Bill Capodagli Presents "The Disney Way" in Anaheim

Bill will be keynoting NIRSA's annual conference in Anaheim on Friday, April 23, 2010! The subject is The Disney Way!!



The National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association's mission is "to provide for the education and development of professional and student members and to foster quality recreational programs, facilities and services for diverse populations. NIRSA demonstrates its commitment to excellence by utilizing resources that promote ethical and healthy lifestyle choices."

The National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association vision statement is: "committed to be recognized internationally as the leader in recreation within higher education, dedicated to excellence in student and professional development, education, research and standards. NIRSA's commitment, creativity and strategic partnerships are consistently demonstrated through outstanding programs, facilities and services."

VOTE FOR BILL CAPODAGLI ON GLOBAL TALK RADIO

Bill Capodagli is in the running to win a one-time talk show on Global Talk Radio (GTR), one of the world’s fastest-growing talk stations and ranked as #1 on Google for “talkradio” searches.

If Bill wins, his intent is to feature parallels of business philosophy and culture between Pixar and Opening Minds Through the Arts (OMA), a Tucson-based student achievement program that uses arts integration to teach the academic standards and successfully raise test scores. OMA is featured in Innovate the Pixar Way!


Bill needs your vote…please go to:
http://www.globaltalkradio.com and click on the VOTE button at the top of the home page. The show is entitled: Dreams and Dreamers: How to Innovate like Walt Disney and the Pixarians. The show would be archived on GTR indefinitely!


Thanks so much!

BILL CAPODAGLI on THE BUSINESS AUTHORS SHOW

Listen to Bill on TheBusinessAuthorsShow.com on Monday, March 29th...anytime!

You don’t need “gazillions of dollars” to Innovate the Pixar Way

Lest you think you can’t have a fun place to work because you lack funds, consider this: Prior to the success of Toy Story, Pixar Studios was housed in what president Ed Catmull referred to as a “scrappy” cluster of building in Point Richmond, California. The company couldn’t afford to purchase theatre seats for the animation screening room, so John Lasseter enlisted company-wide support to scout for hand-me-down furniture and on his own time, drove around in a rented truck to retrieve the discards. Pixar ended up with what John called “the most ugly collection of ‘70s couches you’ve ever seen” and that the “room became kind of the soul of Pixar.
Isn’t that what any organization needs to discover – what drives an individual’s creative spirit? It doesn’t have to be an extravagantly decorated room or a collection of costly “stuff”; it just has to be what employees feel represents who they really are.

Don’t use the “no money” feeble excuse for not creating a stimulating environment. Get the team together and dream like a child, believe in your playmates, dare to jump in the water and make waves and do unleash your childlike potential!

BILL CAPODAGLI ON VOICEAMERICA

"In Discussion" Voice America Business Channel host David Gibbons interviews Bill Capodagli live today at 3:00PTC. Visit http://davidgibbons.org and select the "Listen Live" tab on the left navigation at 3.00pm PTC.

HOLLAND AREA ARTS COUNCIL BRINGS INNOVATE THE PIXAR WAY SEMINAR TO WEST MICHIGAN

Listen to WGVU's Shelley Irwin interview the Holland Area Arts Council's Executive Director, Lorma Freestone to learn about the Holland Area Arts Council's wonderful contribution to the culture of western Michigan. The Holland Area Arts Council's 4th annual Creative Speaker Series features Bill Capodagli. The keynote will be held at the Pinnacle Center in Hudsonville, Michigan on April 20th - "Dreams and Dreamers: How to Innovate like Walt Disney and the Pixarians"

http://www.wgvu.org/wgvunews/index.cfm?id=tmsdetail&sty=6396

HR Leader Magazine: Magic in the Workplace - how Pixar and Disney unleash the creative talent of their workforce

Creating a culture of fun in the workplace helps to unleash the creative potential of employees. Sarah O’Carroll speaks to culture expert Bill Capodagli about how Pixar and Disney have created an innovative and creative place to work

It’s the type of place where you’ll see employees going down the hallway on a scooter, meetings are interrupted by koosh balls thrown from one executive to another, employees are playing fussball or swimming in an Olympic size swimming pool – or you may even not see them at all, as they have been asked to leave the building to go away and come back with some creative ideas. It’s not like a “workplace”, but it’s what Bill Capodagli describes as a corporate playground.

