Magic is made with laughter and non-attachment to the ideas that don't work
Katelin Holloway on Lattice's All-Hands, with Ed Catmull
Talk about a trifecta: Katelin Holloway is one of the best in the business - having scaled/transformed the People function at Klout and Reddit; Ed Catmull is one of the Founders of Pixar (and author of “Creativity, Inc.,” one of my favorite business books); and Lattice is the preeminent Talent Management software tool - they also produce this All Hands podcast that Katelin hosts.
In this episode, Ed explains his career-long focus on People; offers a hot take that simplifying ideas (or general complexity) has drawbacks, like excluding contributors and offering inadequate preparation for the future; and argues that the “magic” comes from laughter and an openness in idea-sharing – which happens when people feel safe (the feeling of safety helps people listen without getting defensive!).
He also talks a lot about failure. Sort of. While failure is inevitable, Ed recommends not calling failure “by name,” but instead being honest about what’s not working and saying “well that didn’t work, I’m going to try this” next.
Fear of failure can also misalign incentives in team building. Ed recognizes that the people hiring are under pressure to deliver, but they’re not necessarily solving for a known problem set, “the real issue for them is that in front of them, they have an unknown problem coming at an unknown time of unknown size…So in order to meet that risk, they only want people who were proven to be able to manage any problem.” When people are so afraid of failure, “the need to deliver and look good in delivery, overpowers the logic and overpowers what it takes to do right by the people” – they have blinders in the effort to find the right person, or allow someone to rise to the occasion of a stretch role.
Episode here; more excerpts below. Enjoy!
I wanted to be an animator. I couldn't draw well enough so I switched over into physics. Now when I tell people this, they usually feel like it's rather humorous because they seem so incongruous with each other. But my own belief is they're not incongruous, that actually the creativity on the scientific side and the artistic side are the same.
[Katelin] A lot of people think that having the right idea would be the most essential part of your business. You say that having the right people with the right chemistry is far more important. And I think that the idea that people should be put before product, that that was an audacious belief 30 plus years ago.
[Ed] Ideas aren't singular. If you're going to have a new product or make a company, there really isn't a single idea. It's easy for people to articulate. Like this is the key thing that our company is built around, but it's not true. It's an illusion. If you make anything, there are thousands of ideas that are involved or necessary. And if you simplify it, then it's also easy for a single person to take credit. Like this is the person who did it. And it, what it does is it screws up the internal story in the company, but also screws up the head of the person who thinks that. When in fact, we're all in this together. It takes a lot of people to make something work. And if we don't recognize that it takes a lot of us and that we've all contributed, even though some are silent, if we don't value that, then we actually diminish our ability to keep on doing something which is complex.
We don't always get it right. And part of the struggle is the recognition that you've tried; you take a risk and you look at it after a while and say, well, this isn't working and then have to figure out why.
On team building:
One of the things we look for is the chemistry in the group – a visible manifestation of how things are working.
If there is laughter in the group, that's a good sign.
We don't typically use the terminology of failure. If we're working on something, then it doesn't work, we don’t say we failed at it. It's like, “well, that didn't work. I’m going to try this.”
Sometimes people actually don't work hard or they screw up, but the general case is that people are trying to solve a problem. And if it doesn't work, they full well know that it doesn't work. One doesn't need to beat them over the head with it. It doesn't work.
The Braintrust: it was very important that safety be a critical part of this meeting because the director is presenting something to their peers and they know that what they're presenting is flawed. So they come in in a vulnerable state. Since they're vulnerable, you don't want to make them feel more defensive. If you can make sure they're not defensive, you're making it easier for them to listen.
You have to think about the dynamics of a group that comes together. In any group, there's a hierarchy. So how do you address the power dynamics in a room? One of the rules is that the powerful people in the room are supposed to shut the hell up for the first 10 to 15 minutes. → otherwise, leaders set the tone of the room and that a lot of people cannot help but respond to the tone that was set by those people.
Give and listen to honest notes.
There are times when magic happens: the ego has left the room, the ideas come and go without people becoming attached to them. And that's the critical point: you say something, it might work, it might not work.
Finally, some paraphrased advice on building a winning team culture:
→ Be like the 2012 SF Giants - a team of zero all-stars that rally together to win the NLCS in the rain