3Feb/100
Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small
- Organisational structure should not be confused for communication structure
- Success hides problems.
- If you give a good idea to a mediocre group they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group they'll fix it - or throw it away. (described by Ed as "People and how they function is more important than ideas")
- When a team functions well together, they will succeed
- Make something that's broken better rather than copying a success -> taken literally this could be contrary to Al Ries theory of mining the rich gold vein in his book Focus
- Post mortems should be a critical in depth analysis. Pixar's current post mortem technique is to ask people to give feedback regarding the process they used on that film: 5 things they would do again and 5 things they wouldn't do again