This is Pixar. The company that created animated feature films such as Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and the recent Academy Award winning movie Up. It was established in 1984, when chief creative officer John Lasseter left his animation job at Disney to join filmmaker George Lucas’ special effects computer group, which later became known as Pixar.

Pixar attributes its successes to finding and developing world-class creative talent and combining this with proprietary technology to develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heart-warming stories. Fundamental to this is a unique culture which enables the company to unshackle peoples’ imaginations and create the best products and services in the market.

Putting fun back into work

One might say it’s all very well to have such a fun and cre ative workforce in a movie studio. But according to Bill Capodagli, author of Innovate the Pixar Way, this way of working can be replicated in any organisation, and not just that, but it is this exact way of working that is the secret to successful organisations.

Only through creating a culture of fun and stripping out the monotonous drone of the working day can companies really unleash the creative talent of their employees, he says.

“Too often, too many organisations feel that in order to succeed work has to be hard, it needs to be boring, it needs to be work!” he says. “Organisations often think that if people are having fun, then they’re not productive enough and that you need to suffer in order to produce a great product. I don’t think that’s the case at all. Even working with some very technical teams of global engineering firms, fun was a very important part of their team and as a result they were highly, highly successful.”

There are many ways in which companies can intro duce some fun into the workplace. Some ways to liven up meetings, for example, is by introducing stress relieving tactics such as koosh balls that can be thrown around, or blowing bubbles to relieve some of the tension, and joking and kidding around with one another to break potential meeting monotony.

“I think having a good time at work and feeling comfortable enough to joke and kid around with one another helps in the collaboration that needs to take place for really great teams to exist,” says Capodagli. “When you take yourself too seriously, that is when work starts becoming a drudgery. You need to take your job seriously but your self not as seriously.”

This culture of playfulness must all stem from the leadership team, says Capodagli, which in Pixar is very much the case. The leadership team should make sure that people are allowed to have fun, and although the leader may not be the practical joking type who is as much fun as someone else, he has to make it his job to create an atmos phere where it’s okay to enjoy oneself.

Is fun in the average workplace a realistic idea?

But can this type of “fun” culture be replicated in a company which is not typically synonymous with fun – such as a financial services company, a book publishing company or a refrigeration company?

According to Capodagli, it’s all to do with creating the story of the organisation. The motto in Pixar and Disney is: “The story is king.”

One of the ways of creating this culture of fun is ensur ing that every person in the organisation knows what their own dream is and what the company’s dream is. Therefore they become excited about what they’re doing and where they are going, and while they are having fun in work they are still working towards a common goal and vision.“

At Pixar they say the story is king. And every team has a story and revolves around telling that story,” he says. “The same thing needs to happen whether you are publishing books or making refrigerators or selling hot dogs; what is the story of your organisation, does everybody know what the story is, the mood and how to engage your customer, and how to make your customer part of that story – whether it is making a product or providing a service so that every one on the team knows their role in that story.”

Capodagli equates it back to the show business model that Walt Disney created. Although your role may be a supporting role backstage, Capodagli says you know how important it is to the entire production. “When people know what they are doing within the organisation then the mood within the organisation needs to be collaborative, and the way to make it happen is to make it a fun experience.”

The magic of orientation

One of the most effective things that HR can do (and what Walt Disney and Pixar each do) is to create a comprehensive, high quality orientation process. This does not have to deal with policies, rules, forms and insurance benefits; instead it should deal with the visions and the values of the organisation. Capodagli says that in orientation employees should learn about the “unofficial rules” of the job.

