Book Review: Creativity, Inc. : Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
This book was recommended to me by the Group Director of the 309th Software Engineering Group at Hill Air Force Base, Mr. Jim Diamond. After spending 6 months in software as part of my Logistics Career Broadening Program — I finished my last month in conjunction with reading this book. Learning about Pixar and Disney was probably one of the most fun ways to understand a unique organization leadership and culture framework. This book helped me identify new creative leadership skills while helping me realize that military organizations do VERY little in terms of helping to build an organization that empowers its members. But why? Should creativity even be the goal for a military organization?
It’s seems comical to compare Pixar and Disney Animations to the Air Force, I’m fully aware the military is NOT a creative computer animation studio. The Air Force however, is going through a doctrinal and cultural revolution that warrants a change in how leadership interacts with individuals, teams, and organizations to still achieve mission success in combat and in garrison. “Accelerate Change or Lose”, the current Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s action orders are controversially different for the Air Force to implement quickly and efficiently because it is not how the organization is led. Before I review the book itself, I would like to explain how there are different types of organizational cultures so there’s a foundation to how you read this review or when you read the book.
Competing Values Framework
The Competing Value Framework created by Robert Quinn identifies a wide range of different leadership and organization management styles based on two different dimensions — flexibility vs control and internal vs external focuses. When places on an axis, these dimensions create four different categories for organizational focus and culture.
1. Compete: Tools or techniques, such as competitiveness, fast response, decisive- ness, driving through barriers, or goal achieve- ment, could be highlighted in the lower right quadrant.
2. Control: Tools or techniques, focused on assessing and measuring, controlling processes, structuring, efficiency improvement, or quality enhancement, could be addressed in the lower left quadrant.
3. Collaborate: Tools and techniques such as teamwork, collaboration, talent management, empowerment, or inter-personal relationships could be highlighted in the upper left quadrant.
4. Create: Tools and techniques focused on innovation, creativity, ar- ticulating future vision, transformation change, or entrepreneurship could be address in the upper right quadrant.
Take a second to think about where your organization lies on this framework — does it focus on innovation or process? Competition or teamwork? Or better yet, a combination of multiple cultures based on the mission or goal?
As leaders, we must understand that based on the current resources, personnel, and goals — your organization’s value framework may change but it’s up to leadership to drive that change.
Creativity, Inc. — The Lessons That Fit Any Culture
From reading the book, it seems as though Pixar falls into the Create and Collaborate dimension of the Competing Values Framework most of the time. Ed Catmull focused more on the Collaborating synergy of his organization and how they were able to build a culture that favored its employees through creativity. Here were three of my favorite concepts in this book:
1. Creativity is not defined narrowly — this was one of my favorite points of this book. “Creativity is problem solving and how do we think about problems, the act of working on those problems is a creative act.”, says Ed Catmull. This concept ties directly with the autonomy necessary to produce quality work by empowering your people. In the entire book, not once does Ed Catmull define Creativity and it really allows the reader to pull together their own definition and how best it fits to the audience’s environment.
2. Build a Brain Trust — A Brain Trust is a feedback mechanism where multiple advisors and mentors provide expertise, insight, and advice on current and new ideas. The meetings occur on a reoccurring basis and their emphasis is on candor in a safe environment with subject matter experts. Ed Catmull states that the Brain Trust was used to root out mediocrity — and it obviously worked based on their very successful movie production after the Brain Trust inception. I really enjoyed imaging what a Brain Trust would look like in my organization and I hope it’s something you can imagine and implement too!
3. Avoid blaming in mistakes and failure — Accountability is valuable to learn from mistakes or bad ideas but not in the way you would think. In my organizations, I have seen “Root Cause Analysis” prime individuals to blame people when there are mistakes and failure to the point of being risk adverse. In certain Control organizational climates, risk adversion may seem like the safe option but that doesn’t empower individuals to feel compeled to solve problems at their level and by no means does it get fid of failure. Additionally, when a person is tied to their failure or bad idea, instead of focusing on making an idea better, there can be negative attitudes or emotional decisions that drive bad outcomes. There are ways to utilize mistakes and failure in a positive light and finding that balance is key for an organization’s success.
“You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.”
I am very glad this book was recommended to me and hope to pass it along as a worthy read for organizational leaders, management, and supervisors of all levels. Even in a military organization, this book was able to highlight concepts and tools that we could use that shouldn’t just stay in the creative industry.
