Tour notes - Pixar part 6: The Extras

We then moved onto the gym, where a couple of people were using the cardio equipment. It looked like a nice enough place, especially for an office environment, but nothing extravagant. As it turns out, that is by design.

When you are dealing with resources, and how to apportion them, there is more to think about than simply budget constraints. You can tell that Pixar is not afraid to spend money on something, but they do it in a really smart way.

They found that there is a delicate balance to find when doling out resources. If you do not offer enough resources, people will hoard them and not share with one another. If you offer an excessive amount, people will take it for granted and not take advantage of it. So, dumping a box on someone's desk with every training DVD imaginable is not a good use of resources - it will likely go completely unused. Likewise, providing an insufficient amount of training resources leads to a selfish or competitive environment where people are unwilling to share.

This is true with the greatest resource of all, time. If employees feel like they are under pressure, like every minute is accounted for, they are going to be unwilling to spend time on someone else's problem. An "every man for himself" environment has been created. So, at Pixar, they choose to trust their employees to handle their work and free time in a good way. This leads to an environment where a person could be up against a difficult problem and one of their co-workers will say "Hey, I finished up my work for the day. How about if we spent a couple of hours and work on this together?"

If an animator feels he is hitting a wall and needs a creative outlet, and he wants to play ping-pong or go swimming or play volleyball.... there are resources for him to use right there at Pixar. And no one is going to see him doing that and suggest he should be working. The issue is not the time he spends swimming, but the end product. If he is not producing a good amount of work of sufficient quality then someone will need to speak to him. But if his work is improved somehow because he wants to play chess there's no one to tell him that's wrong. :-)

The bean-counters may not understand this philosophy at most companies, but they get it at Pixar. That's the culture. And that's how they have made such a creative environment.