Ed Catmull Quotes & Sayings

So my colleagues know more than I do about what's going on in any given department at any given moment. On the other hand, I know more about issues that people working in production do not: schedule requirements, resource conflicts, market problems, or personnel issues that may be difficult or inappropriate to share with everyone. Each of us, then, draws conclusions based on incomplete pictures. It would be wrong for me to assume that my limited view is necessarily better. — Ed Catmull

I heard a delightful - and possibly apocryphal - story about what happened when the British introduced golf to India in the 1820s. Upon building the first golf course there, the Royal Calcutta, the British discovered a problem: Indigenous monkeys were intrigued by the little white balls and would swoop down out of the trees and onto the fairways, picking them up and carrying them off. This was a disruption, to say the least. In response, officials tried erecting fences to keep the monkeys out, but the monkeys climbed right over. They tried capturing and relocating the monkeys, but the monkeys kept coming back. They tried loud noises to scare them away. Nothing worked. In the end, they arrived at a solution: They added a new rule to the game - "Play the ball where the monkey drops it. — Ed Catmull

Fear of change - innate, stubborn, and resistant to reason - is a powerful force. — Ed Catmull

That's because success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right. — Ed Catmull

If you think, you stink. — Ed Catmull

Second, this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company. Had the enormous task of making Notes Day a reality been shunted off on someone who didn't have the clout to throw muscle behind it - and not entrusted to Tom, who in turn recruited the most organized people in the company to help him - it would have been an entirely different experience. Employees wouldn't have bought into the idea because they'd sense that management hadn't, either. And that would have rendered Notes Day moot. — Ed Catmull

Because your rational mind knows that tunnels have two ends, your emotional mind can be kept in check when pitch blackness descends in the confusing middle. Instead of collapsing into a nervous mess, the director who has a clear internal model of what creativity is - and the discomfort it requires - finds it easier to trust that light will shine again. The key is to never stop moving forward. — Ed Catmull

but its most important characteristic was an ability to analyze the emotional beats of a movie without any of its members themselves getting emotional or defensive. — Ed Catmull

When a new company is formed, its founders must have a startup mentality - a beginner's mind, open to everything because, well, what do they have to lose? (This is often something they later look back upon wistfully.) But when that company becomes successful, its leaders often cast off that startup mentality because, they tell themselves, they have figured out what to do. They don't want to be beginners anymore. That may be human nature, but I believe it is a part of our nature that should be resisted. By resisting the beginner's mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely. — Ed Catmull

At Pixar, Toy Story 2 taught us this lesson - that we must always be alert to shifting dynamics, because our future depends on it - once and for all. Begun as a direct-to-video sequel, the project proved not only that it was important to everyone that we weren't tolerating second-class films but also that everything we did - everything associated with our name - needed to be good. Thinking this way was not just about morale; it was a signal to everyone at Pixar that they were part owners of the company's greatest asset - its quality. — Ed Catmull

Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up? That approach never encourages a creative response. — Ed Catmull

This was a revelation to me: The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers. I also realized that this kind of thing, if left unaddressed, could fester and destroy Pixar. For me, this discovery was bracing. Being on the lookout for problems, I realized, was not the same as seeing problems. This would be the idea - the challenge - around which I would build my new sense of purpose. — Ed Catmull

Uncertainty and change are life's constraints. And that's the fun part. — Ed Catmull

The trust comes from knowing that we are safe, that our colleagues will not judge us for failures but will encourage us to keep pushing the boundaries. But to me, the key is not to let this trust, our faith, lull us into the abdication of personal responsibility. When that happens, we fall into dull repetition, producing empty versions of what was made before. — Ed Catmull

When faced with a challenge, get smarter. — Ed Catmull

Since making movies is such a messy process, we need to be able to talk candidly, among ourselves, about the mess without having it shared outside the company. By sharing problems and sensitive issues with employees, we make them partners and partowners in our culture, and they do not want to let each other down. — Ed Catmull

This is not a call for working faster or doing more overtime or making do with fewer people," he said in one town hall forum. — Ed Catmull

IF YOU CREATE a fearless culture (or as fearless as human nature will allow), people will be much less hesitant to explore new areas, identifying uncharted pathways and then charging down them. They will also begin to see the upside of decisiveness: The time they've saved by not gnashing their teeth about whether they're on the right course comes in handy when they hit a dead end and need to reboot. — Ed Catmull

I often say that managers of creative enterprises must hold lightly to goals and firmly to intentions. What does that mean? It means that we must be open to having our goals change as we learn new information or are surprised by things we thought we knew but didn't. As long as our intentions - our values - remain constant, our goals can shift as needed. — Ed Catmull

