“The search for life elsewhere is remarkable in our age because this is the first time that we can actually do something besides speculation. We can send spacecraft to nearby planets; we can use large radio telescopes to see if there is any message being sent to us… And it touches the deepest of human concerns. Are we alone?” – Carl Sagan
Are we alone? That fundamental question that Carl Sagan posed in that 1985 radio interview, pondered the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But that question is not only relevant at the astronomical scale, it is relevant at the terrestrial and even personal one. Are we alone? Are you alone? Do you feel alone? PIXAR’s latest movie, Elio, takes an unsurprisingly emotional and profound look at that query. We’re fundamentally social creatures, often introverted, reserved, or timid, yet we crave connection. We seek belonging and meaningful relationships. We hunger for community, either in person or via digital venues. We aspire and yearn for recognition by others. Feedback, we often say, is pure gold. It touches us deeply. Connecting with others seems to activate a grounded certainty that we are indeed, not alone. We belong. We are seen. We matter.
Elio delivers spectacular visuals. It develops relatable, lovable, and fun characters. But more than subtle, it sends you home with a great reminder. Don’t miss the obvious connection sitting right next to you (possibly even in the theater with you). You are not alone. We are here. Don’t look past the blessings in human form right next to you. Make an effort to see beyond your pain or loneliness and recognize, the answer might have been there all along. Know that others are here and others do care. And, just as you may be feeling lonely at times, recognize that there are others around you who may feel the same. Be kind. Be aware. And of course, be there, when they need you too.
I’ve been guilty of being oblivious at times. I think back to the many occurrences when I was so in my own head that I completely overlooked a precious soul sitting right next to me. Buried in my calendar, my phone, or my computer keyboard, I might as well have been a lightyear away from the present and sometime critical need next to me. This is a good reminder to pause and better connect to the human treasures all around us. We need each other. We need to belong. We do belong.
Remember, you are not alone! Be kind to each other and connect. And, of course, go see Elio if you haven’t already. It is marvelous and profoundly human. A message we need to hear. Well done, PIXAR!
I hope you all had a great weekend! And for any fellow dads out there, I hope you had a great Father’s Day! I spent time with all four of my kids watching movies, grilling outdoors, and of course, celebrating over some ice cream on these hot summer days. Now, to be fair, it doesn’t take much to need to celebrate in our household. Life is full of excuses that merit a need for a soft serve dose of that dairy goodness, but this weekend seemed particularly poised for that indulgence.
We love movies! As part of this weekend’s festivities, we had a full playlist of cinematic magic streaming on our living room screen. You all know me by now, so it probably doesn’t surprise you to know that I have my garage-based AI system curate our movie selection. It sends out text suggestions on what to watch. It keeps track of our viewing habits and has a good idea of what we like to see. But despite all that tech, my wife wasn’t quite satisfied. She suggested that it should consider recommending movies celebrating the anniversary of their general theatrical release. For example, “Incredibles 2” was released on June 15, 2018, so it would be a great one to watch on Sunday. I loved that idea! So, I went to work adding that context to our resident AI. I just needed data.
Good luck! I tried finding a good data source, but everything I found was driven more toward discovery, and most of it was flawed, including bad release date information. I finally landed on TMDB as a good listing of movies, with references to IMDb that could pull more official release dates from OMDb. Yeah, it was confusing, but sadly, there wasn’t a clean way to get this data. I needed a web service to aggregate all of this for me and my AI.
I’m going to stop now and just acknowledge that many of you are probably tired of hearing me talk so much about Vibe Coding. If that’s you, you can stop now. I won’t be offended. For the rest of you, yes, buckle up, here is another vibe coding story.
I launched VSCode with my GitHub Copilot-powered assistant that I call JoJo. I switched him to agent mode (super important, by the way), and began having a chat. I told him about my vision to create this web service, how I wanted to build this dataset and APIs for easy access. He created a movie_db folder and went to work on a script. The script ran right away and pulled down the data. I suggested a high-speed way to process the data, and he suggested caching the API calls to prevent overloading the providers. What a smart aleck! But he was right. That was a good idea because the free tier of API access was rate-limited.
