1657. 01:12:27 about this a whole lot,
1658. 01:12:28 but Ed, Catmull and John Lasser both loved Disney growing up
1659. 01:12:33 and aspired to be a part of Disney animation.
1660. 01:12:38 Now, during the period when Pixar was releasing hit
1661. 01:12:43 after hit after hit, Disney had not released a single,
1662. 01:12:48 big number one in the box office hit.
1663. 01:12:51 But as a result of that,
1664. 01:12:54 and through conversations, this is when Disney purchased Pixar.
1665. 01:12:59 I believe the sale price was a little over 7 billion.
1666. 01:13:02 And as a part of that negotiation,
1667. 01:13:05 Steve Jobs negotiated it.
1668. 01:13:07 So guess what, it really was in Pixar's favor.
1669. 01:13:11 And Ed Catmull and John Lasser
1670. 01:13:15 became the heads of Disney animation and Pixar.
1671. 01:13:20 - Yep.
1672. 01:13:20 - And it also being that if you had a centralized leadership
1673. 01:13:24 across those two, you would not have competition
1674. 01:13:28 between the two.
1675. 01:13:29 And also the idea was that if the leadership from Pixar
1676. 01:13:35 moved over to the leadership of Disney
1677. 01:13:37 as a part of that merger,
1678. 01:13:40 the rituals and the success factors
1679. 01:13:42 that go into the development of Pixar films,
1680. 01:13:46 those traditions could remain.
1681. 01:13:48 That was key to Steve Jobs.
1682. 01:13:51 And I think brilliant negotiating for him.
1683. 01:13:55 And they had a success, the merge happened.
1684. 01:14:00 And this was the first chance that Ed had to apply
1685. 01:14:06 the principles and the practices that they had at,
1686. 01:14:09 excuse me, Pixar, they took those to Disney
1687. 01:14:13 and tried to learn how to incorporate those
1688. 01:14:16 into Disney animation in an effort to fix Disney.
1689. 01:14:21 Thus, he terms this a new challenge.
1690. 01:14:24 - Yeah, and a little bit of background here.
1691. 01:14:27 So we mentioned a while back with the IPO of Pixar,
1692. 01:14:32 there was also a detail there where Steve Jobs
1693. 01:14:37 renegotiated the deal they had with Disney
1694. 01:14:40 so that it was a 50/50 split.
1695. 01:14:43 But Disney owned the rights to the Pixar characters.
1696. 01:14:47 So--
1697. 01:14:48 - Pixar owned it.
1698. 01:14:49 - No, Disney did.
1699. 01:14:51 They had a group called Circle 7
1700. 01:14:55 that before Bob Iger took over
1701. 01:14:59 was there was some bad blood between Pixar and Disney
1702. 01:15:02 and they were moving ahead with making sequels
1703. 01:15:06 to the Pixar hits and they basically didn't need
1704. 01:15:09 Pixar's okay to do so.
1705. 01:15:11 They had the legal right to do it.
1706. 01:15:13 And that was under Michael Eisner.
1707. 01:15:16 So when Bob Iger takes over and he talks to Steve Jobs
1708. 01:15:20 and Steve Jobs likes him a lot because I think
1709. 01:15:23 he was the first one to put TV shows on iTunes,
1710. 01:15:27 a bunch of the ABC stuff came over.
1711. 01:15:30 And then Steve Jobs has John Lasseter
1712. 01:15:33 and Ed Catmull over for dinner and he's like,
1713. 01:15:35 "Hey, so I'm thinking of selling to Disney."
1714. 01:15:39 And they're both like,
1715. 01:15:40 "What? How could you sell to our mortal enemy?"
1716. 01:15:43 (laughs)
1717. 01:15:44 - Yes.
1718. 01:15:45 - So his advice to them was just go get to know Bob Iger.
1719. 01:15:50 I think he's a good guy.
1720. 01:15:52 And to his credits, they mentioned that Steve Jobs said
1721. 01:15:55 that if they weren't on board with it,
1722. 01:15:57 he wouldn't go through with the deal.
1723. 01:15:59 So they got to know Bob Iger, they liked him.
1724. 01:16:02 And he mentioned that he had been through a successful merger
1725. 01:16:06 and an unsuccessful one.
1726. 01:16:08 He wanted to make this a successful one.
1727. 01:16:10 And basically we're not doing things right.
