Ed Catmull Quotes

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

“You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.”

“When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what’s bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers. I also realized that this kind of thing, if left unaddressed, could fester and destroy Pixar.”

“When faced with a challenge, get smarter.”

“The responsibility for finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee, from the most senior manager to the lowliest person on the production line.”

“Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.”

“Find, develop, and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas.”

“Quality is the best business plan.”

“A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.”

“Societal conditioning discourages telling the truth to those perceived to be in higher positions.”

“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.”

“You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.”

“People need to be wrong as fast as they can.”

“Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and as such should be seen as valuable; without them we have no originality).”

“Is the question being asked: Whose fault is it? If so your culture is one that vilifies failure. Failure is difficult enough without being compounded by the search for a scapegoat.”

“When it comes to creative endeavors, the concept of zero failures is worse than useless. It’s counterproductive.”

“The person who can’t change his or her mind is dangerous.”

“If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario, it causes no panic, because the threat of failure has been defanged.”

“You’ll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar.”

“Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas.”