Finally, I had a good dataset to use, and JoJo had compressed it into a serialized object for fast access. I then switched to having him create the Python web service and gave a general idea of the APIs I wanted. He suggested some routes to use and wired together a Python Flask app. I told him that I wanted to use FastAPI and that I wanted to build all the tests before we built the APIs. He reluctantly complied and had me run pytest to verify. All good. Then the fun began. he started churning on the code for the APIs.
At this point, I should acknowledge that I was very tempted to jump in and code some lines myself. You can definitely do that, and these tools will co-develop with you, but I wanted to see how far I could go just vibing my way along. It turns out, a long way! The APIs were looking good, and it was extremely fast. I decided I wanted a nice UI, so I told JoJo to build a web page and gave him a general idea of what I wanted to see. He spun up some templates, added some tests, and plumbed in a new route for the landing page.
“Show the movies that were released on this day in history and sort them by popularity.” Boom! In less than a minute, JoJo had a basic screen up and running. I asked him to tweak the colors and make it more modern with a date navigator. He did, but I didn’t like some of the placements, so I asked him to nudge things around a bit more and adjust the style. I must confess, this is where I spent probably too much of my time. It was too fun and easy to ask him to make minor tweaks to scratch my curiosity itch. But he never complained; he just kept coding and plodding along. I even had him add additional pages for “Search” and “About”, which had nothing to do with my original goal.
About eight hours later, we were done. Yes, that is probably about four times longer than I needed, but I was having so much fun! Fun? Yes, legitimate, awe-inspiring fun! I finished up the project by asking JoJo to build the Dockerfile and help me launch the app as a public website for others to use. He complied. In case you are wondering, I even spent the $11 to get a domain: https://moviesthisday.com. I still have a non-stop list of updates spinning in my head, not the least of which is a MCP server for AI.
When I launched my first startup, we spent over a year getting our business and first website launched. There was a lot of development time for that. I can’t imagine how different that story would have been if we had Vibe Coding to accelerate our efforts back then. This is a game changer! I want all of you to get a chance to vibe too. If you tried it in the past and weren’t impressed, please try again. The advances they are making are happening on a weekly basis now. I’ve seen it myself. They just keep getting better.
Technology amplifies human ability. Vibe Coding feels like digital adrenaline. I’m a little addicted. But it feels great! It has definitely helped bring the fun back into coding again for me. I wonder if the same could happen for you?
Now, for those of you who managed to actually stay with me through today’s way-too-long blog post, thank you! I’m excited for you. We are living through an amazing time in technology. Let’s get busy putting this great tech to use for the betterment of ourselves, our companies, and our world. Lean in! Try your hand at this ice cream of coding. The scoops are amazing!
Oh, and in case you are wondering what movie to watch tonight…
“We are a storytelling company, and the architecture is part of the story.” – Bo Bolanos
“Hi Jason! Sorry I was in a conference call with Disneyland. Are you still around?”
Bo was texting me. We were trying to connect for lunch. He had some ideas he wanted to talk about but had been pulled into a meeting to dream into the future of Tomorrowland. That sounds fun, doesn’t it? Bo had been working at Imagineering for over 30 years. He was a brilliant art director and principal for creative development.
Bo and I had met on the Glendale Beeline shuttle from our GC3 office campus to the Burbank Train station. We loved talking shop. Bo was particularly good at complaining about office politics, the red tape of bureaucracy, and insufferable inefficiencies. He would wander through his frustrations and challenges, yet in every conversation, he would conclude with his signature laugh and infectious smile, “But I love what I do, I love making magic.”
