Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

by Ed Catmull

there were problems they could not see. And because they weren’t aware of these blind spots, they assumed that the problems didn’t exist. Which brings us to one of my core management beliefs: If you don’t try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead.

The better approach, I believe, is to accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.

The goal is to place one foot on either side of the door—one grounded in what we know, what we are confident about, our areas of expertise, the people and processes we can count on—and the other in the unknown, where things are murky, unseen, or uncreated.

There are others who venture into the unknown with surprising success but with little understanding of what they have done. Believing in their cleverness, they revel in their brilliance, telling others about the importance of taking risks. But having stumbled into greatness once, they are not eager for another trip into the unknown. That’s because success makes them warier than ever of failure, so they retreat, content to repeat what they have done before. They stay on the side of the known.

BUILDING AND SUSTAINING

Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft.

In any business, it’s important to do your homework, but the point I’m making goes beyond merely getting the facts straight. Research trips challenge our preconceived notions and keep clichés at bay. They fuel inspiration. They are, I believe, what keeps us creating rather than copying.

Just as looking at what is not the chair helps bring it into relief, pulling focus away from a particular problem (and, instead, looking at the environment around it) can lead to better solutions.

Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional. Postmortems are one route into that understanding.

First of all, vary the way you conduct them. By definition, postmortems are supposed to be about lessons learned, so if you repeat the same format, you tend to uncover the same lessons, which isn’t much help to anyone.

Good producers—and good managers—don’t dictate from on high. They reach out, they listen, they wrangle, coax, and cajole.

TESTING WHAT WE KNOW

“It wasn’t that they had no desire to express themselves, but there was an imbalance of forces in the organization—not just within it, but between it and the rest of the corporation—

“What you have done in this report is to assert that in two years we will be here,” I said, putting my pencil lead at the top of the pyramid. “Once you assert that, though, it’s human nature that you will focus only on making it come true. You will stop thinking about other possibilities. You will narrow your thinking and defend this plan because your name will be on it and you will feel responsible.” Then I started drawing lines on the

THOUGHTS FOR MANAGING A CREATIVE CULTURE