Frozen: The Pixar-Disney story

As Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration comes out, the world can’t help but wonder what Ed Catmull, President of Pixar Animation and Walt Disney Animation Studios has to say about leadership and the corporate culture of what is possibly the most interesting combination of organizations in the recent cinema industry.

Pixar has been phenomenally successful in its endeavors over the last decade (Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Up) and to boost its declining Walt Disney animations tudio Disney bought Pixar in 2006. Catmull and John Lasseter, Pixar’s CEO were appointed the president and CEO respectively. The result, Disney bounced back, initially with Tangled and Wreck it Ralph and finally it has its biggest hit in the recent times, the movie which ended up one-upping Toy Story – 3, Frozen, which earned well over a billion dollars in box office revenue. Surprisingly, this blog post is the result of an intense discussion with a  friend who incidentally hated Frozen and I had to explain these very things to him as well, only then it wasn’t this organized, ah well.

Now the one and only reason for this success is ‘Culture’. Let’s have a look at what has changed in Disney post-merger.

1)    People first.
Pixar was a task oriented group, having risen to success so fast the organizational culture laid heavy emphasis on commitment and dedication. While making Toy Story-2 the creatives team, allegedly, worked for seven days a week for nine month. Pixar had drifted into a dangerous zone and had to be pulled out, writes Catmull. There was an incident wherein a stressed out artist forgot his infant child in his car, who was later recovered unconscious in the broiling car parking, 3 hours later.
The notion here is, excellence at any cost ideology of Pixar, doesn’t work in the longer run and incidents like this are a wakeup call.

2)    Encouraging self-expression and diversity of thought.
Yet another Catmull trait, making everyone feel included. The biggest battle after a successful merger is to accommodate everyone’s opinions by making the projects all inclusive.
Pixar’s office design itself maximizes contact and collaboration. The cafeterias, meeting rooms, employee mailboxes are all centralized so as to let the users interact with each other. In fact Catmull even replaced an expensive long rectangular conference room table with another design because the older one ‘kept people on the ends of the table from interacting with each other’.
Pixar’s ‘Braintrust’ sessions, popularized post Toy Story success, are candour filled interactions between directors, artists, creative heads give each other feedback regarding the film’s progress. The director is free to act on it or not but this type of spirited discussion makes the feedback process easier, something which Disney picked on.
Yet another problem was the Pixar’s chain of command. The Production Managers at Pixar were abhorred by the technologists, probably because during the production of Toy Story the commands from the top grew so restrictive that the entire workforce revolted. There was a time when the situation got so out of hand that the Production Managers didn't even want to work at Pixar. Catmull and Lasseter gathered the entire team and made it very clear that hierarchies and channels are secondary to free discussion, when it came to creative projects.  It took a while for the top management to adjust to this change but by the time Pixar completed ‘A Bug’s Life’ all was fine.

3)    Focussing on a vision that makes people feel proud to be involved.

Pixar’s purpose is to make ‘great films’ as it goes. Brad Bird and John Walker made the Iron Giant while working for another studio and the sole reason for which they were hired by Pixar was their ability to convert projects into something much more than a money machine. Catmull states he found this astonishing drive in Pixar’s employees to focus on the quality of the content which in turn ensured that profits followed.

Catmull closes by saying that how has Pixar affected him personally. Earlier he was focused on creating the first feature film to be entirely animated on a computer, today he has found his new calling: to create a sustainable creative culture that survives long after Pixar’s founders are gone. “We are in this for the long haul”