On Wednesday, I was lucky enough to be invited back to give a second Good Boss, Bad Boss talk at Pixar. I love Pixar. Not just because they are so cool, but because of the deep and relentless commitment to quality and humanity. If you have not heard it, I urge you to listen to this Fresh Air interview about Toy Story 3 — if you listen closely to how they approached their work, you can hear almost everything you need to know about design thinking and leading creative work. As one little example, which illustrates "Failure Sucks But Instructs," note that they had 60 different drafts of an especially crucial scene. Also, as an illustration that creative people and companies have a kind of "storehouse" of rejected ideas that they keep trying to apply to new problems (sort of like a bin of old parts), listen to the example of Lotso, a character who was invented but discarded for an earlier film but who worked great in Toy Story 3 (See Andy Hargadon's book if you really want to dig into this perspective).
I could go on and on, but this post is about the new phrase I learned at Pixar. I was speaking at an internal event, which was meant to help people at Pixar get to know each other better (I am going to omit names so I don't break any confidences). Before my talk, there was a hilarous interview with a Pixar insider, and one of the best parts was when she was asked her favorite swear word. She mentioned a traditional one, but then added her new favorite was "shit show." As with the rest of the group, I was quite taken with it. Of course, shit show is already in the Urban Dictionary. There are 13 definitions, but I like the most popular best:
A description of an event or situation which is characterized by an ridiculously inordinate amount of frenetic activity. Disorganization and chaos to an absurd degree. Often associated with extreme ineptitude/incompetence and or sudden and unexpected failure. Similar: fiasco clusterfuck
"The picnic turned into a real shit show because that bozo decided to throw rocks at that hornet's nest."
As I joked to the audience, while I have resisted doing a sequel to The No Asshole Rule, I am a bit tempted to do a book called The No Shit Show Rule!
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