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More on Leadership done right

This is based on an article on Gigaom, "Pixar's Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation", that Daring Fireball linked to, and it is literally, a checklist for every company in the world on "How to do things right":

Lesson Five: High Morale Makes Creativity Cheap

The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. [what’s true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Without good morale, you're fucked. You may limp along for years, even decades, but you will never truly excel, and you'll be doing nothing but vampiring off of past work and glory. Another point:

Lesson Six: Dont Try To “Protect your success”

The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?

Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

If all you do is protect what you have, you are not growing, you are preserving. There's another name for a well-preserved organism: Mummy. If you want your company to be the walking dead, trodding the same path for eternity, then preserve it. But you'll do no better than you are right now. To succeed, you have to take risks.

Another one that I love:

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

The other thing this does is make siloism and empire-building difficult. When you have to deal with everyone else all the time, you can't hide away, nor can you hide information. I have worked at companies that make siloism an unspoken core value, and it is like death. When you can't just talk to someone else without manager approval and a meeting? When never even talk to people in your own department except by accident? That is the mark of a company that is limping along, with leadership that only looks at the bottom line. "As long as we made a profit, everything is perfect." Penny-wise, but so terribly pound-foolish, and when the master of the silo leaves, so does all the knowledge they never shared with anyone else.

Lesson Seven: Encourage Inter-disciplinary Learning

The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?

Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does [is] “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. [and more creative].

Brilliant. The company I work for now has something similar to this. I don't know if I'll ever use it, but I'm tickled pink that they do that. It's an amazing concept, one that the military is good at. Why is this important? Because you never know what hidden desires or talents someone has until you give them a chance to use them. Think of Al Davis in the early years of the Oakland Raiders, taking players who were thought of as poor, or broken-down, and figuring out where they really needed to be, and making them, and the Raiders, into superstars. Just because someone's in IT doesn't mean they don't go home and write, or compose music, but if you never ask them, you'll never know, and you just might miss out on someone amazing. A job title is a convenience, not a straightjacket.

Finally, the most important one:

Lesson Nine: Making $$ Can’t Be Your Focus

The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?

Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain… The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”

Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

I have to disagree with Brad here. For any company to succeed in the long run, making money cannot be the focus. You do have to make money, but that cannot be why you do work. If your primary focus becomes shit like profit and shareholder value, then walk, you have no more value to offer, unless you become an accountant. When you focus on doing what you do so well that it makes you giddy, you can make money forever. When all you care about is the next quarter, then that's what your commercial lifespan is. Three month. You live and die every three months.

Is that what anyone wants to do?

More companies should read this, and even better, listen to it.

Technorati Tags:
Leadership, Companies that excel

Categories: Business, Leadership

Posted by John C. Welch at 13:12 | Permalink

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This is based on an article on Gigaom, \"Pixar's Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation\", that Daring Fireball linked to, and it is literally, a checklist for every company in the world on \"How to do things right\":

Lesson Five: High Morale Makes Creativity Cheap\n\nThe Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.\n\nBrad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. [what’s true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every \$1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every \$1 you spend, you get about \$3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

I would say that if you have to pick one thing to not go cheap on as an employer, morale is it. If you have high morale, you also have loyalty, and a group that will stick with you through thick and thin, when the cash falls like manna, and when you have to wander in the desert.\n\nWithout good morale, you're fucked. You may limp along for years, even decades, but you will never truly excel, and you'll be doing nothing but vampiring off of past work and glory. Another point:

Lesson Six: Dont Try To “Protect your success”\n\nThe Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?\n\nBrad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

The other thing this does is make siloism and empire-building difficult. When you have to deal with everyone else all the time, you can't hide away, nor can you hide information. I have worked at companies that make siloism an unspoken core value, and it is like death. When you can't just talk to someone else without manager approval and a meeting? When never even talk to people in your own department except by accident? That is the mark of a company that is limping along, with leadership that only looks at the bottom line. \"As long as we made a profit, everything is perfect.\" Penny-wise, but so terribly pound-foolish, and when the master of the silo leaves, so does all the knowledge they never shared with anyone else.

Lesson Seven: Encourage Inter-disciplinary Learning\n\nThe Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?\n\nBrad Bird: One thing Pixar does [is] “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. [and more creative].

Lesson Nine: Making \$\$ Can’t Be Your Focus\n\nThe Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?\n\nBrad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain… The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”\n\nWalt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

Technorati Tags:\nLeadership, Companies that excel\n