“What we're doing is not simple for any of our companies. It's hard. So, if you're going to do something that's hard, you want to value the people who are helping you solve  the problems, even if they're more silent. What they're doing is valuable."

Welcome to ALL HANDS by Lattice, where we believe that People Strategy IS Business Strategy. I’m your host -- Katelin Holloway. For the last decade, I’ve been a People & Culture executive at some of the internet’s most beloved startups, but my fascination with building true people-first cultures started many, many years ago. From film to tech (and a few interesting layovers in between), the one common denominator remains: I am most passionate about enabling people through belonging to create beautiful, innovative products.

On All Hands, I talk with CEOs and other c-level leaders about how being a "people first" company is a strategic advantage. Join us while we chat with these top leaders about how a “people first” approach isn’t just good for people -- it’s good for business too.

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Today on ALL HANDS we're sharing a very special interview that I did as part of Lattice's Resources for Humans Virtual Conference with Ed Catmull. He is the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and author of the bestselling book. Creativity Inc.

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Katelin Holloway: In addition to the unique and touching stories that are brought to life on screen, Pixar is also known for its phenomenal people-first culture.
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And I would know because I had the pleasure of working under Ed's leadership for five years. Now that was a long time ago. Yes, granted, but my experience at the studio had a profound impact on my worldview. It's been nearly a decade since we've been in the same room Ed, but I'll have, you know, I've given you a great deal of credit for my career arc over the years.
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So even if he couldn't pick me out of a lineup, you've had a pretty, pretty big impact on me, but I know that I'm not the only one. There are thousands of people who got to experience the magic of working at Pixar and have taken those first principles back out into the world. And now those people are shaping the next generation of company cultures as well.
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I think few people get the opportunity to publicly thank their role models. So I wasn't about to let this one go unsaid. So thank you. And now to the task at hand, it is my obvious pleasure to have this conversation with you today and to share a bit of that Pixar magic with our guests. Are you ready?

Ed Catmull:  I'm ready. Thank you.

Katelin Holloway: Excellent. Alright, so now I'm a bit old fashioned, but I think it would be nice if we started at the beginning. Can you please quickly share a little bit about yourself and your journey to creating Pixar?

Ed Catmull: Yes. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and this is after, World War II and the Great Depression, which actually formed a culture that I grew up in and the two iconic figures of the time that I, when I was young was, uh, Albert Einstein and Walt Disney. And I wanted to be an animator, but I reached the point where I realized that I couldn't draw well enough so I switched over into physics. Uh, now when I tell people this, they usually feel like it's, uh, it's rather humorous because they seem so incongruous with each other.
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But my own belief is they're not incongruous, but that actually the creativity on the scientific side and the, uh, on the artistic side are the same.  I got an undergraduate degree in physics and a second one in computer science. And then when I returned to graduate school to study computer languages, uh, my very first class was in computer graphics.
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This is 49 years ago, completely turned my life around because now here was a time in which the arts and the sciences in fact really did come together. It wasn't this nice saying, it was actually true. And here was the frontier for using the computer in the arts, in the sciences. So I started to wrestle with the problem was, or what it would take to make it practical.
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And then I went off to New York. I spent another five years in New York, running a research lab. Again, had some amazing people, uh, made some correct decisions, and made some really stupid decisions. And then I was hired by George Lucas to come bring technology into the film industry. George was the only person of note in this entire industry who believed the technology was going to change the industry. And that was pretty remarkable that there was this person that would do this, and he did not represent the general sense of the industry. So he basically funded it. We came up with the changes and again, I made some mistakes, I learned a lot. I hung onto the things that I realized were true and I jetted in the things that I thought were wrong.
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I had friends in Silicon Valley because we all went to school. Um, the founder of Adobe who makes Photoshop was a classmate. And,  uh, the founder or the person who came up with object-oriented programming, it was a classmate. And Jim Clark, the founder of the company that really got Netscape going, he was a classmate. So it was really this remarkable group of people that were together and all with this philosophy of changing the world. And I believe that that element that I saw in the classroom, there is still an underlying belief that most people have. They want to make a difference in the world. And that's what I've come to value and to try to nurture because I was given help at that time in my life.

Katelin Holloway:  So how did you take it from there? Once, you were in school, you have this incredible group of colleagues that you graduated with. You were hired by George Lucas to, to change the world through technology in the world of storytelling. How did that parlay then into Pixar?

Ed Catmull: Well, in the case of Lucas Films, it turns out that, George, while he was funding this, he got a divorce and she got the cash and he kept the company. It was how they divided up, but he was cash poor, and so it was necessary to sell this group. Actually, there were four groups that I was over. There was, uh, the computer graphics, digital audio, video editing and games. But for this group in graphics, it's where our heart was, was in, in making imagery and, uh, Steve Jobs who had just been kicked out of Apple, bought us from Pixar. And that was how Pixar the company was formed. We have an incredibly good relationship with George because it wasn't as if he had a choice. And there was no conflict or where it's just, it's just the reality.
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Going through the disasters and the hard things a