1728. 01:16:12 We want you to come help us out.
1729. 01:16:14 So John and Ed were the ones basically coming
1730. 01:16:18 to save Disney culture, which was a challenge
1731. 01:16:21 because it couldn't just also make a clone
1732. 01:16:24 of what they had at Pixar.
1733. 01:16:26 Disney had to kind of evolve into its own thing.
1734. 01:16:29 They did eventually get there.
1735. 01:16:30 A lot of this is history.
1736. 01:16:32 I didn't really care for this section all that much
1737. 01:16:34 in terms of like stuff that you could apply.
1738. 01:16:37 Sections two and three were really the meat of that
1739. 01:16:39 in my opinion.
1740. 01:16:41 But there is some interesting stories here.
1741. 01:16:42 And they did obviously get to that point
1742. 01:16:45 where they eventually released Tangled
1743. 01:16:47 and that was the first number one that hit
1744. 01:16:49 that they'd had since the Lion King, which was pretty crazy.
1745. 01:16:54 But they had to make a lot of changes,
1746. 01:16:56 including how the floor plan was laid out,
1747. 01:17:01 personnel changes.
1748. 01:17:02 One of the personnel changes I thought was interesting
1749. 01:17:04 was the Circle 7 group,
1750. 01:17:06 the guy who was leading that actually was a pretty bright guy
1751. 01:17:09 who was just doing his job.
1752. 01:17:10 So when he met with Ed and John,
1753. 01:17:12 he wasn't like begging to stay or anything,
1754. 01:17:14 but they were impressed with this guy
1755. 01:17:15 and they gave him a pretty high up position.
1756. 01:17:18 Even though he was the one in charge
1757. 01:17:20 of like breaking their babies.
1758. 01:17:21 - Yep.
1759. 01:17:23 - So that was kind of cool.
1760. 01:17:25 And then the other thing here,
1761. 01:17:27 which maybe we don't need to spend a ton of time in here,
1762. 01:17:29 but the note stay, I thought this was cool.
1763. 01:17:32 Because as Pixar is growing
1764. 01:17:35 and they fix Disney, like the companies continue to grow,
1765. 01:17:38 they realize basically that they've kind of gotten away
1766. 01:17:41 from their culture, not because they did anything wrong,
1767. 01:17:45 but just because it's harder to maintain with new people.
1768. 01:17:50 They actually experienced, they said,
1769. 01:17:51 three crises at once where the production costs
1770. 01:17:54 were rising, the external economic forces
1771. 01:17:55 were putting pressure on the business
1772. 01:17:57 and the cultural tenant that had that good ideas
1773. 01:18:00 could come from anywhere was kind of faltering.
1774. 01:18:02 So just like they have these note stays for their movies,
1775. 01:18:05 they told everybody, we're gonna have this note stay
1776. 01:18:08 and it's gonna be this day and they set up all these sessions
1777. 01:18:12 to talk about different things
1778. 01:18:13 based on the suggestions that they got.
1779. 01:18:15 And the end result was they had this day
1780. 01:18:18 where you had people from all over the company,
1781. 01:18:19 all these different backgrounds, different departments
1782. 01:18:22 who never interacted really with each other previously.
1783. 01:18:26 Now we're attending these different sessions
1784. 01:18:28 and everybody was encouraged to share their ideas
1785. 01:18:32 and like basically how do we fix Pixar?
1786. 01:18:35 And they held notes day on March 11th, 2013,
1787. 01:18:41 and it was a huge success.
1788. 01:18:43 I really liked this idea.
1789. 01:18:45 I'd like to apply notes day to everything I'm involved with.
1790. 01:18:49 I know that's not gonna happen,
1791. 01:18:50 but I really love this idea
1792. 01:18:52 and really like the story behind it.
1793. 01:18:54 - Yeah, this was a piece that,
1794. 01:18:57 it's right towards the end of the book
1795. 01:19:00 and when I was reading through it was like, yes, yes, yes, yes.
1796. 01:19:04 Like this is, yes, like I want this.
1797. 01:19:07 And it's because essentially what they're doing
1798. 01:19:11 is they're making it okay
1799. 01:19:14 and giving a mechanism for the entire company
1800. 01:19:18 to shut down for one day and look internally
1801. 01:19:23 and discuss ways to make themselves better.
1802. 01:19:26 - Yep.