Bo had just completed the design of Disneyland’s Pixar Pals Parking Structure. He had loved that project. In fairness, it wasn’t as grand as his efforts creating Aulani, or as massive as his work designing Disney’s Animal Kingdom or even the whimsical creative direction, he provided for Toontown. But to Bo, it was a dream. With leadership focused on opening Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, he had been given free rein to dream up a new parking structure. I remember seeing the ear-to-ear grin when he announced it was done. If you haven’t seen this Parking Structure, I highly recommend visiting it. It is quintessentially Bo, rooted deeply in story and expressed with artistic magic.
Bo was passionate about story and detail. He had a unique ability for draping stone, concrete, wood, and steel structures with a rich tapestry of story. When you are at any of his projects, you can feel it. It immerses you and pulls you deep into that alternate world. It connects you with the past, the future, and the timeless feeling of what it means to be human.
“How do you do it, Bo?” He answered with one word, “details.” He would then tell of how they hired artisans from African tribes to fly in and perfectly craft the thatched roofs at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, or how upon examination at Aulani, a newly built fabrication was demolished to raise the ceiling 10 inches to faithfully deliver the Hawaiian design vocabulary, critical to the physical narrative that was being told. That attention to detail is the source and power of Disney’s differentiated magic. Bo was a masterful wizard and casting that detail to life. You can still experience that magic at Toontown, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Aulani Resort, Indiana Jones, Midway Mania, Buena Vista Street, Soarin’ over California, Napa Rose, and many, many others that Bo touched.
Sadly, Bo passed away earlier this month. I was shocked and devastated when I heard the news. I will miss Bo, but his impact will continue. Generations will continue to be touched by the stories he told in architecture, in stone, colors, and lighting. Bo reminds us that details matter. The art matters. The human story matters. Like Bo, we can tell the story through our own architecture, our lives, the expression of our creative energy on the universe, and make a difference.
“Disney is all about magic, about storytelling, and about family… I hope you all enjoy this magical, wonderful place.” – Bo Bolanos
Bo Bolanos’s LinkedIn Image at Disneyland’s Pixar Pals Parking Structure
Several years ago, I had the privilege of meeting the brilliant songwriter Richard Sherman at our Glendale campus. Ironically, I had no idea it was him! We were both late to a meeting and ended up sitting on a couch in the back of the room. We were enjoying a friendly chat when the emcee at the front of the room suddenly announced a special guest speaker. Richard stood up and walked to the front of the room. I blushed, finally realizing who I had been talking to. Richard turned around and looked at me and laughed. He went on to play his beloved songs, including “It’s a Small World (After All).”
Sadly, Richard is no longer with us. But before his passing he left us with one final gift… a last verse to this iconic song. If you haven’t seen this, I recommend you take some time to watch this right now:
Warning, it may require tissues… at least it did for me.
As we enter this season of love, joy, and peace, this song reminds us that we are all inextricably connected. Sure, in many ways there are differences. We may be separated by some beliefs, ideas, customs, and distances. But we all share laughter, we all share fears. And even in our world of hope, we all shed some tears. Theres more that connects us than divides us. One of the amazing potentials of humans is our ability to connect across vast expanses, to smile, to care for each other, to love and be loved. But it is still our choice. If I may be so bold, when you have the opportunity, choose love.
As Richard and Robert Sherman would put it,
“It’s a world of laughter A world of tear It’s a world of hopes And a world of fears There’s so much that we share That it’s time we’re aware It’s a small world after all
There is just one moon And one golden sun And a smile means Friendship to ev’ryone Though the mountains divide And the oceans are wide It’s a small world after all
Mother earth unites us in heart and mind And the love we give makes us humankind Through our vast wonderous land When we stand hand in hand It’s a small world after all.”
And yes, that song is probably stuck in your head by now. You’re welcome.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky.”