One example of the unofficial rules Disney employees hear is that it’s everybody’s job to clean up the park. Capodagli gives the example of an hourly employee who was walking behind the recently hired vice president of Disney and noticed he stepped over some litter on the ground without picking it up. The employee picked it up and brought it to his office saying: “You apparently for got that it’s everybody’s job to keep our park clean.” Both employees are still working for the company.“

You can’t dictate the values of an organisation. People need to embrace those values, and an orientation program that runs for any less than two days does not give people an opportunity to really see why those values work in an organisation,” he says.

In Disney and Pixar, it is HR who spearheads the process of creating an orientation program that deals with the vision and values and how to instil those in employees at all levels.

Proof of such an approach was found in Disney, when one year they tried to change their tactics. Every summer they hire tens of thousands of people for the peak season in their parks, and they put everyone through a two-day orientation program before they start their job. As it is an expensive process, the finance department suggested cut ting this orientation program down to one day to save costs – which they did for one summer. However, that summer the managers in the park starting complaining to HR that the quality of hires was not as good as in the past and they wanted to know what had changed.

“The only difference was they cut off the one day of orientation called ‘traditions’. When they put it back in the complaints went away,” says Capodagli. “It takes more than just a day for people to question and then embrace a new set of values.”

Disney and Pixar’s orientation program covers the history of the company, the history of storytelling, vision and values and lots of exercises that demonstrate collaboration.

Bring in the Brad Birds

Another driver of Pixar’s and Disney’s success is hiring interesting people. Very often companies tend to look at a candidate’s pedigree and credentials, rather than the exciting and innovative thinking they might possess. According to Capodagli, some of the wackiest ideas come from people who may not have the conventional credentials.

“HR should be a leader at looking for people who are not all the same in an organisation. I don’t mean gender and race, but the thinking of people too,” he says. “We see in all too many organisations the people are cut out of the same mold as the CEO or the head of research and development.”

Capodagli gives the great example of how employing these “wacky types” can lead to huge success. “After Toy Story, Bugs Life and Toy Story 2, which were such great successes, Ed (Catmull, president of Pixar) and the management were afraid that they would fall into this formulaic group of doing the same thing over and over again. So they hired a guy from the outside, Brad Bird, to come in and do The Incredibles.”

Capodagli explains that Bird was known as a maverick in the industry and was even let go from a couple of studios. When he came into Pixar with some radical ideas they were shot down by some of the technical people, who said it would take 10 years to make and it would be far too expensive. Bird went to management and said: “Give me all your people who have different ways of doing things but haven’t had a chance to show their creative side. Give me even the people who are about to walk out the door.” The group was called “the black sheep”.

The result was The Incredibles, and the highest-selling DVD in the US, which also cost less per minute of production than any of the previous films.

“Innovation really needs to begin in HR,” says Capodagli. “It’s even more important in HR than new product marketing, or research and development.”

Training

Training at Pixar is one of the other keys of making it a great place to work. They offer more than 110 classes which vary from job-related classes, like screen writing and filming to drawing and sculpting and even self-defence classes. Every person in the organisation, from the receptionist to the president, is encouraged to take four hours of class every single week on company time.

“Pixar feels that everybody has unlimited potential and the more you exercise your brain the better receptionist, technician or executive you’ll be,” says Capodagli.

“When Randy Nelson, the Dean of Pixar University was asked ‘Why would you teach accountants how to draw?’ he said ‘We don’t just teach them how to draw, we teach them to be more observant. And if you think about it every company would be more productive if their employees were more observant.”

While not all companies can have a special university such as the Pixar University, one way in which smaller companies could enhance this training is by funding classes at local colleges and adult education classes.

“I do believe that if you give people four hours of training on something of their choice, they will be more productive in the other 36 hours,” he says.

Dream like a child

Leadership within Pixar is also very important. It is through the leadership of chief creative officer John Lasseter and president Ed Catmull, that a playful environment and ultimately the company dream is created.