1803. 01:19:27 - And when you take a massive crew,
1804. 01:19:29 like the entire company of Pixar
1805. 01:19:32 and shut it down and say, how do we get better?
1806. 01:19:35 How do we cut costs?
1807. 01:19:36 How do we speed up the process of making films?
1808. 01:19:40 People get excited, like, wait, you're gonna listen to me?
1809. 01:19:44 Like I can say something all the way up to the CEO,
1810. 01:19:46 even though I sweep the floors, like this is amazing.
1811. 01:19:50 And everybody bought in, they built their own wiki pages,
1812. 01:19:53 they came up with their own like team.
1813. 01:19:56 - Before notes day even happened.
1814. 01:19:57 - Yeah, before it even happened weeks before it even happened.
1815. 01:19:59 They were discussing this amongst each other
1816. 01:20:01 so that they had better ideas.
1817. 01:20:03 And it all goes up to leadership
1818. 01:20:06 and they use that to continually perfect
1819. 01:20:08 and improve the company on a whole.
1820. 01:20:11 It's brilliant.
1821. 01:20:13 If you really wanna know what the details
1822. 01:20:15 of day-to-day business and how to improve those,
1823. 01:20:18 talk to the people who live and breathe it every single day.
1824. 01:20:20 Like it's just a brilliant idea.
1825. 01:20:22 - Yeah, and there's a lot in the details of how it was executed
1826. 01:20:25 that really make it work.
1827. 01:20:26 Like John Lasseter going on stage at the very beginning
1828. 01:20:29 and sharing how he received a whole bunch of feedback
1829. 01:20:33 and it was all compiled and he thought maybe
1830. 01:20:34 there would be like a half a page
1831. 01:20:35 and it was two and a half pages.
1832. 01:20:37 Like all the stuff that people didn't like about
1833. 01:20:39 working with him, you know?
1834. 01:20:40 And he's like, did I like reading that?
1835. 01:20:42 No, but it was valuable.
1836. 01:20:44 And he's like, and I'm asking you to take the same approach.
1837. 01:20:46 We're not attacking people here.
1838. 01:20:49 We're attacking the problems with our processes.
1839. 01:20:51 What was really interesting to me about all of this
1840. 01:20:54 was they gave people some direction at the very beginning.
1841. 01:20:58 They mentioned like we wanna get the number
1842. 01:21:01 of employee weeks per film 'cause there's a ton of people
1843. 01:21:05 that work on these movies down to something like 18,500.
1844. 01:21:10 - Yeah, percents, yeah.
1845. 01:21:12 - Yeah, and everybody who was involved with it
1846. 01:21:14 basically ran with it further than they thought
1847. 01:21:17 they were going to and they were like,
1848. 01:21:19 no, we're gonna get it down to 12,000.
1849. 01:21:21 (laughs)
1850. 01:21:22 - Yes.
1851. 01:21:23 - Which was interesting to me because of the way
1852. 01:21:27 that it was presented, because I feel the,
1853. 01:21:31 if you were to say, I can envision a very different
1854. 01:21:34 scenario here where John Lasseter comes out and he says,
1855. 01:21:38 okay guys, we've done really well Pixar is awesome.
1856. 01:21:41 We've built this place, but it's not sustainable.
1857. 01:21:44 We gotta make some changes.
1858. 01:21:45 Everybody's gonna have to suck it up a little bit
1859. 01:21:47 and we gotta get this down to here.
1860. 01:21:51 And how much differently that would have been received
1861. 01:21:54 'cause I've been in those meetings.
1862. 01:21:56 It sucks.
1863. 01:21:58 You feel like you have no ownership in the process.
1864. 01:22:00 You feel like the ship is going down
1865. 01:22:01 and you're doing what you can to save it,
1866. 01:22:03 but inevitably this is gonna go down anyways.
1867. 01:22:05 So like, what are we even doing here?
1868. 01:22:07 - Right.
1869. 01:22:08 - As opposed to let's reconsider everything
1870. 01:22:12 and we know that there are ways that we can do this
1871. 01:22:15 without just forcing people to work more.
1872. 01:22:17 Over time is not the answer.
1873. 01:22:19 So how do we do this?
1874. 01:22:22 And obviously the net result was that everybody loved it.
1875. 01:22:26 Everybody felt like they had a voice.
