Exercise: Retrospective

Objective:
To understand the activities that occupied our time on the most recent project.

Preparation:
This exercise should be run at a milestone or conclusion for a development project. It can be carried out individually or in small groups.
Allocate at approximately 30” to run this exercise.

Material:
Provide one copy of Allan Kelly's dialogue sheet to each group.

Or use an online styled version (jamboard)

Retrospectives from the Learn/Design/Construct exercise:

Instruction:
Follow the steps on the dialogue sheet and produce an activity/timeline sketch for the project.
At the end of completing the exercise review the diagrams, group and display them during discussion. Alternatively select student/groups to show, talk about and explain their diagrams to the class.

Write your name(s) on the sheet.

Outputs:
A single page upon which each student/group creates their own activity/timeline sketch and learnings list. 

Learning Outcomes and Reflection:
Design as a learning process

Need for feedback

Attaining objectivity

Give voice

Practical Aim:
Identify the key characteristics of collaborative design projects.
Demonstrate a democratic review process

Exercise: Sutton's creative strategies

Results from 2020 Jamboard (link)

results from Nov 2019

results from BCFE 2019

results from Nov 2010

results from Nov 2011

Creating an 'organic' histogram of the results

Objective To assess how prepared I am to manage a creative team and a truly innovative project.
These questions are set out as either/or style. There is no middle ground, they are not 'fair'. They act as a forcing function to get you to honestly resort to your true belief on how you intend to manage creative work teams. Your answers are naturally founded on your own personal beliefs and/or experiences. Your answers will probably change if the test is taken at another point in your career.

Instruction stage 1
Ask everyone to self-access the following questions.

Score	Either	Or	Score
+1	Seek out and be attentive to people who will evaluate and endorse the work	Seek out ways to avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money	-1
+1	Think of some sound or practical things to do, and plan to do them	Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, and plan to do them	-1
+1	Reward success; punish failure and inaction	Reward failure and success; punish inaction	-1
+1	Bring happy people together and make sure they get along	Bring happy people together and get them to fight	-1
+1	Promote “fast learners” (of the organizational code)	Promote “slow learners” (of the organizational code)	-1
+1	Hire people who make you feel comfortable, whom you like	Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike	-1
+1	Hire people you (probably) do need	Hire people you (probably) don’t need	-1
+1	Take your past experiences and replicate them	Take your past experiences and forget them	-1
+1	Use job interviews to screen candidates and, especially, to recruit new employees	Use job interviews to get new ideas, not to screen candidates	-1
+1	Do something that will probably succeed, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain	Do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain	-1
+1	Ignore people who have never solved the exact problem you face	Ignore people who have solved the exact problem you face	-1
+1	Encourage people to pay attention to and obey their bosses and peers	Encourage people to ignore and defy their bosses and peers	-1

Calculate your total personal score. Possible value ranges between -12 through to +12.

Instruction stage 2
Provide Sutton's principles paraphrased below for creative teams and then open the discussion, e.g. consider some of the questions below.

• Place bets on ideas without heeding projected ROI.
• Radical innovation implies ignoring what worked before.
• Take happy people and goad them into disagreement.
• Reward action, success AND failure.
• Have people who don’t fit in.
• Disagreements are necessary.
• Use new employees to bring in NEW ideas.
• Generate and use NEW ideas.

Nilofer Merchant (link) illustrates the contradictory qualities of situations where groups attempt creative problem solving through collaboration. In asking why (creative) collaboration is so rare she hits on a realisation, it is dangerous, risky, involves loss of face, basically it is something that can't be controlled and that translates into something to fear.

Discussion

• Are the recommendations irresponsible?
• Is a creative culture doomed to self-destruction?
• Can a creative development culture coexist with general production?
• Are Sutton's principles simply those that apply in startups?
• If this is startup thinking or behaviour where does it fit in 'scale organisations'?
• Must innovation efforts be separated from the mainstream organisation?
• Does the "Innovator's Dilemma" imply that innovation efforts need independence to succeed?
• Thinking of the possibility of 'Zones' of creative production occurring within the traditional monolithic organisation; Characterise a creative zone or project in such a way that it can be understood, appreciated and supported by a wider conventional organisation: skunk works, black team, blue sky, laboratory...

Observation: This test reveals how 'prepared' for and 'aware of' we are, of the intrinsic demands of creative innovative design environments. In spite of rhetoric to the contrary most organisations and most employees are not involved in innovation. In the main we repeat and reproduce routines that extract value from existing products, markets, customers, business models. Consequently most of us adhere to ingrained approaches to valuing, managing and acting within teams and their wider organisations.

Consider Ken Schwaber's commentary on the relationship between Agile and the PMI...