Where I grew up, elementary school was grades 1 through 6 and when you graduated from 6th grade, you were promoted to Junior High school. For the first time in your educational career, you were introduced to the responsibility of managing your class schedules, electives, and hallway lockers. Do you recall those days? At thirteen years of age, uncoordinated, unpopular, timid, and slightly attention challenged, it was often a recipe for disaster for me. But I somehow managed. I even signed up for my electives. I picked journalism because they got to use a computer, but beyond that, I had no idea what to pick. I rolled the dice and signed up for band.
I decided to try the trumpet as my instrument. As with every member, we were given special attention by the instructor. We began practicing on day one and it was a sonic disaster. Squawks, buzzes, squeaks, and raspy rattles were heard across the auditorium. I questioned my decision more than once but kept practicing along with my peers. With our instructors help, we finally began to learn proper posture, embouchure, breathing and finger placement. Like some sort of miracle, after a while, real notes started to appear. We were no way close to competing with Louis Armstrong, but we could really blast “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” like nobody’s business.
I recall how we all thought we had move up into the major leagues when we hit almost every note and occasionally even had the timing right. Some notes were extra special. They require a bit more skill to hit so when you finally did, you liked to hold it a bit longer, perhaps too long. With a help of a metronome, we eventually moved past the “finally got it so hold it” tendency. The trumpet concerto finally had those stars twinkling.
The band teacher assembled everyone together. We had been practicing and performing separately but now it was time to play together. Our trumpet section joined the flutes, clarinets, trombones, saxophones, and percussion. The entire band came together and was ready to perform.
Have you ever been in a car accident? There is a weird feeling where all control is pulled away from you and the world boils in chaos all around you. Well, that is how it was when we first started playing together. It was awful! We were all blindly playing through the notes on the sheet music in front of us, unaware of being out of sync and out of tune with everyone else.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” the instructor tried to wrangle the stampede. “Let’s start slow. Hold each note until I tell you to move on. Watch me!” The conductor raised his baton, and, on the downstroke, the room erupted in the “Mary” note. It started rough but as we held it, something amazing happened. We finally heard each other for the first time. It was actually quite remarkable. The instructor smiled. Seeing us each awaken to this new connection he moved on to the next stroke, “had”, then “a” and the double beat “little.” When we finally reached “go” there was a bit of awe in the room, and we were even a bit emotional. We had done it! It was no Concerto Magnifico, but it had unlocked a key lesson in life. Paying attention and listening to each other would allow us to make beautiful music together.
We all have a part to play. We carry different instruments in life. We each have unique abilities, talents, passions, and perspective. Something incredible happens when we come together, listen to each other, and focus on a common outcome. Our individual notes become a chorus, resonating, and amplifying each other into something that we could never achieve on our own. Individually, we are all amazing wonders, but together, we are magnificent, like a diamond in the sky!
Play your notes with all your heart! But listen. Connect. Feel the majesty of what we can be together. Let’s keep playing!
A gasp and then silence fell across the room. Jenna, a young and wide-eyed girl behind me said with a soft and nervous voice, “Mommy, are they okay?” Boom! The environment exploded with electrifying sound and brilliant flashes of light. Silhouettes of nearby friends illuminated all around us, projecting living shadows across the room. A melody of “oohs” and “aahs” rose from the crowd. All eyes were fixed on the glowing white screen in front of us. It was grabbing us and pulling us toward an irresistible climax. A rising sound, then a chorus of anticipation filled our ears. Then sweeping notes of joy flooded many of our eyes with tears. The protagonist on the screen had stepped into our souls. We feel how she felt. We see what she saw. We heard what she heard. The moment had stitched us into the story. We had arrived. And yes, Jenna, things are going to be okay.
Movies tell stories. But they also connect us. They walk us through our own emotions, our own dreams, and our own fears. They scare us. They inspire us. They take us on a fanciful journey. They stir our imagination, transport us to new realities and ultimately entertain, delight, and stir our souls. The art of storytelling through the medium of cinema is an amazing experience. It is needed. Through it we can step outside of our own troubles and into new possibilities. Our human souls yearn for those stories and imagination to take us on journeys we would never venture alone. They can be healing, providing relief and therapeutic inspiration. They can be fun.