1876. 01:22:28 Everybody felt like they were listened to.
1877. 01:22:30 And I imagine that this had a ripple effect
1878. 01:22:34 where people were not just doing more work
1879. 01:22:36 but more effective work.
1880. 01:22:37 They were more engaged with their work, I guess,
1881. 01:22:38 would be the term to use here,
1882. 01:22:40 though that maybe has negative connotations.
1883. 01:22:42 Like people were excited to come to work
1884. 01:22:44 for how many weeks or months after that
1885. 01:22:46 because they thought that they had been hurt.
1886. 01:22:48 - Right.
1887. 01:22:49 - You can't put necessarily a dollar sign value
1888. 01:22:53 on that sort of thing,
1889. 01:22:54 but it's totally what happens
1890. 01:22:56 when you do something like this.
1891. 01:22:58 - After this chapter,
1892. 01:23:00 this is technically the end of the book right here.
1893. 01:23:03 There's an afterword and then some starting points
1894. 01:23:06 that follow that.
1895. 01:23:07 You mentioned earlier,
1896. 01:23:09 some people may be picking this book up
1897. 01:23:11 in an effort to learn about Steve Jobs' involvement in Pixar.
1898. 01:23:16 He does give that to you in not quite 20 pages
1899. 01:23:20 at the back of a book in this afterwards,
1900. 01:23:22 the Steve we knew.
1901. 01:23:23 I don't really wanna go into that
1902. 01:23:24 other than it is interesting to see Steve's involvement
1903. 01:23:28 in the book.
1904. 01:23:29 And then after that,
1905. 01:23:31 he has the starting points,
1906. 01:23:33 thoughts for managing a creative culture.
1907. 01:23:35 Basically, if you wanna start managing a creative culture
1908. 01:23:39 in the way that they manage Pixar,
1909. 01:23:42 here's some tips for how to do that.
1910. 01:23:44 That's what that basically is.
1911. 01:23:45 I just wanted to point those out quick
1912. 01:23:46 because if you are reading the book or interested
1913. 01:23:47 in picking it up,
1914. 01:23:49 those are a couple pieces that I think are valuable,
1915. 01:23:51 but I don't really wanna go into them a whole lot here.
1916. 01:23:54 - Yeah, I agree.
1917. 01:23:55 The Steve Jobs we knew or the Steve we knew that chapter,
1918. 01:24:00 I didn't really care for it all that much.
1919. 01:24:04 A lot of it was just the people
1920. 01:24:07 and the nice things that they said at his funeral.
1921. 01:24:09 (laughs)
1922. 01:24:10 - Yeah.
1923. 01:24:11 - So not a whole lot there.
1924. 01:24:12 If you really wanna study Steve Jobs,
1925. 01:24:14 the person, go read the Walter Isaacson biography.
1926. 01:24:19 - Exactly, that's a great biography, by the way.
1927. 01:24:22 Action items, Mike?
1928. 01:24:24 - Yes, so I mentioned one of them already,
1929. 01:24:27 which is to talk about my failures.
1930. 01:24:29 I did actually have another one in here.
1931. 01:24:31 We didn't talk about this,
1932. 01:24:34 but this comes from section two,
1933. 01:24:38 Pete Doctor, he was the director of UP.
1934. 01:24:42 He has this thing that he does
1935. 01:24:46 to trick people into considering change.
1936. 01:24:49 - Right.
1937. 01:24:50 - Those are his words, and I thought this was brilliant.
1938. 01:24:53 So he would say things in meetings like,
1939. 01:24:57 this would be a big change if we were really going to do it,
1940. 01:25:01 but just as a thought exercise.
1941. 01:25:03 What if we--
1942. 01:25:05 - Yeah.
1943. 01:25:05 - Yeah.
1944. 01:25:06 - And I totally get where people,
1945. 01:25:09 especially people who have created something
1946. 01:25:11 in there already watching the number of hours
1947. 01:25:13 that they're putting into this thing,
1948. 01:25:14 they'd be hesitant to completely throw out
1949. 01:25:17 what they had done and take a different direction.
1950. 01:25:19 So I think that this is a brilliant tactic
1951. 01:25:24 to use to get people to think a little bit differently.
1952. 01:25:26 I don't know specifically where I would use this sort of thing,
1953. 01:25:29 but I'm definitely putting this in my management
1954. 01:25:32 leadership toolbox.
