Managers of creative companies must never forget to ask themselves: âHow do we tap the brainpower of our people?â From its genesis to its execution, from the goodwill it engendered to the company-wide changes it set in motion, Notes Day was a success in part because it was based on the idea that fixing things is an ongoing, incremental process. Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure canât be avoided, and âvisionâ is often an illusion. But they must also feel safe â always - to speak their minds. Notes Day was a reminder that collaboration, determination, and candor never fail to lift us up.
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Which is why we donât 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 otherâs notes, even when those notes are challenging, and where everyone has a vested interest in one anotherâs 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 movieâs inevitable problems, we offer them the counsel of the Braintrust.
I think youâre getting a sense of how hard our team worked to make sure Notes Day took us where we needed to go. As Tom put it, âWe didnât just want to make lists of cool things we could do. The goal was to identify passionate people who would take ideas forward. We wanted to put people with clever insights in front of Pixarâs executive team.
The specific procedural changes will sound mundane to anyone who doesnât work in animation - we implemented a faster, more secure way, to cite a tiny example, of delivering the latest cuts of films to directors - but when you add them all up, they mattered. In the weeks after Notes Day, we implemented four good ideas, committed to five more, and earmarked still a dozen more for continued development. All of them stood to improve either our processes, our culture, or the way Pixar is managed.
What made Notes Day work? To me, it boils down to three factors. First, there was a clear and focused goal. This wasnât a free-for-all but a wide-ranging discussion (organized around topics suggested not by Human Resources or by Pixarâs executives, but by the companyâs employees) aimed at addressing a specific reality: the need to cut our costs by 10 percent. While the discussion topics were allowed - even encouraged - to stray into areas that might seem only vaguely related to this goal, the fact that it was there was key. It provided a framework - and it kept us from falling into confusion.
Second, this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company. Had the enormous task of making Notes Day a reality been shunted off on someone who didnât have the clout to throw muscle behind it - and not entrusted to Tom, who in turn recruited the most organized people in the company to help him - it would have been an entirely different experience. Employees wouldnât have bought into the idea because theyâd sense that management hadnât, either. And that would have rendered Notes Day moot.
Third, and relatedly, Notes Day was led from within. Many companies hire outside consulting firms to organize their all-staff retreats, and I understand why: Doing them well is a monumental, enormously time-consuming undertaking. But that our own people made Notes Day happen was, I believe, key to its success. Not only did they drive the discussion in meaningful ways, but their involvement also paid its own dividends. Seeing themselves engage and cooperate, steering the agenda toward something that could make a real difference, they remembered why they worked at Pixar. Their commitment was contagious. Notes Day wasnât an end point but a beginning - a way of making room for our employees to step forward and think about their role in our companyâs future. I said before that problems are easy to identify, but finding the source of those problems is extraordinarily difficult. Notes brought problems to the surface - but we still had the hard work in front of us. Notes Day didnât solve anything all by itself. But it shifted our culture - repaired it, even - in ways that will make us better as we go forward.
Managing creativity is an art, not a science. When giving notes, be mindful of how much of themselves the person youâre speaking to has poured into the project and how much is at stake for them.