MBA1624 Must Read P2- Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

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And I can keep going, but you get the point. An incredible, incredible company that produced an incredible product. This book was incredible to the point I had to make this must read a two parter. So if you haven't listened to part one, go back to listened to yesterday's episode and we got a lot more to cover in today's. We're going to dive into the second half of the book talking about planning, fears, failure, trust, leadership, management and a whole lot more. We're going to dig deep and find out how important is planning really in your business. Also about fear and how you want to make sure it's not a prevalent feeling in your company. What happens if fear is a big part of the day to day of your employees. We'll also talk about failure, how to deal with that, how to help it make your business better. We'll also talk about how to manage your team, how to be a confident leader. This book is filled with great stories and insights that I want to share. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. If you haven't picked up the drift already, Creativity Inc. Is a book you need to read. It details the story of the Pixar organization. It shares insights, anecdotes, as well as how to build an amazing business like theirs. Let's talk about planning. Well, actually, the book talks a lot about the idea of planning in your business. Planning your projects, planning your features, planning your product rollouts. And people think that if you over plan, there's not a lot of room for creativity. What I love about Ed's perspective is that he first says you have to plan. You have to have a plan beforehand. But he also understands that not everything is going to be clear and available to you in the planning stage. There's not an endless amount of information. There's only a certain amount of information that you know in the beginning, and there's only so much you can control. So his advice is to plan. Spend some time planning, but implement that plan as quickly as possible. So if you're wrong, you can course correct quickly and expect that you will be wrong. And that's okay because you're going to learn how not to do it and how to pivot. But if you spend too much time planning, you don't have enough time to be creative and come up with a better plan. That's what he's saying, that come up with a plan, plan out your project, plan out the product you're creating, implement. Because then that's where the creativity starts. When you start doing things, you start doing things, you'll start realizing, oh, maybe there's a better way to do this, maybe this is a better idea. Maybe we should do this way. So he's like, implement, failure, improve. Correct. So don't spend too much time planning, but start with something he talks about. When you're building a company, uncertainty and change is inevitable. You cannot avoid it. You can't avoid the fact that you don't know what's going to happen in the future and that things will change. Things are changing constantly. The economy, your audience, the people that work at your business, all that stuff is going to happen and will happen and is happening. So don't try to control everything. Accept it Just like we accept the weather, you know, the weather changes. Sometimes the forecast says, hey, it's going to be raining all day and then tomorrow it's all sunny. This happens. We can try to predict the future. We could try to use the tools and the, and the things that we have at our disposal to, you know, kind of plan out and think how things are going to go for a business. But reality is a different story. The marketplace is a different story. We got to be willing to adapt and accept that things may not be as we expect. Failure is a huge part of their success. They actually would get worried if the project is going without any challenges, is going without any problems. They're like, this is not normal. There should be issues. They expected to at least have one flop. They know that, you know, it's very hard to have a winning streak of movies, you know, blockbuster after blockbuster. So they knew that at one point they will put out a movie that won't be that great no matter how hard they worked. And this allowed them to be like, hey, let's take some risks, let's try our best. Because some things are out of our control. We can't just be led by fear worried about failing. This is that fear based companies, companies that are afraid to fail rarely succeed because they don't take any risks, they don't try to stretch themselves. They take it very slowly, very safe, and in the meantime, the competition gobbles them up. He says, if you foster a positive culture of failure, understand that failure is inevitable as part of our company, is part of growing as a company, as part of the creation of the product, that the opposite will happen. If everybody accepts the fact that, hey, failure can happen and will happen, you will feel less likely. It's pretty interesting. Why? Because when you work and play like that, you're a lot looser, you're a lot more in your element. And I can definitely relate to this in the world of sports. I play basketball quite often, you know, just recreationally. But I did play pretty competitively when I was younger. When I went into a game saying, we can't lose, I got to dominate all that kind of stuff. I didn't play as well. I was a lot more rigid, I was a lot more stiff and not as comfortable. But when I went into a game knowing that we can lose, losing is an option. This can happen. I was looser, I played a lot better, I was a lot more creative. And I actually learned later on that this is how Phil Jackson, one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time, Coach of Michael Jordan's Bulls as well as Shaq and Kobe's Lakers. That's what he told his players. You can lose, and accepting that fact helps you perform better. Give that a try the next time you're working on something big in your company. So how do you drive out fear in your company? Well, he says trust is the anecdote. If you give your employees more trust, more autonomy, whether it's in remote work, whether it's with a project, whether it's delivering on a deadline, this will help curb fear. People won't feel they're in a fear based company that, hey, people, trust me, everything's going to be okay. Let's be a little creative now. The thing about trust is that it takes some time to build. It takes a lot longer to build trust than fear. Fear can be cultivated quite quickly. So remember that I need to install trust in my team. Trust in me, trust in the system, trust in the company over time. He says managers should never have the default of secrecy. Secrecy is the enemy. You want to be transparent. You want to be honest, you want to be candid. This will build trust. The opposite will build fear. The less people know, the more they'll imagine what the scenario is in their heads. Make up stuff, fill in the blanks. So encourage yourself and your managers not to be secretive, to be transparent, to be as honest as possible. He then moves on in the book about leadership and management. And one of the things I loved was his advice on hiring. He mentions in the book that when he first got into animation, one of his first jobs was working for George Lucas of Lucasfilms. And George Lucas asked him a question. He said, if I don't hire you, who should I hire for this position? And Ed in the interview, quickly rattled off a whole bunch of people he recommends for this job. This told George a couple things. One, this guy is secure. He has the confidence to recommend