Ed Catmull

“When faced with a challenge, get smarter.”

— Ed Catmull

“candor could not be more crucial to our creative process.”

— Ed Catmull

“There is no growth or success without change. For”

— Ed Catmull

“When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.”

— Ed Catmull

“Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track.”

— Ed Catmull

“Better to have train wrecks with miniature trains than with real ones.”

— Ed Catmull

“People want decisiveness, but they also want honesty about when you’ve effed up,”

— Ed Catmull

“Story plays a role in the budget process when building reels.”

— Ed Catmull

“leadership is about making your best guess and hurrying up about it so if it’s wrong, there’s still time to change course.”

— Ed Catmull

“We realized that our purpose was not merely to build a studio that made hit films but to foster a creative culture…

— Ed Catmull

“were incisive and straightforward. Something unusual had been built at Pixar, he said, and he wanted to understand it. For the first…

— Ed Catmull

“Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up? That approach never encourages a creative response.”

— Ed Catmull

“Having a finite list of problems is much better than having an illogical feeling that everything is wrong.”

— Ed Catmull

“Then, because we know that this passion will at some point blind them to their movie’s inevitable problems, we offer them the…

— Ed Catmull

“The takeaway here is worth repeating: Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.”

— Ed Catmull

“The most productive creative sessions allow for the exploration of myriad trains of thought.”

— Ed Catmull

“The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight…

— Ed Catmull

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to…

— Ed Catmull

“studios down. (He also thought, frankly, that making us the stewards of both entities would guarantee that Pixar’s traditions didn’t get overtaken…

— Ed Catmull

“People who act without an approved plan should not be punished for “going rogue.” A culture that allows everyone, no matter their…

— Ed Catmull

“Though I was immensely proud of what we had accomplished, I vowed that we would never make a film that way again.…

— Ed Catmull

“Instead of saying, ‘The writing in this scene isn’t good enough,’ you say, ‘Don’t you want people to walk out of the…

— Ed Catmull

“The leaders of my department understood that to create a fertile laboratory, they had to assemble different kinds of thinkers and then…

— Ed Catmull

“What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think…

— Ed Catmull

“To view lack of conflict as optimum is like saying a sunny day is optimum. A sunny day is when the sun…

— Ed Catmull

“Your employees are smart; that’s why you hired them. So treat them that way. They know when you deliver a message that…

— Ed Catmull

“When I advocate for protecting the new, then, I am using the word somewhat differently. I am saying that when someone hatches…

— Ed Catmull

“Don’t Let Resentments Fester Many things that go wrong are caused by misunderstandings or screw-ups. These lead to resentments that, if left…

— Ed Catmull

“Consolidate What’s Been Learned While it is true that you learn the most in the midst of a project, the lessons are…

— Ed Catmull

“If our mental models are mere approximations of reality, then, the conclusions we draw cannot help but be prone to error. A…

— Ed Catmull

“I’ve talked about my belief that balance is a dynamic activity—by which I mean, one that never ends. I’ve spelled out my…

— Ed Catmull

“The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides…

— Ed Catmull

“Here’s what we all know, deep down, even though we might wish it weren’t true: Change is going to happen, whether we…

— Ed Catmull

“Once, I was having lunch with the president of another movie studio, who told me that his biggest problem was not finding…

— Ed Catmull

“The definition of superb animation is that each character on the screen makes you believe it is a thinking being. Whether it’s…

— Ed Catmull

“The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20–20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact,…

— Ed Catmull

“Pete has a few methods he uses to help manage people through the fears brought on by pre-production chaos. “Sometimes in meetings,…

— Ed Catmull

“Yet randomness remains stubbornly difficult to understand. The problem is that our brains aren’t wired to think about it. Instead, we are…

— Ed Catmull

“Athletes and musicians often refer to being in “the zone”—that mystical place where their inner critic is silenced and they completely inhabit…

— Ed Catmull

“To be honest, I was uneasy about Steve. He had a forceful personality, whereas I do not, and I felt threatened by…

— Ed Catmull