One of the things the company’s leadership advocates is what Pixar calls “plussing”, a concept which originated from Walk Disney himself – which was subsequently adopted by the founders of Pixar. “Walt Disney continually looked at things and how they could be done better. Good was never good enough,” explains Capodagli.

This idea runs through the entire organisation. Each individual must continue to assess what their individual dream, their dream as a worker and also the values that guide them as an individual. Employees also need to ask themselves “what risk do I need to take to look at ways of improving and put a plan together” – a question which Walt Disney also encouraged employees to ask themselves.

Capodagli believes it’s important to celebrate failures and for employees to ask themselves what they can learn from them. “That’s the type of childlike attitude you need to get back in to a company,” he says.

“When you are a child you think you can do anything, you have all kinds of ideas and think you can do any of it. It’s by encouraging this daring to dream like a child again, that will reawaken the innovative spirit that is missing in so many companies.”
18 March 2010

PIXAR BOOK AUTHOR BILL CAPODAGLI SPEAKING IN CALIFORNIA - 3-18-10

Bill Capodagli, co-author of “Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground,” will speak at an Atascadero Chamber of Commerce workshop Tuesday.
He has used what he’s learned about the corporate structures of The Walt Disney Co. and Pixar Animation Studios to help businesses boost productivity, according to Joanne Main, chamber president and chief executive. The program runs 7:30 to 11 a.m. at the Pavilion on the Lake in Atascadero and includes a light breakfast. Admission is $40 for chamber members and $45 for nonmembers. Call 466-2044 to register.
— Melanie Cleveland, San Luis Obispo Tribune

WALT DISNEY'S "PLUS-ING" ALIVE AT PIXAR

Walt Disney originally coined the term plus-ing as a way of making something the product or idea better. One of our favorite examples of Walt's plus-ing happened late one year at Disneyland. Walt had decided to hold a Christmas parade at his new park. Knowing that the parade would cost several hundred thousand dollars, Walt's brother Roy and the accountants tried to convince him not to spend the money on such an extravagant event. Their rationale was that park guests were already coming for the Christmas holiday, and no one expected a parade. Walt responded, "That's just the point -we should do the parade precisely because no one's expecting it. Our goal at Disneyland is to always give the people more than they expect. As long as we keep surprising them, they'll keep coming back. But if they ever stop coming, it'll cost us ten times that much to get them to come back." Pixar's president Ed Catmull and chief creative officer John Lasseter have long been inspired by Walt Disney, and plus-ing has become a way of life at Pixar.

Never, ever accept "good enough"...there's always room for improvement.

Innovate the Pixar Way Book Review

"Wow! Your article Where Did Creativity Go?, in the Leadership Excellence Magazine caught my full attention. What a great piece!"
David at www.businesspersonmentor.com

Innovate the Pixar Way: Review of a New Book on Developing An Innovative Culture

Innovate The Pixar Way – Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground offers inspiration to any leader who is seeking to make her organisation more creative and innovative. Pixar is, of course, the animation powerhouse whose creations include Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

The values and principles that underpin an ‘innovation culture’ have been described in many books and academic papers. Innovate The Pixar Way reminds us of many of them including: Taking a long term view, creating a learning culture, not letting hierarchy get in the way, creating high performing creative teams, encouraging risk taking and learning from failure rather than punishing it.

Notwithstanding that this is well-trodden territory, Innovate The Pixar Way is a stimulating read which brings a fresh perspective to the topic of developing an innovation culture.
There is detail enough to guide those who are looking to bring about significant cultural change within an organisation. It might also serve as a useful reference for those already in the process of cultural change and looking for additional reassurance that their strategy will pay off.
This is Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson’s second collaboration. Their first book The Disney Way (McGraw-Hill 1999, fully revised and updated in 2006) dissected the Disney strategy of Dream, Believe, Dare, Do.

Innovate The Pixar Way holds a tight focus on its subject. The result is that we are presented with a fairly detailed picture of a ‘model innovative company’. We also get to see just how the elements that make up an innovation culture interact together to deliver great creative products, engaged employees and excellent financial returns.