1955. 01:25:34 - Nice.
1956. 01:25:35 Well, I have two down here.
1957. 01:25:40 One, I copied from yours, talk about my failures more often.
1958. 01:25:43 I'm specifically referring to this in my work context.
1959. 01:25:47 That's, I feel like where I could use that the most.
1960. 01:25:51 Two is, I'm just curious about this whole brain trust concept,
1961. 01:25:55 or maybe something like a notes day
1962. 01:25:58 and how that applies to our church
1963. 01:26:01 in a way of how do or should we use mechanisms
1964. 01:26:07 and ideas along those to help us improve the church.
1965. 01:26:11 So I'm probably gonna have a couple conversations about that
1966. 01:26:15 just 'cause I'm curious what other people think about doing it.
1967. 01:26:18 - Cool.
1968. 01:26:19 - There you go.
1969. 01:26:20 All right, so authors, style and rating.
1970. 01:26:24 I'll go first here.
1971. 01:26:25 I think Ed Catmull is a very easy guy to read.
1972. 01:26:30 Like his writing style is very easy to read.
1973. 01:26:33 I love, love, love the way he tells stories,
1974. 01:26:36 which I wouldn't have expected anything less
1975. 01:26:39 from someone who's so deeply ingrained in a storytelling company.
1976. 01:26:44 And as a result, this is a tough one to put down.
1977. 01:26:48 At least I found it hard to put down.
1978. 01:26:50 But I do think that there's some pieces of it
1979. 01:26:54 that I'm just not quite sure I wanted.
1980. 01:26:56 They are like Ed Catmull's personal history.
1981. 01:26:59 Yes, it kind of informs things later on,
1982. 01:27:03 but I just didn't see how that really fit.
1983. 01:27:06 There's a number of things that I had a hard time translating.
1984. 01:27:09 And that's primarily because I don't think
1985. 01:27:14 that there are a lot of companies
1986. 01:27:16 that are creative in the sense like at this scale.
1987. 01:27:21 Like Pixar and Disney, of course.
1988. 01:27:25 I could see how any sort of big media company could be that way.
1989. 01:27:30 But I mean, you had a good point earlier too, Mike,
1990. 01:27:32 about translating things down to like a mastermind group.
1991. 01:27:36 Maybe there's some strong correlations there.
1992. 01:27:40 But some of the principles I had a hard time
1993. 01:27:43 seeing how it applies.
1994. 01:27:45 I think I'm gonna put this at a 4.0.
1995. 01:27:47 'Cause I really like the book.
1996. 01:27:49 It's a great read.
1997. 01:27:51 It is very different for Bookworm,
1998. 01:27:52 but there are some definite tidbits that we can pull out.
1999. 01:27:56 But I don't think it's a five,
2000. 01:28:01 and I have a few qualms here and there,
2001. 01:28:02 which makes me wonder about the 4.5,
2002. 01:28:05 so I'll put it at a 4.0.
2003. 01:28:06 It's right, Lance.
2004. 01:28:07 - All right.
2005. 01:28:08 Well, as you know, I was skeptical about this one.
2006. 01:28:12 - Yep.
2007. 01:28:13 - I did not think that this was going to fit.
2008. 01:28:16 And when I read the first couple chapters,
2009. 01:28:18 those fears were confirmed.
2010. 01:28:21 But something funny happened after that.
2011. 01:28:25 By the time I got to chapter four,
2012. 01:28:28 and he starts talking about the defining creative principles,
2013. 01:28:32 Toy Story 2, and everything after that point,
2014. 01:28:36 I absolutely loved.
2015. 01:28:39 And then as I mentioned, the further I went,
2016. 01:28:43 he does a great job of weaving the things
2017. 01:28:45 that he's talking about back to those early experiences
2018. 01:28:48 that he had.
2019. 01:28:50 It's also kind of interesting
2020. 01:28:51 because you see the same people popping up
2021. 01:28:54 over and over again.
2022. 01:28:56 And one example of that,
2023. 01:28:58 that I noticed in the transition
2024. 01:29:02 and how the story evolved.
2025. 01:29:04 So he starts off talking about how when he was in New York,
2026. 01:29:08 when he goes to work with George Lucas
2027. 01:29:10 and he's working with Steve Jobs,
2028. 01:29:11 and kind of his right hand man
2029. 01:29:12 through all of that stuff is a guy named Alvey.
