Superteams in Action

The Black Friday looked like the end of the road, but the Pixar team who worked on Toy Story wouldn’t just give up… When Pixar struck a US $26 million deal with Disney to make three movies, Toy Story was the first. Inspired by the ambition to create the world’s first computer-animated film, though, the Pixar team still had to rely on the support and expertise of The Walt Disney Studios. It was on Friday, the 19th of November, 1993 at Walt Disney Co., Burbank, California that they screened the first half of Toy Story for Disney Executives. 

After viewing it, the consensus across the table was that the film was awful. As the novice film-makers from Pixar worked hard to please the intimidating head of the Walt Disney Studios, Jeff Katzenberg, who wanted to give the film an edge so that it’d appeal to children, teenagers and adults alike, the film had lost its cinematic bearings. Peter Schneider, President of Walt Disney Feature Animation orders a shutdown of the project, threatening major layoffs. But, Pixar Co-founder and Head of Animation John Lasseter successfully pleads for a fortnight to revise the script. Still, it was a very scary time for them.

What seemed to be a disaster at the time, however, turned out to be a remarkable turning point for Pixar later on. They were already a good team who had a shared vision, a deep understanding of what they all reckoned as great work, a penchant for technology and art, and belief in the prime importance of storytelling. But, the daunting challenge before them was the trigger which enabled Pixar to become a superteam. “In the crucible of adversity”, writes Management & Leadership Consultant Khoi Tu in his book ‘Superteams’, “they developed processes and ways of operating  that proved so successful that in the aftermath of the crisis the Pixar team strove to retain those processes as part of their daily work, to turn principles and practices into a way of life.”

There’s something we all should understand here. Whereas Pixar’s success story feels romantic from an outsider’s perspective, any seasoned executive knows how difficult it’s to keep his wits about himself when faced with a crisis of this scale. The trouble is, at those times of utter frustration, coming to grips with what has happened and calmly deciding on a course of action to address the problem is rarely second-nature to most people. But, if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. The Pixar team did just that and eventually made history and a box office hit with $362 million revenue in ticket sales worldwide.

If you remember a crisis that you’ve handled successfully, you may be familiar with this phenomenon. When we’re fighting for survival,  we, to a man,  tend to focus on the matters at hand like a spotlight, brush aside all those petty disputes and office politics in all other forms, offer candid feedback without fear of offending anyone, give suggestions without being asked to, dispense with our perfectionist attitudes, walk the extra mile, dissolve hierarchical boundaries, ask for help without feeling inadequate and above all behave rationally. Maybe, once it got back to normal, unbeknownst to yourself, you slid back into your old ways at work.

The reason is when our very survival is at stake, everything else to which we’d have paid disproportionate attention under pleasanter and less threatening circumstances simply falls away. Granted, what I’ve just said is just commonsense. It’s the way we’re supposed to work whether it’s rain or sunshine. But, when we factor into this all the politics, egos, favoritisms, prejudices, hypocrisies, hostilities, and what not at everyday office, we know commonsense is the least of most people’s concerns and, by extension, a rarity in the workplace.

But hard as you may find it to believe, superteams have this commonsense or conventional wisdom hardwired into their collective DNA. A superteam is always committed to their common cause and directs their collective efforts towards achieving it without letting superficial concerns sidetrack them.  Most importantly, day in and day out, they keep at it and adjust their course with alacrity in response to the changes in the macro environment. 

What about groupthink, then? Superteams have reliable in-built mechanisms to prevent groupthink from taking root. If you think superteams comprise remarkably talented, highly knowledgeable individuals, you’re right. But, if you think they share the same traits and the same approach to work, you can’t be more wrong. They’re all different enough from one another to build a robust check & balance system inside the team. A superteam has visionaries, planners, pragmatists, critics, connectors, thinkers, contrarians, thought-leaders who are strongly bound by a common purpose. 

They possess different skill sets, but have great professional respect for their respective realms of expertise. A perfect example for this is the team of Pixar Founders-Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith. 

Maybe, most business leaders have the knowledge, skills and resources to build superteams, but, they rarely see it that way, if at all.