From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad; failure means you didn't study or prepare; failure means you slacked off or - worse! - aren't smart enough to begin with. Thus, failure is something to be ashamed of. — Ed Catmull

Most people have heard of the Eastern teaching that it is important to exist in the moment. It can be hard to train yourself to observe what is right now (and not to bog down in thoughts of what was and what will be), but the philosophical teaching that underlies that idea - the reason that staying in the moment is so vital - is equally important: Everything is changing. All the time. And you can't stop it. And your attempts to stop it actually put you in a bad place. — Ed Catmull

I'm not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. — Ed Catmull

I remember his assertiveness. There was no small talk. Instead, there were questions. Lots of questions. What do you want? Steve asked. Where are you heading? What are your long-term goals? — Ed Catmull

As I saw it, our mandate was to foster a culture that would seek to keep our sightlines clear, even as we accepted that we were often trying to engage with and fix what we could not see. My hope was to make this culture so vigorous that it would survive when Pixar's founding members were long gone, enabling the company to continue producing original films that made money, yes, but also contributed positively to the world. That sounds like a lofty goal, but it was there for all of us from the beginning. We were blessed with a remarkable group of employees who valued change, risk, and the unknown and who wanted to rethink how we create. How could we enable the talents of these people, keep them happy, and not let the inevitable complexities that come with any collaborative endeavor undo us along the way? That was the job I assigned myself - and the one that still animates me to this day. — Ed Catmull

The antidote to fear is trust, and we all have a desire to find something to trust in an uncertain world. Fear and trust are powerful forces, and while they are not opposites, exactly, trust is the best tool for driving out fear. — Ed Catmull

communicating fully and openly, by not withholding or misleading. There is no doubt that our decision-making is better if we are able to draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group. But as valuable as the information is — Ed Catmull

As more people are added to any group, there is an inexorable drift toward inflexibility. — Ed Catmull

That's the place you're looking for: when the movie starts to tell you what it wants to be. — Ed Catmull

we seek what we think are simple explanations for events in our lives because we believe the simpler something is, the more fundamental - the more true - it is. But when it comes to randomness, our desire for simplicity can mislead us. Not everything is simple, and to try to force it to be is to misrepresent reality. I believe that the inappropriate application of simple rules and models onto complex mechanisms causes damage - to whatever project is at hand and even to the company as a whole. The simple explanation is so desirable that it is often embraced even when it's completely inappropriate. — Ed Catmull

Not the confidence that we know exactly what to do at all times but the confidence that, together, we will figure it out. — Ed Catmull

The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realised that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for the fear of being labeled complainers. — Ed Catmull

fail early and fail fast" and "be wrong as fast as you can. — Ed Catmull

ARPA's mandate - to support smart people in a variety of areas - was carried out based on the unwavering presumption that researchers would try to do the right thing and, in ARPA's view, overmanaging them was counterproductive. — Ed Catmull

Frequently, the people in charge of the Beast are the most organized people in the company - people wired to make things happen on track and on budget, as their bosses expect them to do. When those people and their interests become too powerful - when there is not sufficient push-back to protect new ideas - things go wrong. The Beast takes over. — Ed Catmull

First, it created an electronic suggestion box where Pixar people could submit discussion topics they thought would help us become more innovative and more efficient. Immediately, topic ideas began flooding in, along with suggestions about how to run Notes Day itself. — Ed Catmull

Notes Day wasn't an end point but a beginning - a way of making room for our employees to step forward and think about their role in our company's future. I said before that problems are easy to identify, but finding the source of those problems is extraordinarily difficult. Notes brought problems to the surface - but we still had the hard work in front of us. Notes Day didn't solve anything all by itself. But it shifted our culture - repaired it, even - in ways that will make us better as we go forward. — Ed Catmull

We'll just have to get smarter. — Ed Catmull

If one looks at creativity as a resource that we continually draw upon to make something from nothing, then our fear stems from the need to make the nonexistent come into being. — Ed Catmull

Don't wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It'll be pretty when we get there, but it won't be pretty along the way. — Ed Catmull

In any creative endeavor, there is a long list of features and effects that you want to include to nudge it toward greatness - a very long list. At some point, though, you realize it is impossible to do everything on the list. So you set a deadline, which then forces a priority-based reordering of the list, followed by the difficult discussion of what, on this list, is absolutely necessary - or if the project is even feasible at all. You don't want to have this discussion too soon, because at the outset, you don't know what you are doing. If you wait too long, however, you run out of time or resources. Complicating — Ed Catmull

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. — Ed Catmull

The goal, then, is to uncouple fear and failure - to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn't strike terror into your employees' hearts. — Ed Catmull

