Pixar created the Brain Trust to find truth and gain insight. Many companies claim to do this, but leaders often surround themselves with people who only say what they want to hear. This creates a group that is more concerned with politics and career goals than finding the truth. The Brain Trust was designed to let people be honest with each other in a safe way. Steve Jobs had a different approach but also valued insight. He understood that being wrong has no upside and would change his mind quickly when he gained new understanding.

If they don't disagree with me, then they aren't bringing any value to the company.

Steve even fired board members who never disagreed with him. He believed that disagreement was the only way to bring real value. Board meetings were loud and filled with strong opinions. Ed Catmull and Steve disagreed often. They would have week-long discussions. Sometimes Ed was right, and sometimes Steve was right. Other times, Ed simply did what he wanted after the discussion, and Steve was fine with that. The goal was always to surface the underlying truth by peeling away layers of information rather than making quick, surface-level decisions.

A healthy discussion must focus on the topic rather than who is right. This is difficult because creative teams feel vulnerable when their work is not yet perfect. New members may also feel pressure to prove themselves, which makes them focus on their own status rather than the problem at hand. To combat this, Pixar used an outside force to provide perspective. Originally, an executive from Disney played this role. Later, Pixar directors acted as the outside force for each other.

The people with power, either real or perceived power, need to shut the hell up for the first 10 to 15 minutes.

Steve was eventually banned from the Brain Trust meetings because his voice was too powerful. Ed believes that people in power should stay silent at the start of a meeting so they do not set the tone and limit the discussion. Steve understood this and agreed to stay out. He instead gave his feedback during board screenings. Interestingly, Steve often gave the same notes that others had already mentioned. Because he was so articulate and clear, the directors finally heard the advice in a way they had ignored from their peers.

Managing the dynamics of creative rooms is a central responsibility of leadership. Ed explains that the Brain Trust functions best when ego is removed from the equation. In these moments, the team enters a state of flow. Everyone focuses entirely on the problem. If a project goes off the rails, moving to a smaller group often helps. It changes the social dynamics and allows for more intense focus.

This is so important to get all this working right that this is what our product's based upon is this group of people working well together. So paying attention to the dynamics of those rooms is the job. They're the ones that are making the movies. I'm not making the movie. I'm just trying to make sure they work well together.

The relationship between Pixar and Disney was complicated by a contract that undervalued Pixar's potential. Michael Eisner and Disney leadership initially expected computer animation to be a niche product. They signed a deal for three boutique films. They believed the medium would not scale to feature-length success. Steve Jobs realized this was a poor arrangement once Toy Story became a massive hit.

Disney perceived that Pixar was going to produce boutique films, much as they would consider A Nightmare Before Christmas a stop-motion animated film. They thought that short film wouldn't scale up to be a feature-length film. You couldn't really watch the computer graphics stuff for that long of a period of time.

To fix this, Steve planned a bold move. He decided to take Pixar public the same week Toy Story hit theaters. This provided the financial leverage needed to demand an equal partnership in future deals. Disney still viewed sequels as inferior projects. They excluded them from the main film contract. This led to a cultural challenge at Pixar. The studio was built on a belief in high quality. However, they were being asked to create a sequel that was considered a lesser, direct-to-video product.

The success of Toy Story 2 changed how the film industry viewed animated sequels. Disney originally wanted to release it direct to video. Ed and the Pixar team pushed for a theatrical release instead. It became a massive hit and the first truly successful animated sequel. This success created a rift between Steve Jobs and Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Steve argued that since the film was a high quality theatrical release, it should count toward their contract. Michael refused and insisted on the letter of the original agreement.

Disney eventually began developing its own version of Toy Story 3 without Pixar. This deeply affected the morale of the creators at Pixar. They felt their characters were like their children and feared they would be handled poorly by outsiders. While Michael Eisner dealt with internal board conflicts and a public war with Roy Disney, Pixar looked for other distribution partners. During this period, Steve learned he had cancer. He became focused on ensuring his family was taken care of and that Pixar was in good shape for the future. He refused to continue working with Michael Eisner.

When Bob Iger took over as CEO, the dynamic shifted immediately. Bob realized during a visit to Hong Kong Disneyland that every popular character in the park parade belonged to Pixar rather than Disney Animation. He knew he had to save the relationship. Bob's approach to Steve was built on radical honesty. He called Steve and admitted that Disney was in a weak position. This vulnerability was unusual in high stakes negotiations.

