To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History
by Lawrence Levy
The natural tendency in negotiations is to engage in positional bargaining. This means taking a position knowing that it is not a final position, and holding in reserve a backup position. The danger of positional bargaining is that it forces you to think about backup positions, which weakens your conviction in your original position. It’s like negotiating against yourself. Plan A may be your optimal outcome, but inwardly you have already convinced yourself to settle on Plan B. One way to illustrate the ideas of the Middle Way is to imagine that there are two people inside of us. One is a bureaucrat; the other, an artist or free spirit. The job of the bureaucrat is to get things done: wake up on time, pay the bills, earn good grades. The bureaucrat likes stability, rules, and values efficiency and performance. The artist or free spirit within us cares about joy, love, adventure, spontaneity, creativity, and feeling deeply connected and alive. The free spirit wants to break through the sea of convention and expectation in which we often find ourselves swimming.
In his mind, if he didn’t get what he wanted, nothing else would take its place, so he’d walk away. This made Steve an incredibly strong negotiator. He would dig into his positions with a fierce, almost unbreakable grip. The risk, however, was in so overreaching that we would end up with nothing. If we were not going to have a backup plan, we had to be very careful about knowing what we wanted.
Although I found Steve to be quite a private person, when it came to the public eye, he didn’t like to share the spotlight. His ability to weave stories around big ideas was legendary, and he applied them with equal force to his own story. Working for Steve meant working in the shadows; he wasn’t terribly generous when it came to publicly sharing credit.
Somewhere on those drives, in the quiet of my own car, I realized that no amount of deliberation was going to resolve my worries. Sometimes there comes a point when you jump not because you feel ready or are sure that you’ll make it across the chasm, but because the conditions are forcing you off the edge. That’s when you find out if you can fly.
When you added it up, there were many aspects of Pixar that had a big influence on Steve: becoming a billionaire, experiencing a stellar comeback in the eyes of the public, learning the ins and outs of the entertainment industry, enjoying a transformed relationship with Pixar, and bringing both business and creative imperatives into harmony.
“Think of it as a portfolio business,” Joe had explained. “Each year a studio earmarks funds for a slate of films: low budget, medium budget, and big budget. Then we do the same with marketing, allocating amounts to market each film. We release the slate, hoping that we create enough hits to make up for the ones that don’t perform.”
"The natural tendency in negotiations is to engage in positional bargaining. This means taking a position knowing that it is not a final position, and holding in reserve a backup position. The danger of positional bargaining is that it forces you to think about backup positions, which weakens your conviction in your original position. It’s like negotiating against yourself. Plan A may be your optimal outcome, but inwardly you have already convinced yourself to settle on Plan B."
"One way to illustrate the ideas of the Middle Way is to imagine that there are two people inside of us. One is a bureaucrat; the other, an artist or free spirit. The job of the bureaucrat is to get things done: wake up on time, pay the bills, earn good grades. The bureaucrat likes stability, rules, and values efficiency and performance. The artist or free spirit within us cares about joy, love, adventure, spontaneity, creativity, and feeling deeply connected and alive. The free spirit wants to break through the sea of convention and expectation in which we often find ourselves swimming."
"Walt Disney had long had an interest in newspaper cartoons. After returning from service as an ambulance driver in France in World War I, he encountered animated cartoons for the first time and quickly fell in love with the field. Ironically, he feared that he had entered the field too late, that there was no growth opportunity left in it. He ended up creating that opportunity by pushing the field into new territory, both creatively and technologically, just as Pixar was doing now."
"Corporations are a lot like living creatures. They have personalities, emotions, and habits. The person at the top might seem to be calling all the shots but is often imprisoned in a culture he or she can do little to change. As corporations succeed, they generally become more conservative. The flames of creativity on which a company is built can easily cool as pressures to perform mount. Success brings something to defend, something to lose. Fear can easily trump courage."
"Todd Carter and Mike McCaffrey came over to Pixar to meet Steve, Ed, and me. We all liked Mike immediately. He was tall, athletic, and articulate. He came across as sharp, grounded, and very respectful toward Pixar and Steve. After the meeting, Steve pulled me aside. “I have one request,” he said, “and it’s nonnegotiable.” “What’s that?” I asked. “I want Mike McCaffrey at every stop on our road show.” My heart sank a little. This was crazy."
"Corporation that once ruled the high-tech world had evolved into hierarchical, formal cultures. Orders came from the top. Lines of communication were rigid. Coloring outside the lines was shunned. Their organizations became politicized. The most progressive, innovative contributors did not necessarily rise to the top. Excessive hierarchy and bureaucracy were like a death blow to innovation. I knew that at Pixar, we had to avoid this."
"If we are too focused on function, accumulation, and performance, we may wind up wondering if we have truly lived. If, on the other hand, we are so focused on living free and engaging our passions, we may become frustrated by lack of momentum or grounding. The Middle Way holds that the best outcomes arise from harmonizing these two sides—from harvesting our positive nature, spirit, and humanity without ignoring practicality."
- →Somewhere on those drives, in the quiet of my own car, I realized that no amount of deliberation was going to resolve my worries. Sometimes there comes a point when you jump not because you feel ready or are sure that you’ll make it across the chasm, but because the conditions are forcing you off the edge. That’s when you find out if you can fly.
- →“Think of it as a portfolio business,” Joe had explained. “Each year a studio earmarks funds for a slate of films: low budget, medium budget, and big budget. Then we do the same with marketing, allocating amounts to market each film. We release the slate, hoping that we create enough hits to make up for the ones that don’t perform.”
- →So that was all we needed to do. Besides making films that would enjoy unprecedented box office success the world over, we simply had to QUADRUPLE OUR SHARE OF THE PROFITS RAISE AT LEAST $75 MILLION TO PAY FOR OUR PRODUCTION COSTS MAKE FILMS FAR MORE OFTEN THAN WE KNEW HOW BUILD PIXAR INTO A WORLDWIDE BRAND Piece of cake.
- →“You know,” I said, “in all my conversations with Steve these past two months, I’ve never found him defensive. I’ve critiqued and dismantled every aspect of Pixar’s business and he had every reason to justify and defend it. But he didn’t. It’s as if he’s taking this journey with me, learning it at the same time I am.”
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