Fear No Failure, and the Path to Success Opens Wide | 5Y View
Before you innovate, you need to rethink what failure means.
When venturing into new territory, failure is an unavoidable part of the process—but how we respond to failure is something we can control and adjust. The wise compress the time spent making mistakes as much as possible, separate failure from fear, and learn from the lessons.
Ed Catmull, co-founder and president of Pixar, believes that "failure is an inevitable presence in the innovation process." He sees failure as a symbol of learning and exploration. Without experiencing failure, the mistakes you might make in the future could be far more serious than the failures themselves. In Ed's view, if Pixar's culture were one of avoiding failure, there would be none of the creative exploration that defines the studio. Ceasing to fear failure is the path to success.
This article is excerpted from Chapter 6 of Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, on "Fear and Failure." We hope it offers you some inspiration :)
Excerpted from Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Fear is one of the biggest obstacles on the path to creativity. Failure is inevitable; fear is not. What we must do, then, is decouple failure from fear—creating a corporate environment where employees don't live in terror of making mistakes.
For most people, failure arrives bearing a heavy burden. We need to see failure through a different lens. You've surely heard this before: If approached in the right way, failure can be transformed into an opportunity for growth. In a culture where everyone is timid and sees failure as an enemy to be destroyed, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk and exploration whenever possible. To minimize risk, they will stick to proven experience, and their work becomes nothing more than uncreative repetition. But if you can build a culture that encourages people to understand failure in a positive light, you will reap entirely different results.
01
Building a Culture Where People Face Failure Without Fear
So how do we get people to confront failure without fear?
Some solutions are quite practical: If we as leaders can share our own missteps and take responsibility for them, failure becomes less dangerous for everyone else. We don't need to flee at the first sight of failure, nor deceive ourselves by pretending it doesn't exist. At Pixar, I place great importance on making our significant mistakes public, because I believe failure teaches us an important lesson: Openly sharing failure is the first step toward learning from it.
My goal is not to completely eliminate people's fear of failure—because in an environment of high standards and strict demands, failure is unavoidable. What I hope to achieve is to loosen failure's grip on us. We certainly don't want failures to come one after another, but we should also view the losses they cause as an investment in the future.
If you build a culture of courage (at least within the bounds of human nature), people will feel free to explore new frontiers and venture down unknown paths. They will gradually discover the benefits of decisive action: If they don't waste time hesitating or second-guessing whether their decisions are correct, they'll have ample time to start over when they hit a dead end.
Simply choosing the right path isn't enough—you must actually walk down it. Only then will you see the scenery invisible from the starting line. The journey may not always be filled with flowers; some places may leave you disoriented. But in our terms, at least you've "explored the surroundings." Remember this: Even when you believe you've gone astray, you still have time to get back on track.
Though you've taken a wrong turn, your previous planning and thinking weren't entirely wasted. While most of the information you gathered along the way won't solve your immediate problem, you will certainly pick up things that will prove useful sooner or later. Similarly, some good discoveries made during exploration may not help right now, but you can keep them in mind for when they're needed. If you see experimentation not as a headache-inducing waste but as meaningful and indispensable, then even when hitting roadblocks, your team can still find joy in the work. This is crucial.
The principle I mention here—finding answers through repeated experimentation—is a tried-and-true method in science. Faced with a problem, scientists form hypotheses, then test and analyze them through experiments, repeating this process again and again. The principle behind this is simple: Experiments help uncover facts, and repeated experiments allow scientists to gradually deepen their understanding of things.
In other words, any experimental result is a good result, because we can extract new information from it. If your experiment overturns your previous assumptions, better to know sooner than later. Using the new information gathered, you can re-examine the problem from a different angle. Scientists accept this idea more readily than businesspeople, for pursuing profit through artistic creation or product development is both complex and expensive.
Beyond compressing the time spent making mistakes as much as possible, here's another method for your consideration: If you can think through every aspect, if you can plan meticulously and consider all possible consequences, your probability of creating something enduring will increase substantially. But I must warn you: If you want to plan out every step before taking action, if you hope to avoid failure through exhaustive, painstaking planning—then I must say you're dreaming.
First, it's relatively easy to work by imitating others, because you're merely copying and repeating what already exists. Therefore, if your goal is to devise an extremely detailed, immutable plan, you're only pushing yourself further down the path of lacking creativity. Beyond that, trying to avoid problems through planning is pure fantasy. Planning is important, and we do make plans frequently. But in a creative environment, the scope of what we can control is very limited. Those who rely too heavily on planning face an inevitable consequence: The more time spent on planning, the more deeply entrenched in it they become. Like wheels sinking deeper into mud, unreasonable ideas in your plan embed themselves ever more firmly in your mind, making it impossible to move when you need to shed wrong ideas and change direction.
Of course, in certain contexts, zero failure rates are possible. Commercial aviation has an astonishingly high safety record because enormous effort goes into ensuring everything is foolproof. Similarly, hospitals have devised elaborate safeguards to ensure surgeons operate on the right patient, in the right place, on the right organ. "Zero defects" is indeed critical for some industries, but this doesn't mean it's a universal rule. In creative work, the concept of zero failure is not only useless but can actually be counterproductive.
To be sure, failure causes financial losses. Producing substandard products or facing major scandals damages not only a company's reputation but also employee morale. So we minimize the damage caused by failure—that is, we reduce the accountability people must bear for it.
Small setbacks can help people deepen their understanding through trial and error. But what about when catastrophic, major mistakes strike? A few years ago, one of our films suffered this fate. The initial two years of structuring a film should be spent constantly testing and thus locking down the pacing of the story. This requires people to make actual decisions, not just engage in vague discussion. Though every crew member harbored the best hopes, various assumptions and uncertainties left them unable to move forward. To use Andrew's metaphor, though everyone was rowing hard, the boat stayed in place. So in May 2010, with heavy hearts, we brought the film's production to a close.