other people, knowing he's not the only person in the world that can do this job too. He understands it takes a team to build an amazing company. So he's ready with some people that he would love to work with or maybe have on his team. The funny thing is, is that George hired him on the spot because he asked the same question to all the other candidates, some of which he mentioned as recommendations that Ed recommended to say, hey, this is who you should hire for this job. And they all didn't respond that way. They responded with, well, I should get the job. That was an early lesson for Ed on how to hire. He says make sure you put away your ego, right? Shelve your insecurities and hire people that are better than you, that are smarter than you. That's how you build an incredible company. And that does take a lot out of you, you as a leader, to understand that you are not that great. There are people that are better at certain things than you. Better salespeople, better marketers, better technical leads, better managers, better customer service agents, whatever it is. You got to hire somebody who's better than you so you can be the person that has the dream team. He also talks about leadership. And as a leader, you need to be confident. People want confident leaders. They want somebody to have a vision, to say, hey, this is what we're going after. And you are doing everything you can as a leader to push the team towards that goal. If they see that, they will follow. They will say, okay, I might not like this or that or that's something that annoys me, but I respect this person as a leader. I respect their vision, I respect their leadership. And. And people crave leadership. I could tell you from my own experience working in education, the reason why I left certain jobs was not because of the salary, not because of the hours, not because of my own position. It's because I didn't respect the leaders. I wasn't learning anything. I didn't feel like they were doing their job. There was no growth. I wasn't, you know, inspired in any way. Every day I go to work, people need this, especially in their jobs, because they send so much time at work, a third of their life. So you might as well give them some direction and say, hey, this is a goal, and remind them of that goal constantly. This is what we're doing. This is what we're working towards. This is why we're doing this. This is who we're affecting. This is the positive change we're making. You got to lead with confidence. Alongside that, he says that great leaders don't command and dictate. They listen. They sometimes have to do some convincing, some cajoling, some diplomacy. And sometimes they have to sacrifice and understand they're not always going to get their way. But as long as you're moving towards your goal, you've won the day. You've won that argument. Even if the other person got their way, it's okay. You don't have to dictate everything and say, it's my way or highway. This is very hard for some entrepreneurs because they said, I built this business on my back. I sacrificed everything. You're going to do it this way because that's the way I want it. You can do that, but your business will have a ceiling. It will not grow past a certain point because you're not empowering people to empower themselves to actually take action and take decisions and add great ideas to your ideas and to come up with better ones. That's the power of a business, is that you're not only using one mind, you're using so many minds to come up with incredible innovations. We've been the trusted expert since 1960 because nobody knows tires better than we do. And with over 90 tire brands, we have an abundance of options in stock for your vehicle. Buy and Drive today@discounttire.com Let's get you taken care of. We know you'll always find ways to look out for the people you love. And with Amica Life Insurance, we'll help build a plan to make sure you always can. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. To wrap up Today's part two of our must read or special Must Read Creativity Inc. I want to wrap up with some really good pieces of advice about evaluating yourself as a leader and as a manager. What's a good measure of success as a manager? Well, Ed says, look at the people on your team. How are they working together? Can they rally to solve a problem on their own? If so, you're managing well. You've built that culture that makes you a good manager. Lastly, he really mentions something I thought was very impactful, and he talks about rules. He says, be wary of too many rules in your company. Rules are great for managers because it makes their job a lot easier. But for 95% of the rest of the company, it can be demeaning. And in fact, most of the people in your workplace, 99% of them, don't really need the rules. It's for the people that break the rules, right? The people that don't do their job. So in essence, those rules are actually hurting more than they're helping. When you have excessive rules, he says instead, have less rules. And he thinks that if you can't remember all your rules and you have too many rules, and if somebody breaks a rule or two or has an issue, address it individually. And that's why values are so important in a company, to make sure people embody those values. You remind people the values because the values will really cover a lot of things. And make sure you don't have too many rules. You're dealing with smart, talented adults. You don't want them to feel like you're restricting them and you're babysitting them. If you want creativity, if you want an innovative company, if you want to create something spectacular for your customers, you got to trust your employees. You got to give them the space to do all that. And the thing they will remember about their workplace, when they think about their job, they'll think about all the freedom and flexibility and creativity they have in their job instead of the restriction and all the rules they have to follow. And again, a lot of us, we maybe come up with too many rules to kind of protect ourselves, but really they only apply to a very, very small number of people and everybody else has to suffer and live in that condition. All in all, this book, Creativity Inc. Is a must read. You have to pick it up, either listen to it on Audible or read it on Kindle or on Paperback. It's a fantastic book, one of the best books I've read this year by far. Pixar is an incredible company to learn from. So go ahead and pick it up and go really deep on some of the things I touched on in this two parter. I've really enjoyed reading this book and sharing with you what I learned. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you want to learn more, get special content, exclusive content, go over to our Instagram and follow us over at the the100mba on Instagram. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I really believe a great book like this one, Creativity Inc. Is worth its weight in gold and then some. There's so many insights, there's so many great stories, there's so many perspectives that you gain. I highly recommend you get into the habit of reading more if you're not doing it already. Even if you read half a dozen books a year, which means you're reading one book every two months, it's gonna create this tidal wave of personal development that's gonna help you and your business dramatically. How do I know? Because I've done it. And at the end of the day, a better you means your company gets a better leader and you get better results. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and see save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote@usaa.com. bundle restrictions apply.