As filmmakers, we have the incredible privilege of helping bring this experience to the world. Directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, designers, composers, editors, artists, and other cast members all assemble to bring these stories and experiences to life through visual and auditory means. It is an art-form and craft that ministers the magic of storytelling, delight, and joy to our planet.
This Friday, Inside Out 2 shows up in theaters. Be sure to take your friends and family to see it and encourage others to do the same. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see it, hear it, and of course… feel it too.
I was running late. The previous session had run over. I needed to run! I jogged across the campus to make it to my next meeting. It was in the presentation room at Imagineering HQ. After a quick sprint down the John Hench Graffiti Hallway, I quietly ducked into the venue. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. I followed in a few other late arrivals. The person in front of me and I took a seat on one of the couches in the back. The meeting hadn’t yet started. I let out a sigh of relief and the person next to me smiled and nodded a sympathetic, “Well, at least we made it.” We managed to find some water bottles, a nice treat after a mad dash between meetings. We chitchatted about the water, the sprawling creative campus and the new modernized presentation room.
The meeting finally got underway. The emcee stood at the front of the room on a small riser and addressed the crowd. They had wheeled in a digital piano and a stand mic. The host welcomed everyone and informed us that we were in for a special treat. A renowned guest had joined us today and would be talking to us about their career at Disney as a songwriter and musician. This special guest, he informed us, was a Disney legend and had worked directly with Walt Disney himself. There were some oohs and ahhs across the room as the announcer concluded, “Please join me in welcoming Richard Sherman to the stage.”
We began to clap. My new friend next to me stood up and started walking toward the front of the room. I was stunned! He turned around and looked at me and grinned. I’m pretty sure my face was red. All this time I hadn’t recognized that the friendly soul sitting next to me was none another than one of the most prolific composer-lyricists in the history of family entertainment, Richard Sherman.
Richard took his seat at the keyboard and began telling us his story. He talked about his time working with Walt Disney. He told how he and his brother, Robert, had composed songs like “Chim Chim Cheree”, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “I Wanna Be Like You,” “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room”, “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Feed the Birds”, “Winnie the Pooh,” and of course, “It’s A Small World (After All).” He used the keyboard to tell the stories and punctuate each stage of his career with melody and rhyme. He sang to us. He taught us. He inspired us. He entertained us. Richard was simply amazing.
This past weekend, Richard composed his final outro. The narrative of his 95 years had reached its end. While his story may have ended, his songs never will. His words, his choruses and his melodies will live on forever. Like him, they sing to our souls. They teach us to smile, optimistically and cheerfully embrace the future, our work and each other. They entertain and delight us. Richard tickled the keys of the human spirit. He will be missed, but his words will continue across the planet for years to come.
And finally, just a reminder, don’t hesitate to greet those you sit next to, even if you are late to the meeting. You never know who you might accidentally meet. But then again, I guess it does make sense, it is A Small World, after all.
“No matter what you do, give it everything you’ve got.” – Richard M. Sherman
As a kid I would dream of being a scientist and working in outer space. Like many of my generation, I was inspired by Star Wars. I loved the Jedi and fancied being one myself, but I was absolutely fascinated with spacecraft. I would spend hours in grade school drawing spaceships and orbital space stations while the rest of the class did their lessons. I wasn’t alone. My friends were all enamored with Star Wars and epic adventures. Then I saw the movie TRON. A new passion formed. I wanted a computer so bad I could taste it!
TRON inspired me. I dreamed of creating virtual worlds my programs could live in. I even imagined living in the Grid myself. In fact, I would ride a light cycle all the way to school. To be fair, everyone else just saw an old beat-up BMX bike, but for me, I was fighting for the users. I wrote my first real program in 7th grade. No surprise, it was a space game with flying sprites of rockets, asteroids, and invading aliens. I remember how incredible it felt to deliver that experience and hearing how others were enjoying it. I was a computer astronaut pushing bits around and manipulating the world through code. After college I worked as a civil engineer shaping the physical world through software. I still dreamed of creating fantasy worlds where my love of space, science and technology could collide. Then it happened.
