In this article the author Ed Catmull, himself a Pixar founder, describes the creative culture and processes of the team(s) responsible for producing hit animated films including Toy Story, Ratatouille, and WALL-E. Catmull defines the atmosphere under which creative minds can thrive and meet deadlines. He outlines the conditions under which psychological safety is guaranteed for ideas to be vetted and reviewed without judgement by all team members. The article closes with a model for debriefing projects after completion that focuses attention appropriately on what went well and what went wrong, without dwelling in one direction or another.
Looking at a pull quote from the article, I found this to be a key takeaway. “If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up. But if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they’ll make it work.” This is one of many points from the article that suggest that building and supporting healthy team process (e.g. support for risk taking, feedback environment) is more critical than building and supporting the talents of individuals who may be on a team. This reminds me of a brainstorming exercise where given a list of fruits teams are to identify as many possible categories for the fruits and collaborate to narrow down their list to what they believe were the five most original ideas. This requires quickly generating as many ideas as possible which requires input from all members, free of criticism or judgement for any and all ideas. This exercise was just a microcosm of the process and environment happening at Pixar, and it gave me a taste how I might be able to conduct myself in meetings and projects at work, and how to suggest work be conducted when I sense interpersonal conflict is infecting the process.
LO2: Demonstrate the ability to assess complex organizational environments and achieve communication goals.
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