"We have found that the role of the project manager is counterproductive in complex, creative work. The project manager’s thinking, as represented by the project plan, constrains the creativity and intelligence of everyone else on the project to that of the plan, rather than engaging everyone’s intelligence to best solve the problems." (link)

References
Cliff Kuang. The 'done' manifesto: 13 Rules For Realizing Your Creative Vision. 2011 (link)
Nilofer Merchant's post the "Eight Dangers of Collaboration" (link)
SUTTON, R. I. 2001. The Weird Rules of Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 79, 10.
SUTTON, R. I. 2001. Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, Free Press.

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results from FTa 2015

results from FTb 2015

results from PT 2015

results from PT class 2013

results from FT class 2013

results from class 2012

Pixar (case)

Compulsory Reading: Catmull, E. 2008. How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 89, 9.

Listen to Ed Catmull's interview with Paul Michelman on HBR IdeaCast / Episode 109 

(https://hbr.org/podcast/2008/08/harvard-business-ideacast-109)

How Does Pixar Foster Collective Creativity?
One industry compares well with that of software development; film. Both produce information goods, digital or digitisable products (Shapiro and Varian, 1998). Both rely on the highly creative work of their designers. Both are produced by teams and teams of teams. The industries themselves have become intimately interdependent as film studios’ demand for visual effects, modelling, simulation, special effects, post processing etc has driven rapid innovation in graphics and animation software.

John Lasseter at the 2009 Venice Film Festival (src: wikipedia).

Software studios create the tools and techniques to produce effects that are used increasingly in films. Films using more realistic and convincing effects constantly push the boundaries of what is possible, and this in turn drives further technology development. The cross-over between software and entertainment is even ingrained into the culture of film, computing and programming. Computing and computer games have also been used as subject matter and characters, not just as tools, from the earliest days of film. We can even argue that visions of 'computing in film' precedes its realisation in reality e.g. Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).


Pixar's Cultural Roots
Pixar grew out of Lucasfilm's CGI division which was formed by George Lucas to create the special effects for the first Star Wars trilogy. Lucasfilm's Graphics Group eventually became ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) and ILM in turn nurtured the early Pixar. In the days of Lucasfilm and ILM George Lucas encouraged wider intellectual engagement with academics and industry; the same culture was present in Pixar.

“...a film company that was pushing the boundaries. George didn’t try to lock up the technology for himself and allowed us to continue to publish… This made it possible to attract some of the best people in the industry…” (Catmull, 2008)

From its beginning Pixar considered engagement with others as an expression of their core belief in community and ‘relationships that matter.’

The Creative Crisis: With the Toy Story 2 project Pixar entered a crisis situation when they tried to release two high value projects in tandem; developing and producing A Bug’s Life in parallel with Toy Story 2, which was initially contracted to Disney as a 'release to video' offering. Pixar's ‘proven creative leaders’ had already moved on to the next project, "A Bug’s Life", while a second talented and capable team was working on Toy Story 2. However Pixar found that the second production team was not achieving the high production values, general quality and excellence that was the hallmark of Pixar movies. Pixar's "brain trust" eventually realised the Toy Story 2 team were failing on several levels.

“we had a good initial idea for a story, but the reels were not where they ought to have been by the time we started animation, and they were not improving. Making matters worse, the directors and producers were not pulling together to rise to the challenge.”
(Catmull, 2008)

Different reasons were posited to explain how the situation arose. Perhaps the lower quality production values of a direct to video project were a corrosive influence on Pixar’s values? Was the Toy Story 2 team demoralized by knowing that something less than acceptable was now acceptable? Was Pixar’s culture of excellence and in particular its image of ‘talent’ being corroded by Disney's definition of ‘acceptable quality’?

Toy Story 2 was now looking like it needed to be treated like crunch project with the all of the crazy demands of recovering a contracted production schedule that needed 18 months but only had 8. The problem was not in the high concept, but in the details, the coherence and logic of the narrative. Resolving the situation could have wide ranging impacts; much of the work they had thought was finished would have to be revised. Fixing it could impact character development, the storyline, CGI models, artwork, scenery, narrative, dialogue, soundtrack, EVERYTHING! Wouldn't it be easier to just ship a mediocre product? After all, excellence isn't everything?

References and additional sources (thanks to class members for links).

Catmull, E. 2008. How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 89, 9.

Lang, F. 1927. Metropolis (link)
Panzarino, M. 2012. How Pixar's TS2 was lost and then found (link)
Stopera, M. 2011. 33 things you probably didn't know about the Toy Story trilogy (link)
Nusair, D. 2011. More things you didn't know about the Toy Story Trilogy (link)
See the introductory section on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story_2) n.b. Most of the content on Wikipedia is from the 2008 book The Pixar Touch by David Price.