It smelled like dirt and diesel. Large earth moving vehicles were roaring around us. Steel and concrete workers were busy shaping the terrain. We navigated across deep dirt ruts and board covered walkways, eventually making our way to a center area. Tall rock work spires pierced the sky all around us. Then I felt goosebumps. A grin shot across my face as we rounded a corner and suddenly before us was the Millennium Falcon. I couldn’t believe it! The terraforming of Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland was almost complete. It hit me. I was seeing my dream come true. We had spent the last several years helping craft the software pipelines and systems that would power this adventure. Soon guests of all ages would experience this fantastical journey into the world of Star Wars powered by technology, science, and imagination.
One hundred years ago, Walt Disney had a dream. He dreamed of a company that would inspire and entertain the world through the art of storytelling. It was a vision of a bright and hopeful future. A dream that would cherish and learn from the past but push boldly forward into the future. And it would require the most important thing of all. People. Artist, workers, Imagineers, cast members, and of course, guests. Today, 100 years after Walt and Roy Disney started the company, we keep moving forward, creating new ideas and inspiring others like we were inspired. Every day, we ship encouragement and delight to our fellow humans all over the world. It is what Walt envisioned. It is what we do. We are part of that magic. Walt’s dream continues because of all of you. With a little faith, some trust, and a bit of pixie dust, I’m convinced that we will continue to delight and surprise the world for years to come.
Congratulations, team! Let’s celebrate one hundred years of Disney magic, inspiration, and storytelling… and here’s to 100 years more!
It was the first day of the pottery class. The instructor welcomed the students and began to orient them on the material. He announced that the final grade would be determined by one of two measures. For half the class, he said that their final grade would be determined by the “quality” of their pottery. Their goal was to work on a single high quality product. For the other half of the class, he said that their final grade would be determined by “quantity”. Their goal was the sheer amount of pottery produced. Fifty pounds of pots would be rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. The class began and the students began their work.
The last day of class finally came and a curious fact emerged. The works of highest quality were not produced by the group focused on quality. Instead, the highest quality works were all produced by the group graded for quantity! It seemed that the “quantity” group got busy producing piles of work and learning from their mistakes as they went along. In contrast, the “quality” group sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little to show for their work than some theory of perfection and a lump of dead clay.[1]
The key to becoming a great artist, writer, musician, etc., is to keep creating! Keep drawing, keep writing, keep playing! Quality emerges from the quantity. It strikes me that the same thing applies to software and systems we run. When we focus purely on the quality, we actually miss the mark. The way to improve quality is to keep creating, testing and learning. In the software sense, we want to keep releasing our code as often and as fast as possible. By doing that, we build operational expertise, knowledge and automation. We develop fast feedback loops that nudge the digital clay into a better shape. We tune processes to provide faster feedback loops, remove toil through automation, and minimize human error and mistakes. We optimize for a high throughput of working products and reap the prize of high quality outcomes.
But does this hold true? In my career, I have seen this to be true time and time again. Areas where we remove friction and optimize for faster release cycles (even multiple times a day), with automated integration, testing and delivery, ultimately result in higher quality products. I see the same thing looking out to the industry. The highest performing teams optimize for highest flow. The prize of perfection comes by delivering and learning. In the book, “Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations,” Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim ran a multi-year research project looking at practices and capabilities of high-performing technology organizations. Their conclusion was that the highest performing organizations embraced the notion of continuous delivery, the ability to deliver changes frequently, reliably and with minimal manual effort.[2]
We ship! As technologist, software engineers and SREs, our teams help design, build and run the digital trains that deliver amazing products and experiences to our customers and fellow employees every single day. Our goal is to make these experiences shine! And, as the pottery class learned, it is quantity of our practice and continuous learning that makes them more perfect.
