...most notably, in what Pixar calls its “Braintrust.”

A small group that meets every few months or so to assess a movie in process, provide candid feedback to the director, and help solve creative problems, the Braintrust was launched in 1999, when Pixar was rushing to save Toy Story 2, which had gone off the rails. The Braintrust's recipe is fairly simple: a group of directors and storytellers watches an early run of the movie together, eats lunch together, and then provides feedback to the director about what they think worked and what did not. But the recipe's key ingredient is candor. And candor, though simple, is never easy.

Pixar's Braintrust has rules. First, feedback must be constructive – and about the project, not the person. Similarly, the filmmaker cannot be defensive or take criticism personally and must be ready to hear the truth. Second, the comments are suggestions, not prescriptions. There are no mandates, top-down or otherwise; the director is ultimately the one responsible for the movie and can take or leave solutions offered. Third, candid feedback is not a “gotcha” but must come from a place of empathy. It helps that the directors have often already gone through the process themselves. Praise and appreciation, especially for the director's vision and ambition, are doled out in heaping measures.

Braintrusts – groups of people with a shared agenda who offer candid feedback to their peers – are subject to individual personalities and chemistries. In other words, they can easily go off the rails if the process isn't well led. To be effective, managers have to monitor dynamics continually over time. It helps enormously if people respect each other's expertise and trust each other's opinions. Pixar director Andrew Stanton offers advice for how to choose people for an effective feedback group. They must, he says, “make you think smarter and put lots of solutions on the table in a short amount of time.” Stanton's point about having people around who make us “think smarter” gets to the heart of why psychological safety is essential to innovation and progress. We can only think smarter if others in the room speak their minds.

There is some dispute about when, exactly, the Braintrust came into being. That’s because it developed organically, growing out of the rare working relationship among the five men who led and edited the production of Toy Story - John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and Joe Ranft. From Pixar’s earliest days, this quintet gave us a solid example of what a highly functional working group should be. They were funny, focused, smart, and relentlessly candid with each other. Most crucially, they never allowed themselves to be thwarted by the kinds of structural or personal issues that can render meaningful communication in a group setting impossible. It was only when we rallied to fix Toy Story 2, coming together to solve a crisis, that the “Braintrust” entered the Pixar lexicon as an official term.

Which is why we don’t give notes this way at Pixar. We have developed our own model, based on our determination to be a filmmaker-led studio. That does not mean there is no hierarchy here. It means that we try to create an environment where people want to hear each other’s notes, even when those notes are challenging, and where everyone has a vested interest in one another’s success. We give our filmmakers both freedom and responsibility. For example, we believe that the most promising stories are not assigned to filmmakers but emerge from within them. With few exceptions, our directors make movies that they have conceived of and are burning to make. Then, because we know that this passion will at some point blind them to their movie’s inevitable problems, we offer them the counsel of the Braintrust.