Kann man Kreative führen? Ed Catmull hat einige Rezepte

Ed Catmull führt eines der kreativsten Unternehmen weltweit: Pixar. Und genau darüber, über seine Rolle als CEO und Führungskraft, hat er sein Buch geschrieben. "Creativity, Inc. - Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way Of True Inspiration" ist einen ziemlich guter "Backstage-Report" über die Gründung und Entwicklung eines Unternehmens, das von Steve Jobs eigentlich als Software-Bude gekauft worden war. Was also auf den ersten Blick als "Kreativ-Bibel" anmutet, entpuppt sich als Management-Ratgeber für Führungskräfte, die Kreative und Kreativprojekte zu managen haben.

Ed Catmull schreibt dabei schonungslos offen über eigene Bedenken, Zweifel und Fehler. Und er hat einen ganzen Baukasten an Managementtipps parat. Lesenswert.
Darüber hinaus ist das Buch sein Versuch, der Pixar-Gemeinde zu erklären, warum er, zusammen mit John Lasseter und Steve Jobs, dieses großartige Studio dann doch an Disney verkauft hat ... die Fans wollen ihm das immer noch nicht verzeihen. Das Buch ist also nicht nur ein Management-Ratgeber, sondern auch die Bekenntnisse eines CEOs.

Hier meine Lieblingszitate:

• "Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas. (...) Find, develop and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas."
• "Mistakes are part of creativity. (...) "To be a truly creative company, you must start things that might fail."
• "(...) we need to free ourselves of honesty´s baggage. (...) One way to do that is to replace the word honesty with another word that has a similar meaning but fewer moral connotations: candor."
• "Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so - to go, as I say. `from suck to not-suck.´ (...) Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process - reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughliner or a hollow character finds its soul."
• "Telling the truth is difficult, but inside a creative company, it is the only way to ensure excellence."
• "Management´s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover."
• "Our job is to protect our babies from being judged too quickly. Our job is to protect the new. (...) Part of our job is to protect the new from people who don´t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness."
• "The key is to view conflict as essential, because that´s how we know the best ideas will be tested and suvive. You know, it can´t only be sunlight. It is management´s job to figure out how to help others see conflict as healthy - as a route to balance, which benefits us all in the long run."
• "But when it comes to creativity, the unknown is not our enemy. If we make room for it instead of shunning i, the unknown can bring inspiration and originality."
• "If you don´t try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead."
• "Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft."
• "Art challenges technology, technology inspires art." (John Lasseter)
• "In my experience, creative peopel discover and realize their visions over time and through dedicated, protracted struggle. In that way, creativity is more like a marathon than a sprint."
• "We human like to know where we are headed, but creativty demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where."