Candor

08 January 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by jonathanfsullivan.com

Okay, our first post about the priorities—or values—of Pixar. The first value is candor. It means being open and speaking frankly.

One of the greatest things I've learned about working in a team creatively is about how important it is to speak openly with one another about your project. No matter how good or bad it is, and no matter who made it good or bad, you have to be willing to talk openly and fully about the things that aren't perfect.

(Even if it is really good, that may just get in the way of you seeing the parts that need improvement, but that's for the next post about mental models.)

Secondly, the internal feedback from the team must always follow one rule: it's not personal, it's always about the work. Ed Catmull says,

The film itself—not the filmmaker—is under the microscope .... You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.

Pixar has a meeting that they call the Briantrust which picks their movies apart several times during the production of each film. In this meeting people have to speak openly and speak their whole mind. They have to speak candidly. It's one of the reasons that Pixar movies are so great.

Okay, so this is really great advice about being candid in a team, but how does it apply to an individual's creativity. How does it apply to what we are exploring in this blog?

When you are working on your own project, you have to be completely honest with yourself about the project and its value. This might mean you'll need to step back from it from time to time to get an unbiased perspective, or you might need to elicit feedback from others. Either way you must accept the truth about your project's flaws and not take offense or get depressed.

One of the gems of this book is about accepting an ugly baby until it grows up. The book says that all of Pixar's movies have been failures and they weren't successful until they were massive failures and completely undone and redone.

Don't wait for things to be perfect to share with others. Show early and show often. It will be pretty when we get there, but it won't be pretty along the way.

Interestingly, I don't think anyone can say that Apple is rated high on the candor list. They are known for their secrecy. But don't get confused by that. While they are secretive about their products to the public, I would be willing to bet that the people in charge of making their products lay it all on the table to make sure it comes out perfect.