Keep shipping. Keep improving. Keep delivering!
References
The pottery parable is a true story as captured by David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book, Art & Fear. There is a similar story about photography in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim also identifies other key traits of high performing organizations, including having loosely coupled architecture, embracing a learning culture of experimentation, adopting lean principles to optimize flow, and creating a high-trust and empowering environment.
Forsgren, N., Humble, J., & Kim, G. (2018). Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations. IT Revolution Press.
Bayles, D., & Orland, T. (1993). Art & Fear. The Image Continuum.
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.
“I need to sit down.” We were standing in a crowded reception hall and the keynote speaker and I were talking. He had a pained look on his face. The waitstaff was bustling around offering hors d’oeuvres to the conference attendees that had gathered after a “Ralph Breaks VR” demonstration at The Void at Downtown Disney. I spotted a collection of chairs in the corner and motioned toward them, “Let’s grab a seat there.”
“That’s better!” It was a star-struck moment for me. I was now sitting next to one of my heroes and in an hour or so we would be going to dinner together. I first heard about Ed Catmull in college. I had admired his research in computer graphics including his pioneering work in texture mapping. Sitting there, it occurred to me that the incredible VR demonstration we just saw wouldn’t have been possible without his revolutionary work. Ed smiled, clearly relieved to be sitting down and then continued our conversation. We talked about the technology, cloud computing, PIXAR, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, mindfulness and of course, Ed’s book, Creativity, Inc.
“I hated it!” Ed’s shook his head in response to my question about his experience writing the book. It was a lot of hard work. He explained how he had enlisted 40+ reviewers to critique the manuscript and was always wanting more. Despite his elaborate efforts to get that candid feedback, he was convinced that it was still far from perfect. After publication, he said he received abundant feedback from the brilliant folks at PIXAR on all the areas he got wrong. He was motivated and even encouraged by Bob Iger, to make a second edition. I do hope that happens. The thing that impressed me the most about Ed was his insatiable desire to get things right and to enlist the help of others to do so. When I asked why he went to such measures to get that feedback, he told me, “There’s no upside in being wrong.”
If you ever read Ed’s book, and you should, you know how much emphasis is placed on getting authentic and candid feedback. That approach has shaped the storytelling and creative content powerhouses at PIXAR, Walt Disney Animation Studios and ILM. I told Ed about my first visit to PIXAR and how it left such a huge impression on me. It wasn’t just the great campus, the comfortable open area buildings or the iconic artwork decorating the place. No, the biggest thing to me was the culture of candor. There was no power structure in the rooms. Ego was taken out. There was this incredible respect and expectation for everyone in the room to give and take honest notes. It was transformative and something I have forever sought to encourage and replicate in my own teams. Ed’s comment? “Yes, but I know we still have work to do.”
Ed is right. I have seen organizations achieve good success only to see it calcify processes or limit the ability to receive corrective feedback. As my conversation with Ed underscored, it is critical to continually seek honest feedback, remove power structures from the room and drive changes accordingly. I’m proud to say that I personally continue to see this honest feedback. At least once a week, someone on my team will raise an issue to me where we—and yes sometimes just me—are not doing the right thing, not communicating well, missing an opportunity, or doing something we shouldn’t. These are pure gold. I won’t pretend they don’t sometimes sting or hurt, but I can’t think of a single time where they didn’t result in some improvement that made us all better.
Are you willing to receive candid feedback? Are you willing to give it? As a leader, are you removing the power structure in the room so that you minimize risk and amplify candor?
I recognize that I’m over indexed on optimism, but I also believe that at any given point, something is going wrong. How do we discover that and encourage others to do the same? Getting a true and honest signal when things are going wrong is critical for our organizations if we hope to see them stay relevant, successful and thriving. Look for problems. Reward and embrace honest feedback so that you can change. As Ed would say, “There’s no upside in being wrong.” Strive for being right!