Negative feedback may be fun, but it is far less brave than endorsing something unproven and providing room to grow. — Ed Catmull

If our mental models are mere approximations of reality, then, the conclusions we draw cannot help but be prone to error. A few words uttered by someone close to us can carry enormous weight, for example, whereas the same words uttered by a stranger won't resonate at all. At our jobs, we may interpret not being invited to a meeting as a threat to us or to our projects, even when no threat is intended. But because we often don't see the flaws in our reasoning - or our biases - it's easy to be deluded while being quite convinced that we are the only sane ones around. — Ed Catmull

The trick is to shift the emphasis in any meeting away from the source of an idea and onto the idea itself. — Ed Catmull

We humans like to know where we are headed, but creativity demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where. — Ed Catmull

Even though copying what's come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe - to succeed with minimal risk - can infect not just individuals but also entire companies. If we sense that our structures are rigid, inflexible, or bureaucratic, we must bust them open - without destroying ourselves in the process. — Ed Catmull

It isn't enough to pick a path - you must go down it. By doing so, you see things you couldn't possibly see when you started out; you may not like what you see, some of it may be confusing, but at least you will have, as we like to say, "explored the neighborhood." The key point here is that even if you decide you're in the wrong place, there is still time to head toward the right place. — Ed Catmull

Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas - pretty far-out ideas - into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn't play well, he would move on. — Ed Catmull

constructive criticism is "good notes." A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn't clear, what makes no sense. — Ed Catmull

Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can't be avoided, and "vision" is often an illusion. — Ed Catmull

You'll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar. — Ed Catmull

It's extremely difficult to create something out of nothing, especially when you consider that much of what you're trying to realize is hidden, at least at first. — Ed Catmull

A characteristic of creative people is that they imagine making the impossible possible. That imagining - dreaming, noodling, audaciously rejecting what is (for the moment) true - is the way we discover what is new or important. — Ed Catmull

Right away, we realized that we'd made a terrible mistake. Everything about the project ran counter to what we believed in. We didn't know how to aim low. We had nothing against the direct-to-video model, in theory; Disney was doing it and making heaps of money. We just couldn't figure out how to go about it without sacrificing quality. What's more, it soon became clear that scaling back our expectations to make a direct-to-video product was having a negative impact on our internal culture, in that it created an A-team (A Bug's Life) and a B-team (Toy Story 2). The crew assigned to work on Toy Story 2 was not interested in producing B-level work, and more than a few came into my office to say so. It would have been foolish to ignore their passion. — Ed Catmull

Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening. — Ed Catmull

Sometimes you talk about the problems in fifty different ways until you find that one sentence that you can see makes their eyes pop, as if they're thinking, 'Oh, I want to do it. — Ed Catmull

In general, I have found that people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly. The overplanners just take longer to be wrong — Ed Catmull

You might say I'm an advocate for humility in leaders. But to be truly humble, those leaders must first understand how many of the factors that shape their lives and businesses are - and will always be - out of sight. — Ed Catmull

the human tendency to treat big events as fundamentally different from smaller ones. — Ed Catmull

I believe that no creative company should ever stop evolving, and this would be our latest attempt to avoid stagnation. — Ed Catmull

there seemed to be two kinds of reviewers: some who would look for flaws in the papers, and then pounce to kill them; and others who started from a place of seeking and promoting good ideas. When the "idea protectors" saw flaws, they pointed them out gently, in the spirit of improving the paper - not eviscerating it. — Ed Catmull

What is the point of hiring smart people, we asked, if you don't empower them to fix what's broken? — Ed Catmull

Our mental models aren't reality. They are tools, like the models weather forecasters use to predict the weather. But, as we know all too well, sometimes the forecast says rain and, boom, the sun comes out. The tool is not reality. The key is knowing the difference. — Ed Catmull

Paying attention to the present moment without letting your thoughts and ideas about the past and the future get in the way is essential. — Ed Catmull

I feel like the only reason we're able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, 'discovery' means you don't know the answer when you start. — Ed Catmull

the future is unmade, and we must create it. — Ed Catmull

Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal. — Ed Catmull

good managers - don't dictate from on high. They reach out, they listen, they wrangle, coax, and cajole. — Ed Catmull

Steve had a remarkable knack for letting go of things that didn't work. If you were in an argument with him, and you convinced him that you were right, he would instantly change his mind. He didn't hold on to an idea because he had once believed it to be brilliant. His ego didn't attach to the suggestions he made, even as he threw his full weight behind them. — Ed Catmull

When faced with complexity, it is reassuring to tell ourselves that we can uncover and understand every facet of every problem if we just try hard enough. But that's a fallacy. The better approach, I believe, is to accept that we can't understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse. In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity. — Ed Catmull

