Perspectives

The summer movie season has opened in earnest. I have a 9-year old nephew visiting from Japan, so I get to watch a lot of kiddy movies (of course, that’s the excuse I’ll use when I waltz into the theater this week-end’s opening of Despicable Me.)

I do admit that I’m a movie fan (perhaps not a buff, since I don’t know all the details of who won what in which year). And I’m most definitely a fan of any film with a Pixar logo attached to it.

This summer’s Pixar blockbuster is Toy Story 3, the three-quel to the original Toy Story. Now, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were not my favorite Pixar movies. I’d rate Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and last year’s UP! ahead, but this year’s Toy Story 3 shows why once again, Pixar always makes films that are relevant.

Toy Story 3 happens in a world where Andy is grown, ready to go to college, and must get rid of his old toys. He needs to make choices (sound familiar?) of which toy to keep, which ones to throw away, and which ones to give to charity. He makes a decision, but unfortunately, this is not executed properly (this sounds more and more like BP), and his toys all end up in a day care center.

Initially, the day care center seems like a dream world for the forsaken toys—children will play with them once again.. they will feel useful, again (sounds like workers who got outsourced, but then found a home at the outsourcing agency). But then, the toys face the stark reality that these children don’t love them, they just want to play with them, and rough (think strikes at Chinese factories).

And even in this world of spent toys, there’s a dark leader (Darth Vader in a Pink Bear costume), who just like the Star Wars version, was turned dark by circumstances beyond his control. The fearless leader, Woody (Tom Hanks’ voice), who is motivated to act by watching a little girl interact with and truly play with her toys (with love), performs feats of Xtra-Toy proportions to save the day.

But then, at the end, just as Andy’s Mom has to watch her son go, Andy also learns that true love is by letting his toys go, giving away even his fav… Woody to the little girl who teaches him that sometimes, the boss has to let his people grow up on their own.

Without focusing on the bad meaning of “letting go” (how did HR people come up with that one?), the movie was truly about the process of letting someone go. Andy’s Mom seeing her child grow up and going to college. Andy, seeing that his toys were needed more, not by him as a nostalgic momento, but by a little girl who would give Woody as much love as he did. And Wood and Buzz and all the toys, knowing that they had to let go of Andy and grow out of his wings so that they can find their own world, so that they can make other children happy, knowing full well that they had done their jobs.

Now, if that’s not how a boss and employee relationship should be like, I don’t know where you can find a better example.

In the book Innovating The Pixar Way, Ed Catmull, Pixar’s founder, thinks back of how he had lost his energy to do anything after the completion of the first Toy Story. His life work had been completed, and nothing more challenged him. But in the subsequent years, as he saw the Pixar creative talent battle with the corporate side of the business, he realized that he had a much more important mission—to create an environment where the next Toy Story can be made, over and over again.

That was how Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 came about. It was about American ingenuity, grit, hard work, talent, and persistence. It was about a bunch of people who got together and wanted to tell great stories. It was about co-workers who truly cared about each other, who openly critiqued each other’s work (and sought such critiquing), and who dared to do the simplest and hardest thing in Corporate America—being honest to each other.

Through that process, Ed created a company where “letting go” meant patting someone on the shoulder not to say, “I’m sorry, you’re gone,” but to praise, “Great Job. Now go out and make it on your own!”

Joseph Lee is an adjunct professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management and Peter Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, where he teaches a course on management consulting. He also teaches MBA courses in Business Communication and Negotiation/Conflict Resolution at Chuo University’s Graduate School of Strategic Management. Joseph provides Leadership Communication training to global Japanese companies.