Turn The Workplace Into A 'Playground'

The authors’ key thesis focuses on the opportunity to turn a place of work into a ‘playground’. By doing this, as Pixar have done, they suggest that a company can unleash the creative potential of all employees.

To the cynical corporate leader a ‘playground’ might sound like a place where no one does anything useful, and no one makes any money. However, Pixar’s esteemed reputation in the film industry and its financial results over the last fifteen years, quickly put pay to such criticism.
Indeed, while many academics and corporate leaders debate the need for companies to increase workforce productivity and in particular to ‘harness discretionary effort,’ Pixar has already found ways to do these things and is reaping the benefits.

This is a future orientated book that shows us how if we want to get more out of people; more creativity and higher morale; we have to allow those people to bring more of themselves to work. Not just the thinking, compliant, focused and analytical side, but also their playful, imaginative and passionate sides.

Companies need this ‘well rounded’ workforce because, as the authors warn, we are now in an age of ‘rapid innovation’. Companies need teams that can journey fearlessly into the unknown to create products and services that will fulfil their customers’ dreams.
Business as 'Show Business.'

A second key insight in the book suggests using the metaphor of ‘putting on a show’ as a way to run a business. Better still, how about viewing your business – whatever business it is - through the eyes of a (movie) director? Movie directors have led us to expect nothing less than excitement, inspiration and beautiful visuals in films. By taking such an approach in other businesses, leaders could ‘raise the bar.’ “Every business is show business,’’ we are told. And “you only have one chance to deliver that magical, magnetic, enchanting experience to your customer.’

Delivering An Innovation Culture.

The book is full of details about how Pixar does deliver on the key aspects of an innovation culture. The ‘campus’ has been designed to encourage interaction. There are plenty of places to ‘play’ including volleyball courts and a swimming pool. Individuals have the freedom to demonstrate their creativity by personalising their own workspaces,and employees have the freedom to approach anybody without recourse to hierarchical patterns. This means that we see Pixar as a living and breathing innovative organisation rather than the conceptual ideal of same that has been portrayed in other books.

Unfortunately when we come to the challenges that Pixar may have faced over the years there is perhaps not quite enough detail. At one stage Pixar Director Pete Docter is quoted saying “all our films are failures at some point.” I would like to have heard more about this stage - when the films are still in development, still needing to be perfected and crafted. What specifically do the leaders at Pixar do to maintain morale? Also, how does the “long term culture” hold up when the teams come under acute short term pressures?

Nevertheless, I am convinced that the strong values of the Pixar company, the mutual respect and trust for each other and focus on quality, must stand the business in good stead to avoid the type of day to day skirmishes that undermine team working and productivity on a daily basis in many organisations. The consistent message is that by creating the right innovation environment you end up with an energised and enthusiastic workforce who care and want to solve problems and contribute.

I was glad to see that there was at least some consideration of the topic of measuring innovation performance. Admittedly this is quite brief. Having identified the fundamentals of an innovation culture, the authors, not surprisingly are keen to point out how much of the critical aspects of an innovation culture are in fact intangible and very difficult to measure.

This view is presented alongside summarised revenues and costs for the last ten or so Pixar movies. Indeed these particular ‘innovation measures’ are impressive.
Again there is little guidance for the leader who needs to continue to champion his strategy to build an innovation culture, who is not seeing strong financial returns as quickly as Pixar did, and who perhaps is starting to feel some resistance to the strategy from higher-ups and shareholders.

The final stage of the book includes 16 pointers to create your own corporate playground. My favourite of which was “work on cool projects.“ This points to encouraging the right attitude among teams so that they can reframe any project in such a way that it excites and inspires them.

Another favourite pointer ‘dreamers with deadlines’ reminds us that innovation culture is not just about blue sky thinking. Delivering innovation results on time is also critical.