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know - not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don't know can we ever hope to learn it. — Ed Catmull

We tend to think of emotion and logic as two distinct, mutually exclusive domains. Not Steve. From the beginning, when making decisions, passion was a key part of his calculus. — Ed Catmull

At the U of U, we were inventing a new language. One of us would contribute a verb, another a noun, then a third person would figure out ways to string the elements together to actually say something. — Ed Catmull

When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers. — Ed Catmull

When we put setbacks into two buckets - the "business as usual" bucket and the "holy cow" bucket - and use a different mindset for each, we are signing up for trouble. — Ed Catmull

An adage worth repeating is also halfway to being irrelevant. You end up with something that is easy to say but not connected to behavior. — Ed Catmull

I've always been intrigued, for example, by the way that many people use the analogy of a train to describe their companies. Massive and powerful, the train moves inexorably down the track, over mountains and across vast plains, through the densest fog and darkest night. When things go wrong, we talk of getting "derailed" and of experiencing a "train wreck." And I've heard people refer to Pixar's production group as a finely tuned locomotive that they would love the chance to drive. What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position - that driving the train is the way to shape their companies' futures. The truth is, it's not. Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track. — Ed Catmull

Hindsight is 20-20. — Ed Catmull

When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. — Ed Catmull

I'm a firm believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic. If we put too much structure on it, we will kill it. So there's a fine balance between providing some structure and safety - financial and emotional - but also letting it get messy and stay messy for a while. To do that, you need to assess each situation to see what's called for. And then you need to become what's called for. — Ed Catmull

People who act without an approved plan should not be punished for "going rogue." A culture that allows everyone, no matter their position, to stop the assembly line, both figuratively and literally, maximizes the creative engagement of people who want to help. In other words, we must meet unexpected problems with unexpected responses. — Ed Catmull

Despite good intentions, the result is troubling: Feeding the Beast becomes the central focus. — Ed Catmull

To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth. Left — Ed Catmull

it seemed like every issue, big or small, that arose around this time was chalked up to the merger: "You said things wouldn't change! You're breaking your word! We don't want to lose the old Pixar!" I should say that this outcry came despite the fact that the measures we had put in place to protect Pixar's culture were working - and, in my view, were a model for how to maintain cultural integrity after a merger. — Ed Catmull

Tom's team distilled the thousand ideas down to 293 discussion topics. That was still way too many for a single day's agenda, so a group of senior managers then met and whittled those down to 120 topics, organized into several broad categories such as Training, Environment and Culture; Cross-Show Resource Pooling (we often call our movies "shows"); Tools and Technology; and Workflow. — Ed Catmull

good leadership can help creative people stay on the path to excellence no matter what business they're in. — Ed Catmull

discovery and defense of the new. — Ed Catmull

Fear can be created quickly; trust can't. — Ed Catmull

Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. — Ed Catmull

In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepared, financially, for that day. Going public would give us the capital to fund our own projects and, thus, to have more say about where we were headed, but it would also give us a buffer that could sustain us through failure. Steve's feeling was that Pixar's survival could not depend solely on the performance of each and every movie. The underlying logic of his reasoning shook me: We were going to screw up, it was inevitable. And we didn't know when or how. We had to prepare, then, for an unknown problem - a hidden problem. From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment. — Ed Catmull

Andrew Stanton spoke next. Andrew is fond of saying that people need to be wrong as fast as they can. — Ed Catmull

one of my core management beliefs: If you don't try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. — Ed Catmull

It's difficult sometimes to tell the difference between what is impossible and what is possible (but requires a big reach). At a creative company, mistaking one for the other can be fatal - but getting it right always elevates. — Ed Catmull

Fear makes people reach for certainty and stability, neither of which guarantee the safety they imply. — Ed Catmull

Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing. — Ed Catmull

Who better to teach than the most capable among us? And I'm not just talking about seminars or formal settings. Our actions and behaviors, for better or worse, teach those who admire and look up to us how to govern their own lives. Are we thoughtful about how people learn and grow? As leaders, we should think of ourselves as teachers and try to create companies in which teaching is seen as a valued way to contribute to the success of the whole. Do we think of most activities as teaching opportunities and experiences as ways of learning? One of the most crucial responsibilities of leadership is creating a culture that rewards those who lift not just our stock prices but our aspirations as well. — Ed Catmull

Failure isn't a necessary evil. In fact, it isn't evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new. — Ed Catmull

A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well. — Ed Catmull

Do not fall for the illusion that by preventing errors, you won't have errors to fix. The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. — Ed Catmull