Bob just started off by being completely honest. And Steve said, okay, this is somebody I can be a good partner with. And they formed a very close bond and relationship throughout the rest of Steve's life.

This honest admission formed the foundation for Disney eventually acquiring Pixar. It proved that transparency can be more effective than traditional posturing in business.

Ed believes that many people stop thinking after they reach their first conclusion. For years, leaders at Disney assumed Pixar was successful only because of a few key people like John Lasseter or Steve Jobs. This was shallow thinking. They did not look at the culture or the logic behind how the studio was built. When Bob Iger became CEO, he visited Pixar alone without an assistant or an entourage. This personal approach impressed the staff. Bob saw how the teams interacted and how they solved problems together.

The reason Pixar is successful is because they've got some combination of, it's like it's John Lasseter who's got it, or John and Ed, or John and Ed or Steve. We don't have them, and that's the secret to their success. So we can't copy that. Now that's just a shallow way of thinking. The real question is, what is it that's being done that's different?

Every film starts out in a state where it is not yet good. Since early versions are often poor, you cannot use the quality of the work alone to decide if you should continue. Instead, you must look at the spirit of the team. If the team is laughing and working through the angst together, the project is worth saving. This approach led Pixar to complete nearly every film they started. Ed notes that a hard problem is more likely to lead to an interesting film. It is easy to make a mediocre movie by following a standard script formula. A difficult idea, like a rat that wants to cook, forces the team to find original solutions because the concept is not a slam dunk.

If you take on a hard problem and you just keep pushing at it, then the fact that it was hard is what's going to make it different.

The primary rule for leadership at Pixar is that a director must not lose the faith of their team. A director can make mistakes, but they cannot lose the people working under them. If the team loses faith, a change is required. This happened during the production of Toy Story 2. Most of the work behind the scenes involves shoring up directors and providing guidance to help them succeed because holding the mantle of leadership is difficult.

Ed believes that rigid mission statements often hinder progress. A mission statement is an answer, but a healthy organization should always be asking questions about its direction. Rather than falling back on a predetermined script, Pixar focused on the mantra that quality is the best business plan. This philosophy stands in stark contrast to the management style of Jack Welch at General Electric. While Welch was celebrated as the manager of the century for short-term growth, his methods ultimately gutted the company's research and future stability. This same fragile, growth-at-all-costs mindset was later applied to Boeing with disastrous results.

A mission statement is an answer when typically we should always be asking questions. What are we doing? It actually ended up being stronger to have it so that there was always sort of this questioning: are we doing the right thing? And are we going in the right direction?

Walt Disney was a primary influence on Ed because of his relentless pursuit of quality through technology. Walt understood that technology invigorated the creative process. He was consistently on the frontier, whether it was adopting sound or partnering with Xerox to build a room-sized camera for animation. However, Ed observed that while technology was in Walt's DNA, it was not necessarily in the DNA of the Disney company itself. After Walt's death, the studio became staid and the quality of the films declined. It was only later, when Roy Disney Jr. recognized the need for technological reinvigoration, that Disney reached out to Pixar.

Initially as a kid watching that, what I'm seeing is the result. I'm watching the movies and going to Disneyland. Now, if I think of it in terms of technology, Disney understood better than anybody else at that time that technology was invigorating the studio. He was one of the first people on the frontier.

Ed realized early on that his mission to create the first feature-length computer animated film required a specific environment. While he was obsessed with Disney, he turned down a job offer there because the studio did not view technology as a critical driver of innovation. At the time, the industry used technology only as a tool they could buy rather than something they would push forward. George Lucas was the first person since Walt Disney to believe technology would have a major impact on filmmaking. George founded Industrial Light and Magic because he could not buy the tools he needed to achieve his vision for special effects.

Nobody in the industry thinks technology is critical. I mean, they don't, they have cameras and they use certain things there, but it's more like if we can buy the product, we'll use it. We're not going to push it.

