Page 3 - Inside Access November 3rd Edition

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Leadership and Business Lessons
from Top CEOs
Finding Good People
Ed Catmull, the CEO, Pixar, says that the central problem in a business is not finding good ideas but finding good people. Most people think the opposite is true.
In 1996, Pixar was asked to make the ‘Toy Story 2’ movie as the team who made the earlier Toy Story movie were occupied with making ‘A Bug’s Life.’ Before production commenced, Ed Catmull decided to form a new creative team to make the sequel. Unfortunately, the making of the ‘Toy Story 2’ movie did not go as expected. After ten months, Ed Catmull made the decision to replace the existing team with the original ‘Toy Story 1’ team instead. The new team started the movie from scratch and only had eight months to complete the project. They were able to successfully complete the movie and it was a massive success. Ed Catmull points out that the original core concept of ‘Toy Story 2’ was the same for both the teams but the people made the difference.
“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works.”
Ed Catmull
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; We hire smart people so that they can tell us what to do.”
Steve Jobs
“People are just not the most important asset. Right people are.“
If you have the right people, the problem of how to motivate and manage people properly goes away. In the 1980s, banking deregulation wreaked havoc in the banking industry. Wells Fargo handled these challenges better than any other bank and began its fifteen-year streak of spectacular performance. Carl Reichardt, who became CEO in 1983, attributed the success to the people around him.
Walter Bruckart, Vice President, Circuit City said, “There are five factors that led to the transition of a company from mediocrity to excellence. One would be people. Two would be people. Three would be people. Four would be people. And five would be people. A huge part of our company’s transition can be attributed to our discipline in picking the right people.”
Jim Collins
Contributed by Oye Jolaoso
PAGE 3 INSIDE ACCESS | NOVEMBER 2020 3RD EDITION