2030. 01:29:16 And then he meets John Lasseter.
2031. 01:29:18 John Lasseter gets fired from Disney.
2032. 01:29:19 He comes and works for him.
2033. 01:29:21 And after a little while,
2034. 01:29:22 it's not at an Alvey anymore.
2035. 01:29:24 Now it's at in John.
2036. 01:29:26 You don't see that relationship developed though
2037. 01:29:31 unless he tells the stories at the beginning
2038. 01:29:33 about how he was working with Alvey.
2039. 01:29:36 And I feel like this story is more about Pixar in general
2040. 01:29:41 and you could even argue more about John Lasseter
2041. 01:29:44 than it is about Ed Catmull.
2042. 01:29:46 - Right.
2043. 01:29:47 - By the time you get to the end.
2044. 01:29:48 So as much as I didn't like that stuff at the beginning,
2045. 01:29:52 I saw how it all fit at the end.
2046. 01:29:56 And I don't really have an issue with any of it.
2047. 01:30:00 I also got way more out of this book
2048. 01:30:03 than I thought I was going to in terms of
2049. 01:30:06 not even necessarily action items though,
2050. 01:30:08 there are a couple of those,
2051. 01:30:10 but just mindsets that I believe are beneficial
2052. 01:30:14 and have a very general positive effect
2053. 01:30:16 with a lot of the things that I'm involved with.
2054. 01:30:19 So as I finish this book,
2055. 01:30:23 not only do I put it down and think,
2056. 01:30:25 wow, I really enjoyed reading that
2057. 01:30:28 as I try to quantify what sort of impact that this book,
2058. 01:30:33 what kind of impact did this book actually have on me,
2059. 01:30:35 I feel like it's pretty significant.
2060. 01:30:38 So those things combined,
2061. 01:30:41 I actually am going to rate this out of five.
2062. 01:30:44 - Wow.
2063. 01:30:45 - Yeah.
2064. 01:30:46 - And if you can get past the first four chapters,
2065. 01:30:49 which again, there's reasons for that approach,
2066. 01:30:52 but it's going to feel a little bit weird at the beginning.
2067. 01:30:55 I feel like there is something in here for anybody.
2068. 01:30:59 And it's a very entertaining story,
2069. 01:31:02 even if you didn't have a growth mindset
2070. 01:31:04 and you weren't looking for ways to do things better,
2071. 01:31:06 manage things better, lead things better,
2072. 01:31:09 you're still going to enjoy the journey.
2073. 01:31:11 And I really like Ed's style.
2074. 01:31:13 I really like how it's not all about him.
2075. 01:31:16 I like how he points out all the mistakes that he's made.
2076. 01:31:21 And just even the terminology that he uses,
2077. 01:31:24 he's like, "This was really dumb of me."
2078. 01:31:26 That's kind of reassuring.
2079. 01:31:28 'Cause he was obviously very successful.
2080. 01:31:30 He worked with some very successful people.
2081. 01:31:32 But I feel like he would be an interesting guy
2082. 01:31:35 and he would totally be willing to go grab a coffee.
2083. 01:31:38 He doesn't, I don't get the feeling reading this,
2084. 01:31:41 he feels like he's arrived or he's above anybody,
2085. 01:31:45 if that makes any sense.
2086. 01:31:46 It feels like a very approachable book.
2087. 01:31:48 - Yeah.
2088. 01:31:49 Awesome.
2089. 01:31:50 So good pick.
2090. 01:31:51 - Well, it's a great book.
2091. 01:31:52 It's a great pick.
2092. 01:31:53 I really enjoyed it.
2093. 01:31:55 So what's next, Mike?
2094. 01:31:56 - Next is "Ultra Learning" by Scott Young,
2095. 01:31:59 which I don't know, I can't remember
2096. 01:32:02 where I originally, this came on my radar,
2097. 01:32:04 but it is one of the more requested books
2098. 01:32:06 in the Bookworm Club.
2099. 01:32:08 And it's got a forward by James Clear.
2100. 01:32:10 So it's all you need to know.
2101. 01:32:12 (laughing)
2102. 01:32:13 - All right. (laughing)
2103. 01:32:15 Following that, I picked up "Super Better"
2104. 01:32:19 by Jane McGonagall.
