The Blank, The Bias & The Hidden at Pixar!
Visual summary for "Creativity Inc " part 9
624 words | Around 4-minute read
Have you ever felt like you're missing something crucial, right under your nose?
What if the most important insights are hiding in plain sight?
Hi there!
My name is Lud, I am passionate about making complex ideas simpler through Visual Thinking and Sketchnoting.
A Creative Journey
We are currently going through the book "Creativity Inc." by Ed Catmull, chapter by chapter, and I challenged myself to create short animations to capture the book’s ideas.
We are now on Chapter 9. If you missed previous ones, you can catch up by reading:
In the last chapter, we talked about Pixar being bought by Disney and how to navigate change and complexity… This chapter discusses what can make this even more difficult: What’s hidden!
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A Personal Blindspot
Recently I received some feedback from one colleague:
“Did you notice that when you ask a question, you often do not give people enough time to think and answer?”
I definitely hadn’t noticed, and would probably have not found that problem for a while without my colleague’s input. I now try to slowly count to 10 every time I ask a question…
Similarly Organizations will have blindspots, and being aware of their existence is crucial for any prolonged success!
Chapter 9 - The Hidden
The Layers of Invisibility
The author Ed Catmull (at the time President of Pixar) emphasizes the importance of being aware of the limits of our perception. He is haunted by the stories of many great companies that fell into very preventable troubles… Did they become complacent?
Ed believes the problem is that they were not aware of The Hidden.
There are different levels of the unknown:
Level 1: Leader’s Blind Spots
As soon as you become a manager, people will tend to give you less, or more filtered information.
Level 2: Hierarchy & Structure
Hierarchy can influence how information flows, with some people focusing on satisfying the upper levels and disregarding anyone below in the structure.
Level 3: The Complexity Beneath the Surface
People doing the actual work have the most understanding of the complex processes happening and the puzzles to be solved, yet leaders may think that it is their responsibility to know everything and take decisions according to that partial knowledge.
The truth is that there will always be something hidden; no one has the full picture. That is why it is crucial to value the different viewpoints and make them emerge.
“In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to life different views that can help give us clarity.”
Listening Actively
Now let’s see a concrete example at Pixar:
During the preparation for the movie “UP”, the team discovered an unusual insight:
They could be faster… by starting later!
They managed to deliver the movie with less effort by listening to the advice of one visual effects producer: Animators would work faster if they get more finalized input. Starting later meant less re-work... And therefore less work!
Those kind of insights can only be possible if the organization actively listen to the people regardless of their place in the hierarchy. In the next chapters Ed will elaborate more on how those things happen at Pixar.
Hindsight is not 20-20
We have now acknowledged that we don’t see everything and need to humbly listen to other viewpoints, but there is another layer of unknown.
We often hear that we should learn from our mistakes and successes, as well as those of others, but there is a paradoxical trouble when we use the past as a teacher:
Confirmation bias.
Ed Catmull explains that we should recognize the limitations of looking back, and when doing so, take the same careful approach as when trying to predict the future.
Our Mental Models aren’t reality. They are tools […] .The key is knowing the difference.
We can't understand all the intricacies of past events, like the butterflies that "produced" a hurricane. The past is made up of millions of interactions that we just can't comprehend.
Whatever we learn from the past will be partial and tainted by our own biases.
Awareness is the start.
The Unmade Future
Creativity is uncertainty, it is uncomfortable, it is a blank page.
Ed Catmull calls it the "Unmade Future", a scary place full of Changes, Randomness, and things Hidden, and despite all that, we can to learn to confidently venture into it!
That’s it for now!
I don't say it enough, but “Creativity Inc.” is full of nuances and small stories illustrating the points that I can’t capture here, so I really recommend to picking up the book!
I hope you enjoyed my summary 🙂. Let me know in the comments, and you can also consider sharing it around!
How do you get past the blank page?
How do you open up to different views?
The next chapter is out, find it here