Though this failure cost us time and money, in my view the investment was worthwhile. We learned how to better balance new and old ideas, and recognized that our failure to clearly articulate our intentions and secure explicit buy-in from every Pixar leader was our mistake. Afterward, we introduced new software and made some technical innovations—these experiences helped us tremendously. Many people view trying new methods as a fearsome thing, but I believe the drawbacks of always sticking to old methods are far greater. Many companies stagnate on the path of innovation because they dare not take risks, shutting out fresh ideas and gradually fading from view. Perhaps, compared to those willing to push boundaries and accept failure, timid companies are actually more likely to have bad luck.
To build a company of boundless creativity, you must attempt things that carry the risk of failure.
02
How to Recognize and Respond to Failure
Having said so much about accepting failure, it's still frustrating when a film's (or any creative work's) quality fails to improve. If a director devises a series of solutions and the film still shows no progress, it may create the impression that this person is incompetent. And honestly, such a conclusion wouldn't be unwarranted.
Yet when should we choose to give up? How many mistakes are too many? Some failures are merely pause signs on the road to excellence; others are warning signs urging you to change course—but how do we tell them apart? We look to the Braintrust meetings, hoping directors can get the feedback and support they need, but meetings aren't omnipotent. What do we do if people can't speak freely?
These are the problems we need to solve in the face of failure.
We are a filmmaker-led film company—that is, our goal is to give creative people freedom and let them run our productions. Sometimes a film reaches an impasse where not only is the project itself "critically ill," but the director is also at a loss. When this happens, we either replace the director or halt production. You might ask: If every film is terrible in early production, and Pixar gives filmmakers rather than the Braintrust the highest authority to fix problems, how do managers judge when to intervene?
Our standard for choosing when to step in is when a director has lost the trust of their team. Every Pixar film assembles about 300 crew members whose job is to make endless tweaks and adjustments until the story matures. Overall, production team members are quite understanding. They know problems will always exist, so while they examine issues critically, they don't rush to judgment. Their first reaction to problems is to work harder. However, if problems worsen while everyone turns a blind eye, or if people simply wait for instructions, the team atmosphere grows increasingly restless. Production teams usually like their directors, so I'm not saying they'll come to hate the director—they simply no longer believe the director can deliver a satisfactory film. This is partly why I see team members as reliable barometers. If the team is lost, it means the leader is too.
When this happens, we must act. To know when to take action, we must watch carefully to see when a film hits a wall.
Any failure can be viewed in two parts: First, the failure itself, along with the disappointment, confusion, and shame it brings to all involved; second, our response to failure—which is something we can control. Do we engage in self-reflection, bury our heads in the sand, or escape passively? Do we build an environment that encourages people to admit mistakes and learn from failure, or do we reflexively blame others at the first sign of error? We must remember that failure gives us opportunities to grow, and if we ignore these opportunities, we only hurt ourselves.
Talking about failure and its chain reactions isn't mere lip service. We do this because by deepening our understanding of failure, we can fully commit ourselves creatively without obstruction. Fear is one of the biggest obstacles on the path to creativity. Failure is inevitable; fear is not. What we must do, then, is decouple failure from fear—creating a corporate environment where employees don't live in terror of making mistakes.
Trust is the antidote to fear. People want to find something reliable in this ever-changing world. Both fear and trust are powerful forces; while they aren't diametrically opposed emotions, trust is the best tool for dispelling fear. Many things can induce fear, especially when you're entering new territory. Trusting others doesn't mean they won't make mistakes—it means that when others (or you yourself) err, you believe they will take concrete action to push solutions forward. Fear can arise in an instant; trust must be tested over time. The Braintrust and teams throughout Pixar have weathered many difficulties and solved many problems together, building mutual trust through this journey. Be patient, be sincere, persist consistently, and the door to trust will eventually open.
By sincerity, I mean managers need to communicate openly with their subordinates. In many companies, managers are too guarded, unwilling to share information with employees. I believe this approach is wrong. When facing problems, a manager's first reaction shouldn't be secrecy but rather a careful weighing of whether covering up or being open carries the greater cost. If you habitually choose to conceal problems, you leave employees with the impression that you're not worthy of their trust. If you can be candid, it shows you trust them and tells them there's nothing to fear. If you can have genuine conversations with employees, they will feel they possess important information.
When people find their responsibilities exceed what they imagined, they can't help but feel anxious. For first-time directors, the weight of these responsibilities is not only unprecedented but also magnified by Pixar's already glorious track record. Every Pixar director worries that if their film fails, it will break Pixar's streak of box office champions. Bob Peterson, who has long worked at Pixar as a writer and voice actor, said: "The pressure is always there. Nobody wants to be the first to break the streak. We should let this pressure inspire everyone, creating a drive of 'I need to do better.' But some people also worry because they're afraid they won't find their way. Pixar's already successful directors have learned to let go of that worry, using the pressure to spark creativity."
Bob joked that Pixar should intentionally make a bad film to "reset the standards of the film market," thereby relieving this pressure. Naturally, we would never deliberately make a poor film, but Bob's idea is thought-provoking: Is there some way to let employees know that your company doesn't see failure as shameful?
This philosophy of not merely tolerating failure but actually "welcoming" it has helped Pixar build a unique corporate culture.
Rather than wasting energy trying to suppress problems from arising, we firmly believe our employees have good intentions and want to solve problems. Time and again, reality has proven our assumption correct. We give employees responsibility, allow mistakes to happen, and let them take the initiative in solving problems. When fear appears, there must be a reason; our job is to identify the cause and root out the problem. The job of management is not to prevent risk but to build people's resilience.
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