The Other Corporate 'Playgrounds'

So is Pixar the only place that could be described as a corporate playground? An appendix provides details of six other companies that similarly strive to innovate continuously and to unleash the creative potential of their people. These include Google and Nike.

Readers of books about innovation and creativity probably have even higher expectations of getting a fresh perspective on their topic than readers of some other categories, and Innovate The Pixar Way does indeed stimulate and inspire. The metaphors of workplace as ‘playground’, and business as ‘show business’, are memorable and relevant to the 21st century.
Even if readers are not ready to commit to these strategies on behalf of their organisation, having read about their context in Innovate The Pixar Way, some may want to bear them in mind as possible questions on an innovation audit. Are we creating magic for customers? Do our people get the chance to be playful?

Sceptics may feel that when it comes to workplace culture, it’s different in the ‘creative industries’. While Pixar may not be a wholly transferable model of an innovation culture, the authors are keen to point out they are not portraying it as such. They make it clear that a company has to develop its own creative culture. However, I cannot imagine any company that could not, at the very least, learn a thing or two from Pixar.

http://www.anatelloglobal.com - based in England; growth and innovation consultancy has helped large organisations around the world, many of them FTSE 100 or Fortune 500 companies, to innovate and achieve profitable, organic and sustainable growth

PETE DOCTER WINS OSCAR FOR UP!

Throughout the writing of our latest book Innovate the Pixar Way, Pete Docter inspired us by his ability to look at the world through the eyes of a child. Considering that we write about Pixar’s ability to “dream like a child, believe in their playmates, dare to jump in the water and make waves, and do unleash their childlike potential,” Pete’s statement about the making of Toy Story is perhaps the most apropos of all: “As naïve as it may sound, making Toy Story felt like an extension of school, where we were just making the film we wanted to make for us and our friends to enjoy.”

Upon receiving the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Up, Pete said, “Boy, never did I dream that making a flip book out of my third-grade math book would lead to this….it was an incredible adventure making it but the heart of it came from home.” As his parents watched the Academy Awards from their home in Bloomington, Minnesota, they must have been so moved to hear their son stand up in front of the world and honor them. They told Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune that they “always believed in him (Pete), and if he had an idea, we tried to make it happen, whether it was buying film or art supplies.”

And to a large degree, Pixar treats all of their employees in similar “family” fashion…giving the entire team the tools to succeed by making the finest animated feature films in the world. Thanks, Pete, for your inspiration and congratulations to you and your Pixar team on the phenomenal success of Up.

INNOVATE THE PIXAR WAY BOOK REVIEW

"Good morning Bill & Lynn, I just got your book this morning and .. . it is so awesome that I can't put it down. The problem is that I have "work" to do, and I'd rather "play" with your book."
Lor3nzo.com

INNOVATE THE PIXAR WAY BOOK REVIEW

"Bill and Lynn--I finished reading Innovate the Pixar Way a couple weeks back, and I want to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed your work. I learned/gleaned a great deal, and your thinking/research has come to mind several times as I've been working with our collegiate ministry team. We're working on changing our team culture...Have a great day, and may God continue to bless you both with wisdom and insight as you learn and teach about leadership and innovation."
Brian N. Frye, Collegiate Evangelism Strategist, Ohio Collegiate Ministries, State Convention of Baptists in Ohio

Another "Vote" for Pixar's Up as Best Picture

Recently, CNN's David Daniel interviewed Ed Asner who was the voice of Up's main character, Carl Fredricksen, the senior citizen who turns his house into a flying machine so he could reach the land of his dreams...South America.

Ed confessed to David that he had never seen a Pixar film until he went to see Wall-E. He was pleasantly surprised that the film was filled with messages for adults, that it wasn't just a kids' flick.

When he was asked to comment about Up's nomination in the Best Picture category, Ed replied,"what is the final product? It is a movie. What is the quality of that movie and why shouldn't it be made to be equal among equals?...In the same way you can put "Avatar" up there with "Hurt Locker," how much difference is there putting up "Up" against "Hurt Locker?"

We agree!!!!