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Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small

Stanford Graduate School of Business

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  • Recommended by 9 people: 9 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2010 to 2017.
  • Presented by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

216K views17 years ago9 recommendations

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceEngineering managementCode review and teamworkStartups

Ed Catmull shares insights on managing creative teams, surfacing small problems early, and building a healthy organizational culture at Pixar.

Ironing out the little problems can make it so companies can avoid big disasters. Recorded: January 31, 2007 Related Article: gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/2007entepreneurshipconf.shtm… Catmull appeared at the 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Why it's here

9 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an essential talk on building, managing, and maintaining healthy creative organizations.

10renon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Animating a Blockbuster: How Pixar Built Toy Story 3”

fantastic business talk by Ed Catmull (pixar co-founder) at Stanford link to this video btw: I find it hard to believe that Toy Story 3 could be any good (because of the "3"). Is it?
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alexqgbon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way”

I believe Ed Catmull refers to this as 'keeping your crises small.' That is to say, it's much better to actively surface problems before they leave the shop than it is to ship with issues, and try to deal with implosions after the fact (ahem, Vista). Here he is, giving a really good talk at Stanford Business School, in which he covers this (among other good ideas). About an hour, but worth much more. link to this video Interestingly, an ethos like this suggests that the fate of Microsoft is NOT inevitable. It's only becomes that way when you no longer care about shipping garbage. Exhibit B: Detroit in the 70's and 80's.
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henryprecheuron Hacker News • Recommends

On “A conversation with Ed Catmull”

Keep Your Crises Small, link to this video It's a lecture from Ed Catmull. I highly recommend it, many gems from a brilliant developer turned brilliant manager.
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pooriaazimion Hacker News • Recommends

On “What they don't tell you about being a game developer”

…hy Pixar was awesome for soooo long? It wasn't luck, and it wasn't because they had great animators. It wasn't even (entirely) because they told terrific stories. It was because they constantly learned from their "successes"... Watch (or listen) to Catmull's talk. I guarantee that you won't regret the 55 minutes you spend on it... 1: link 2: link to this video…
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danielvfon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What are some 'must watch' talks?”

Rich Hickey's talk on simplicity is a must watch. link And one of the most useful talks of all time for building organizations is by Ed Catmull (of Pixar) link to this video
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10renon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pixar’s leaders want to make their creative powerhouse outlast them”

Article is a little shallow. Great video by Catmull to Stanford business school on it: link to this video (54 minutes) And here's an article by him: link e.g. Toy Story 2 was an impetus to creating the present review system; the reason for saying 5 good things is just to make the people feel better about the criticisms: the last thing you want to do after years of exhausting work is point out what sucked. Catmull is the main guy driving these standards; Lasseter is busy being a creative; BTW: I thought I'd discerned a hidden pattern of pixar having the writer voice the primary mentor role - Brad Bird voiced Edna Mode in The Incredibles ; Andrew Stanton voiced Crush in Finding Nemo - but... Brad Bird…
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panicon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ideas Matter”

Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, has made the same comment about their films. The entire video is worth watching, but the quote in question is at link to this video - The other thing to note is, there is a confusion, I think, that the people have and is — the books and press kind of work this way in that we think about "an idea." When we think of ideas for movies, we think about ideas for products. And it's usually thought of as some singular thing. But the reality is, these successful movies — as with all successful products — have got thousands of ideas. It's just all sorts of things necessary to make it be successful. And you have to get most of them right to do it. And that's why you need a team tha…
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6renon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Inside Pixar's Leadership”

Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small , Stanford Graduate School of Business link to this video (54:11) Long. Worth it.
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bla2on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm”

Google seems to be doing ok to me. I like your point that success can hide problems though; Ed Catmull presents it very well here: link to this video It looks like people were suggesting that Google takes this advice more to heart six years ago already: link
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hodgesrmon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers”

It's worth thinking about the team in advance, especially to understand what things you do well and where you need complementary talents. Good teams also work through the problems that are inevitable in new products. There's a great speech by Ed Catmull that makes this point well. ( link to this video ) Of course this is useless advice if you are doing a one-person business. :)
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zachbeaneon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Value of Ideas”

Reminds me of Ed Catmull's talk about Pixar management at link to this video -- "If you have a good idea and you give it to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it, or they'll throw it away and come up with something else."
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zachbeaneon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.”

Reminds me of Ed Catmull's talk about Pixar management at link to this video -- "If you have a good idea and you give it to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it, or they'll throw it away and come up with something else."
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evanlongon Hacker News • Mentions

On “My Google Interview Experience”

My Google interview experience: Google Internship January 2008: Had a phone screen. First question as I heard it: “Given a binary tree tell me if it is a binary tree?” I was a bit confused and said I didn’t understand the question and requirements. Given A tell me if it’s A. Yes? The interviewers response to my confusion was: “Do you even know what a binary tree is?” Yes, I do. When he restated the question as “given a binary tree tell me if it’s a valid binary search tree” I understood the requirements efffed up something in the implementation though. Then was asked to do another problem. Something with number sequence and iteration. Got told “division is slow” so don’t use it. Couldn’t see…
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Arjunaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Hacker News Generation (Afraid of Hard Work)”

Phrases like, "The myth of burn out" and "Burn out is just a rationalization for giving up early" give me great pause. Burn out is real . It is dangerous, and even an overwhelming, driving passion for your work, your creation, can lead to disaster. Ed Catmull recounted this story about the production of Toy Story 2 1: "So we came back, John Lasseter told the story crew to take a good rest over the holidays, and come back on January 2nd... we were re-boarding the movie. We had 8 months left. We then started this incredibly intense effort to get this movie out. It was boarded quickly, it was pitched to the company, it was an electrifying pitch. We had a lot of over-achieving people working…
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