2105. 01:32:21 The tagline in this is "The Power of Living Gamefully."
2106. 01:32:25 Jane McGonagall is the sister to Kelly McGonagall,
2107. 01:32:31 the willpower instinct, episode number two, Mike.
2108. 01:32:35 - There you go.
2109. 01:32:36 - So we're coming all the way back to,
2110. 01:32:38 so Kelly McGonagall, this is her sister, Jane,
2111. 01:32:41 who's a big gamer.
2112. 01:32:43 And she wrote this book as a way to learn
2113. 01:32:46 how to game real life challenges and the healing process.
2114. 01:32:51 I think this would be fun to go through.
2115. 01:32:55 - Cool.
2116. 01:32:56 - And since I'm on a knack for picking weird odd things
2117. 01:32:59 for Bookworm, here we go again.
2118. 01:33:00 (laughing)
2119. 01:33:02 - All right.
2120. 01:33:03 - We got for a gap book.
2121. 01:33:04 - My gap book is a book that I did not hear about
2122. 01:33:07 until today, but I have ordered it, we'll be here tomorrow.
2123. 01:33:11 That is "Tools and Weapons" by Brad Smith.
2124. 01:33:16 Brad Smith is the president, I believe, of Microsoft.
2125. 01:33:20 This book has a forward by Bill Gates.
2126. 01:33:24 The subtitle is "The Promise and the Paral of the Digital Age."
2127. 01:33:27 So it's probably very much in line
2128. 01:33:30 with the digital minimalism type stuff that we've read.
2129. 01:33:33 What was that one a while back?
2130. 01:33:35 Draining the shallows, probably along those lines.
2131. 01:33:39 But the real interesting thing to me about this
2132. 01:33:41 is that Brad Smith is from Appleton.
2133. 01:33:43 So that's where I live.
2134. 01:33:45 (laughing)
2135. 01:33:47 - And-- - It's a local boy.
2136. 01:33:49 - Yeah, I actually was talking to somebody
2137. 01:33:51 who knows Brad Smith, and he's like,
2138. 01:33:52 "Yeah, I read this book."
2139. 01:33:53 And I'm like, "Oh, was it any good?"
2140. 01:33:55 He's like, "Yeah, it was really good."
2141. 01:33:56 So local person, local celebrity, maybe, I don't know.
2142. 01:34:00 And recommendation from a friend of mine,
2143. 01:34:04 I'm gonna go through this one.
2144. 01:34:05 - Thanks.
2145. 01:34:07 I have "The Oxygen Advantage" by Patrick McEwen.
2146. 01:34:14 Breathing, just kind of not something
2147. 01:34:17 I ever thought I would have an interest in.
2148. 01:34:19 This was mentioned on a podcast that Brett McEwen
2149. 01:34:23 did for Art of Manliness,
2150. 01:34:25 and they were talking about the benefits
2151. 01:34:28 of getting good oxygen into your system.
2152. 01:34:30 I think it was Brett McEwen.
2153. 01:34:32 And I know that David Allen mentioned it at 1.2.
2154. 01:34:35 So I am very intrigued, "The Oxygen Advantage."
2155. 01:34:39 - All right. - So anyway,
2156. 01:34:41 that's what's on my plate next.
2157. 01:34:44 Big thanks to Premium Members,
2158. 01:34:46 those of you who are listening in the live
2159. 01:34:49 piece of this at the moment.
2160. 01:34:50 The show keeps going because of you guys.
2161. 01:34:52 So huge, huge, huge thanks to everyone
2162. 01:34:56 who has supported us through the Bookworm Club memberships,
2163. 01:34:59 and we'll continue kicking things out for you.
2164. 01:35:02 So there you go. Thanks guys.
2165. 01:35:04 - All right.
2166. 01:35:05 We talked a lot about candor in this episode.
2167. 01:35:06 If you want to be candid with us
2168. 01:35:08 and let us know what you think of the show,
2169. 01:35:10 you can do that by leaving us an iTunes review.
2170. 01:35:13 I promise I'll read them.
2171. 01:35:13 I don't promise I will agree with them,
2172. 01:35:15 but we do want your feedback.
2173. 01:35:17 - Love that.
2174. 01:35:18 - If you are following along with us,
2175. 01:35:20 pick up "Alcher Learning" by Scott Young,
2176. 01:35:22 and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.