A specific technical challenge they solved involved motion blur. In traditional animation and stop-motion, the eye often perceives a distracting doubling of edges called strobing. This happens because the images lack the natural blur found in live-action film. At Lucasfilm, the team used motion control cameras and computer systems to capture and maintain that natural blur. This success convinced George that computers would soon transform audio and video as well. When Ed interviewed for the Graphics Group at Lucasfilm, he encountered a revealing question. The team asked him who else they should be talking to. Other candidates felt threatened by the competition and withheld names. Ed chose to list every talented person he knew. This instinct to share information became a foundational part of his career.

We also published everything. And part of this was the realization that the people that we wanted were the people who wanted to be part of the bigger community.

Ed learned that a culture of openness was a powerful recruiting tool. By publishing their research, they attracted high quality talent who wanted to be part of a larger scientific community. This approach helped build a world class team in locations that were not typically considered tech hubs. Ed realized that his early management theories were often wrong, but he found the challenge of building a creative environment just as interesting as the technology itself.

After finishing Toy Story, Ed spent a year thinking about his next goal. He had spent two decades working toward the first computer-animated film. Once he achieved it, he felt a sense of loss. He noticed that many successful Silicon Valley companies would fail after their first big hit. The founders would make obvious mistakes and their companies would pop like a bubble. Ed decided his new mission was to build a culture at Pixar that could last and avoid those same traps.

A core part of Ed's philosophy is accepting that many of his ideas are wrong. He believes that even successful leaders are wrong about half the time. The secret is not in being right, but in how fast you realize you are wrong. By expecting to make mistakes, you can catch them early and move on to better decisions.

I do think that if I know that I'm wrong half the time, that I catch it earlier. I spend less time on the wrong decision. So it looks like the ratio is different. But the reality is I'm just wrong half the time. I think it's important to think that way.

Ed also reflected on the ego involved in success. He wondered how much of Pixar's success was because of his own work. He eventually decided that trying to answer that question was a mistake. He calls it an act of separation. It attempts to pull one person away from the group. Success requires many people working together, and none of it would happen without the whole team.

Asking the question might have been a natural thing to ask, but trying to answer it is an act of separation. That's the problem with it. Because I'm trying to say, how am I separate from others? And really, I never was.

George Lucas had a significant influence on the early days of Pixar. He did not view other filmmakers as simple competitors. George wanted to share technology to help the entire industry. He believed that if the filmmaking industry stayed healthy, everyone would benefit. He used the analogy of a prairie wagon to describe a company. Some people are there for the journey, and some leave once the destination is reached. The team is always changing as it moves forward.

The group eventually became an independent company because of a divorce. George needed to sell assets for financial reasons. He was not interested in making animated films, so he decided to sell the Graphics Group. This led to their first meeting with Steve Jobs. Steve was passionate about the technology, but he went silent for two months right after the meeting. The team later learned he was being pushed out of Apple at that exact time.

Steve Jobs underwent a major transformation between 1991 and 1995. Many biographies focus on his earlier reputation as a difficult leader. However, Ed observed a significant shift during the years Steve got married and Pixar began its rise. During this same window, the film industry realized the power of technology through movies like Jurassic Park. This convergence of events helped Pixar find its place in a changing world.

Ed worked hard to prevent a class system within Pixar. In many organizations, people feel like second class citizens if they are not in pivotal roles. Ed wanted technical experts and artists to be equal peers. This balance is subtle and often misunderstood by other studios. At Pixar, the goal was for everyone to feel they were working with world class people in every department.

We were determined that we did not want this to happen to us. It isn't like the technical people are in service of the filmmakers or the filmmakers are there just to show how the technology is. We're all on this to make really great movies.

Cultural problems are often difficult to see. New employees often emulate the behavior of senior leaders. If those leaders have changed their habits, new staff may lose their sense of fun. This irreverence was key to the company's success. Ed found that you cannot fix these issues with top down orders. Telling people to have fun during a meeting does not work. Instead, leadership should encourage instigators to start organic activities from the bottom up.

If you get in front of a company meeting and say, okay, everybody lighten up, have some fun, they will nod. It doesn't mean anything. They actually need genuine things.

Maintaining a creative environment requires avoiding excessive rules. Rules often stop people from making mistakes, but they also stop people from taking risks. Ed preferred to address common sense errors individually rather than creating a new policy for everyone. This freedom allows for radical self expression. For example, some employees at Disney Animation once disassembled a truck and rebuilt it inside their workspace. Seeing employees continue to redesign their offices is a sign of a healthy and active culture.