We all want our group, organization or business enterprise to make a dynamic, creative contribution to the New Evangelization. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all take an insider’s tour of a really successful creative institution to discover how they do the things they do?

Happily, Ed Catmull, president of both Pixar Animation Studios and Disney Animation Studios, invites us to do just that in his fascinating new book, Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Random House, 2014). Pixar, of course, is the studio that has produced a record 14 movies that have achieved the No. 1 ranking at the box office. And Disney Animation Studios has enjoyed a stirring revival in the past several years.

There are several lessons from Creativity, Inc. that we Catholics would do well to apply to our own endeavors. It’s not that Catmull has anything to say about our particular evangelical missions. Rather, his insights apply to the processes that can make any organization more effective and creative. Let’s briefly look at four of those insights.

 

People Are More Important Than Ideas

Because we’re passionate about transforming our culture in Christ, it’s tempting to become so focused on the cause, the mission, the idea we’re trying to defend or promote than we lose sight of the team that’s doing the fighting. The making of Toy Story 2 put an enormous strain on the company.

Disney, Pixar’s distribution partner at the time, had put the studio on an extremely tight production deadline. Meanwhile, the script had major story problems. Directors had to be fired. And yet another fabulous movie came out of the process. From the crucible of this experience, Catmull gleaned this wisdom: “If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

Getting the team right is more important than getting the idea right. Because the question of what’s more important, people or ideas, is a false dichotomy. Great ideas come from great people; better put, great ideas come from the way great people interact with one another.

 

Quality Is the Best Business Plan

Pixar’s people have generated so many great ideas over the years because of an early commitment they made to make films of the highest quality.

“When we pushed ourselves to the limit in order to prove our commitment to that ideal,” says Catmull, “Pixar’s identity was cemented.”

No one owes us attention or support. The righteousness of our cause does not, in itself, guarantee good work.

Sometimes, in our zeal for making an impact, we get distracted from that which is really capable of earning attention, support or even helping those in need: work of the absolute highest quality. Pixar is now synonymous with creative excellence in digital animation.

John Lasseter, both Pixar’s and Disney Animation’s chief creative officer, captured Pixar’s commitment to excellence in this phrase, “Quality is the best business plan.” Uncompromising passion for excellence should also be driving whatever work we’re doing for the New Evangelization. Anything less is unworthy of the mission.

 

Candor and the Brain Trust 

At Pixar, there is a group of creative minds that make up what they call the Brain Trust. The Brain Trust meets regularly to dissect the development of Pixar projects. According to Catmull, the group’s aim is to push the company’s efforts “toward excellence and to root out mediocrity.”

Catmull calls the Brain Trust Pixar’s “primary delivery system for straight talk. Its premise is simple: Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another.”

The Brain Trust respects that new ideas need to be protected and nurtured, that great work cannot evolve without initial phases of “not-so-greatness.” But the Brain Trust also makes room for honest assessment of a developing project’s inevitable problems and weaknesses. Candor, Catmull affirms, is the most essential element. Without candor, he argues, there is no trust. “And without trust, creative collaboration is not possible.”

So how is your team or organization putting passionate people together to identify and solve problems? Are you encouraging the candor that builds trust and leads to great work?

 

Anyone Can Make a Creative Contribution

One of Pixar’s most impressive practices is that of inviting the input of every single person in the organization. Absolutely anyone can give feedback about how a new production is coming along or about the management of the company. The principle behind this practice is that creative insight is something of which every human being is capable.

Pixar has even established “Notes Day,” an in-house day of reflection in which members of the company meet in various small groups with other members of the company with whom they rarely if ever interact — a chef, for example, meets with a veteran animator and someone from legal — to discuss the organization’s most pressing problems, which they themselves have been invited to bring to management’s attention. That’s a generous, human approach to management that all enterprises can learn from.

Indeed, what the Catholic can most appreciate in Catmull’s book is the way in which the best practices of creative collaboration turn out to be ones which encourage the best practices of human beings.

Daniel McInerny is the author of the Kingdom of Patria children’s series as well as a play, The Actor, based upon events in the early life of St. John Paul II. He also writes and consults with companies as a brand storytelling strategist. Find out more about his work at danielmcinerny.com.