Same but Different

The dangers of conflation

November 23, 2020

That wasn’t flying, that was…falling with style!

-Woody, Toy Story

Ed Catmull was flying high.

Toy Story, the studio’s debut feature film, was universally praised by critics and audiences alike for its groundbreaking use of technology and story-telling. It’s hard to understate the impact this movie had considering:

  • It was the highest-grossing domestic film in 1995, beating out blockbusters like Batman Forever, Apollo 13, and GoldenEye.

  • It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, the first animated film considered for an Academy Award writing category.

  • It won a Special Achievement Academy Award for “the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film.”

  • It was declared by the Online Film Critics Society as the greatest animated film of all time, beating out Fantasia (#2) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (#3).

Ed Catmull, Co-Founder / President of Pixar Animation Studios, could feel the excitement - was at the center of it - but he wasn’t experiencing it.

As he detailed in his New York Times bestseller, Creativity, Inc.:

For twenty years, my life had been defined by the goal of making the first computer graphics movie. Now that that goal had been reached, I had what I can only describe as a hollow, lost feeling. As a manager, I felt a troubling lack of purpose. Now what? The thing that had replaced it seemed to be the act of running a company, which was more than enough to keep me busy, but it wasn’t special. Pixar was now public and successful, yet there was something unsatisfying about the prospect of merely keeping it running.

It took a serious and unexpected problem to give me a new sense of mission.

What problem could outweigh the euphoria of achieving a life-long dream? Toy Story’s success had masked the cracks in Pixar’s foundation.

Many employees were reluctant to sign on for additional films. Ed discovered that the production managers - the essential behind-the-scenes employees who manage a film’s people and processes - felt disrespected and marginalized. In their attempt to enable the film's delivery on time and budget, they built detailed processes to control information and spend flow. These processes inadvertently shifted production managers from partners to well-meaning micromanagers. The creative teams, frustrated with what they perceived to impede good filmmaking, treated the production team as second-class citizens. The collaborative culture was fracturing.

Furthermore, during the production of Toy Story 2, the creative team was overworked to the point of exhaustion. Less than a year before its release, the Pixar leaders realized the film needed rewrites and reshoots. The extremes the team went through to meet the deadline was best exemplified by a moment in June when an overtired artist accidentally left their infant child in the backseat of a boiling hot car in the Pixar parking lot. Fortunately, the baby was ok, but the impression it left on Ed was deeply imprinted.

In short, Pixar had delivered incredible outcomes through an unsustainable process built on individual heroics, a fierce dedication to a cause, and a bit of good luck. This didn’t negate what the studio had achieved, but the future looked far bleaker than its past.

That’s when Ed realized why he felt so empty. He wasn’t flying high. He was falling with style.

It’s possible to do everything wrong and still get to a good outcome. It’s not common, nor is it expected, but it can happen. And, if you’re not careful, you can be fooled by it. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes:

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands, of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security.

The break-neck pace and cultural clashes at Pixar were two of those fatal bullets. It may have taken months or years, but eventually, the reality would catch up with them.

To beat the odds and continue to deliver successful films, Ed realized he had to stay vigilant in uncovering problems even when - especially when - everything seemed to be going well. He realized that seeing problems wasn’t enough. He had to look for them.

We will always have problems, many of which are hidden from our view; we must work to uncover them and assess our own role in them, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; when we then come across a problem, we must marshal all our energies to solve it.

With that framework in mind, Pixar’s leadership built a culture that valued good people over good ideas, transparency over secrecy, and process over outcomes. The results speak for themselves: 16 Academy Awards, 15 of the 50 highest-grossing animated films, and an average worldwide gross of $680 million per film.

Looking for problems paved the way for Pixar to become one of the most successful creative dynasties ever.

Conflation, the mingling of two or more concepts, is rarely intentional and often written off as a difference without a distinction. It’s so commonplace in our day-to-day lives that multiple idioms exist to serve as a response.

Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Same same, but different.

As we learned with Pixar, conflation is more than a grammar faux pas. It’s a semantic trap akin to using ambiguous language, one that can cause great pains if we fail to recognize and rectify it early.

For leaders looking to build sustained success and strong cultures like Pixar’s, there are a handful of concepts they should avoid conflating:

  • Speed / Velocity

  • Experience / Expertise

  • Being Right / Being Effective

Speed / Velocity

Now, more than ever, speed matters. Whether it’s how quickly you get to market, receive feedback on a new product/function, or pivot from one strategy to another, we often frame speed as the difference between success and failure.

The problem is that speed is measured as the distance traveled over time. At work, it’s the amount of activity done over a given timeframe. It gives no weight to where you’re going. It’s directionless.

If speed is your goal, you can consider yourself successful as you sprint off of a cliff.

Velocity, on the other hand, measures displacement over time. It measures progress towards a destination. It’s not just direction-aware; it’s directionally dependent.

This is more than a mere nuance of physics. When we talk about getting to market, getting feedback, and pivoting, there’s a destination in mind. Yet, when the focus is on speed, moving quickly and efficiently, it’s possible - probable even - that we will take longer to reach our goal than if our focus was on getting from here to there as quickly as possible.

The Navy Seals have a saying: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” The concept is intuitive enough - the fewer bumps in the road, the quicker you can go. Even if a freeway had the same speed limit as the main road, you’d know to take Loop 101 to avoid the stoplights.

When we start slow - mapping out our destination, deciding how we’ll get there and what will change our plotted course - we can move faster along the way.

When our focus is on velocity, our measures of success changes dramatically. We become more interested in progress vs. momentum. We focus more on the outcomes we’re trying to deliver than the activities taken to get there. It doesn’t feel so foreign - damaging even - to step back and ask if we’re doing the right things and chasing the right goals. It allows us to say no.

Speed is debilitating. Velocity is empowering.

Experience / Expertise

Years of experience is a common measuring stick when looking to hire someone or chart our own career path. Intuitively it makes sense - what better way to step into a role than to showcase that you’ve done it before.

The problem is that experiencing something isn’t the same as understanding it. As mentioned above, Pixar was experiencing wild success but could have become a cautionary tale of how a studio could lose its momentum as its culture collapsed.

From a personal development perspective, you have to focus on what you’re learning vs. what you’re doing. Like speed/velocity, you have to shift your focus from what activities you can complete to what outcomes you can achieve. Said another way:

When hiring, years of experience is a good input but should be paired with other factors such as potential and aptitude. You don’t want someone unproven, but at the same time, someone who has done what you need for years or decades may not be the best fit. As Allison Barr Allen, Co-Founder & COO of Fast put it:

Experience is an activity. Expertise is an asset.

Being Right / Being Effective

Years ago, I was sitting at lunch with my grandparents, marveling at how they argued. Or rather, how they didn’t. About anything.

My grandpa would say something my grandma would disagree with, but rather than debate the point, my grandpa would shrug and say, “oh, you’re probably right, dear.” Nothing consequential, but enough times to be a stark contrast to what I experienced with other couples.

I pulled my grandpa aside and asked why he did that - why he let everything go. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “When you’ve been married as long as I have, you learn that there’s a difference between being right and being effective. To be effective, you don’t always have to be right.”

While this is an amazing framework for a happy marriage, it applies to our business relationships, too. Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor, says you should leave three unimportant things unsaid each day. Ed Catmull believes a healthy culture requires all constituencies to be heard, but they don’t have to win.

In short, you have to choose what you say so that when you say it, it matters.

Here’s an easier way to think about it. If what you say or how you say it will make you feel like you’ve scored a point, drop or rephrase it. As Matthew McConaughey put it, “Just because you have a point doesn’t mean you have to make a point.”

Being right feels good. Being effective does good.