Fear is The Creativity Killer
Visual summary for "Creativity Inc " part 6
Hey there! How's everyone doing?
I'm currently trying the 30-day drawing challenge #Inktober again. It'll be tough, but I hope to create fun drawings using the daily prompts and reflect on modern work life.
Want to see my daily drawings? Check them out at @ludiq.drawing, I also post them on Linkedin.
I participated last year too. You can find the result on Substack:
Now, let's continue exploring "Creativity Inc." by Ed Catmull. We're on one of my favorite chapters, summed up by this quote:
"Failure isn't a necessary evil. In fact, it isn't evil at all. Failure is a consequence of doing something new."
Missed the previous parts? Find them here:
And of course you can subscribe to follow the series:
Chapter 6 - Fear & Failure
Ed start with acknowledging the pain of failure:
Even if we understand its value, it's emotionally tough to accept mistakes. Our education and experiences often push us to avoid failure.
Yet failing is how we innovate.
Ed suggests to:
📈 See failures as an investment in the future.
⚡ Fail fast
🪞 Have leaders be the model by sharing their failures
Being "Fear-based" & "Failure Adverse" can look like being successful... But only in the short term. Sometimes we need to "put the need to succeed out of our mind" to find better approaches.
Questions to help teams recognize if they're "fear-based":
How do we react when errors are discovered?
Are we open about mistakes?
Do we over-plan, delaying seeing our errors?
Being fearless lets you explore new ideas. "Monsters, Inc." is a great example from the book. The main character changed from a 30-year-old man to a 6-year-old girl, then a boy, then a girl again.
Below you can see an early concept narrated by the director. If you have seen the movie you can see that it has nothing to do with what actually came out.
So we need to be more comfortable with failure, but when does it cross the line ? When should we stop a project ?
According to Ed Catmull, we need to look at the team:
“If the crew is confused, then their leader is, too”
Does the team start to loose confidence in the leader?
Are the problems brought up, not getting fixed overtime?
Some failures are costly, but at Pixar they are expected, and learned from.
People don’t run from their mistakes, and are not blame from them.
Fear is driven out, and the key ingredient achieving that is the trust built overtime!
That’s it for this week,
Let me know what you think!
Find the next chapter here:
https://ludtoussaint.substack.com/p/the-ugly-and-the-beast?r=1bc09s