In Praise of Boring Organizational Innovators

We celebrate technology and product innovators too much. We don't celebrate organizational innovators enough. Here's a call to right the imbalance!

What’s the most under-appreciated business book of the last decade?

Everyone probably has a different answer. But Creativity, Inc. (2014) would be a contender on my list. Not because the book didn’t sell well (it did), but because it hasn’t had the influence I believe it should have. I’m not as interested in peddling the book itself -- although it’s excellent and you should read it. I’m more interested in why books like Creativity, Inc. aren’t more influential.

Creativity, Inc. was written by Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar and now President of Disney Animation Studios, to explain why Pixar has been so successful. Here’s an excerpt from the book, which I am copying from a Fast Company article:

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Our decision making is better when we draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group. Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments. So how can a manager ensure that his or her working group, department, or company embraces candor? By putting mechanisms in place that explicitly say it is valuable. One of Pixar’s key mechanisms is the Braintrust, which we rely on to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. It is our primary delivery system for straight talk. The Braintrust meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making… [Catmull then provides several examples of Braintrust meetings.]

You may be thinking, How is the Braintrust different from any other feedback mechanism?

There are two key differences, as I see it. The first is that the Braintrust is made up of people with a deep understanding of storytelling, who usually have been through the process themselves. While the directors welcome critiques from many sources, they particularly prize feedback from fellow storytellers. The second difference is that the Braintrust has no authority. The director does not have to follow any of the specific suggestions. After a Braintrust meeting, it is up to him or her to figure out how to address the feedback.

Keep in mind that this book is about the most successful animated studio of the last 25 years, led by arguably the most successful industry leader over that time period! Ed was trained as a computer scientist and invented many of the technologies that made computer animation possible. That alone would’ve made him a legend, at least among nerds. But he went on to co-found and lead Pixar, and you know how that went. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Up, etc. Countless Oscars and box-office records. And he’s still churning out hits at Disney.

Creativity, Inc. could have been the story of the technological innovations that gave birth to computer animation. Even more marketable would’ve been the story of how each of the beloved Pixar films came to be. But the book isn’t about the product or technology innovations that made Pixar a juggernaut.

Instead, Ed Catmull is obsessed with telling us about… how to run a meeting (i.e. the “Braintrust”)? The book is full of process recommendations for teams to share ideas more effectively. Among the “7 core principles” are things like “give good notes” and “do not confuse the process with the goal.” It’s a fascinating look into the brain of an engineer turned manager, constantly tinkering with organizational arrangements to find the optimal social technology to reliably produce creative films.

Boring!

Let’s be honest: most of us find the stuff covered in books like Creativity, Inc. to be boring. 

We love Steve Jobs and his penchant for user-friendly products, but we don’t write home about Tim Cook’s role as COO in developing an efficient global supply chain. We love to talk about the rise of digital platforms, but we yawn if the conversation veers into the design and management of the server farms that make digital platforms work. We fetishize the fun culture of the latest startups, but we roll our eyes at the people in HR who try to formalize policies and procedures to ensure the culture can scale as the startup grows. We talk about the global dominance of large multinational firms, but we don’t mention that those firms are powered by cross-national teams that use simple rules for people from across time zones and cultures to work together effectively.

My point is that we undervalue organizational innovators: people who tinker with the ways we communicate, structure, plan, and relate to one another in our day to day jobs. But it’s those “boring” innovations that make the exciting ones possible! 

I think there’s a good argument to be made that organizations are themselves one of the most important innovations of the last few centuries. An organization is a human designed technology like any other. And just like a new processor or better AI algorithm, an improvement in the “technology” by which we coordinate within an organization has massive benefits that make our quality of life better. Just a few examples:

• The invention of limited partnerships allowed the pursuit of risky ventures by entrepreneurs by limiting the exposure of individual capital providers. My favorite example of this is the now-defunct whaling industry. 

• The invention of the multidivisional organization (the “M-form”) allowed firms to operate at scale and pursue increasingly complex corporate strategies. This was famously documented by the historian Alfred Chandler.

• The invention of idea-generation techniques (e.g. nominal group technique, Delphi method) allowed teams to avoid groupthink and generate more new ideas per brainstorming session. These techniques are behind many of the meetings in which you participate. 

What do these organizational innovations have in common? One is that nobody really knows who came up with them. I think this is partly because we don’t celebrate the innovators behind them as much as we should. And partly because they are the product of lots of tiny improvements that, when added up, can’t really be attributed to anyone in particular. But the other thing they have in common is that they have made our lives a lot better, and enabled a lot of the flashier product and technology innovations we love to celebrate.

Praise and a request

That’s what people like Ed Catmull understand. That constant tinkering with the organizational technology -- how we relate to each other and work together -- is just as important as coming up with a better product. Or maybe more important, because the product will be the result of the organizational technology that brings people together to make it.

So here’s to all the quiet, under-appreciated organizational innovators out there! The next time you see one, thank them for making your life better. And if they write a book, consider buying it.

I want to finish this article with a request: If you have a moment, describe an organizational innovator or an organizational innovation that has made your life better. My hope is that, collectively, we can raise the profile of these crucial people and their contributions.