BRAINTRUST

Believe you can come up with a perfect idea at the first attempt? If you do, I’m here to say ‘Stop! Don’t waste your time.’ You may have colleagues, or even superiors, who think you can find that perfect idea just by sitting at your desk and making the right inspiration appear. But if they do, they’ve put their trust in a myth.  The idea that brilliance strikes like lightning and solves everything in one go? It’s an illusion. 

Toy Story

Even the most accomplished creators start with ideas that are, frankly, bad. A fact noted by Edwin Catmull, former president of Pixar, when he once said, ‘All our movies start out as bad movies.’

Take Toy Story — that beloved, groundbreaking film. It wasn’t born a masterpiece. It went through many, many, many script revisions before the makers were satisfied. Take the two main characters: they seem so right that you can’t imagine they could have been anything else. Yet Woody started out as a ventriloquist’s dummy, and the name Buzz Lightyear only emerged after the character had first been called Tinny, then Lunar Larry, then Tempus. The magic of Pixar isn’t that they find perfect ideas. It’s that they’ve built a system to transform bad ideas into great ones.

The power of the Braintrust

At the heart of Pixar’s creative strength is a culture of feedback that’s been dubbed the Braintrust. When the studio’s working on a new project, job titles don’t matter. There’s no hierarchy. There’s only a single shared objective: to make the work better. And the rules are simple:

• Speak up honestly — no sugar-coating.
• Leave your ego at the door — pride blocks growth.
• The hardest feedback often holds the key to greatness.

And what makes this kind of culture possible? Psychological safety.

The fearless organisation

Think about the times you’ve held back from expressing an idea because you were afraid. You were probably thinking:

• What if I ruin the mood?
• What if they reject me?

If you stay silent, you’re not doing your organisation any favours. Research by Amy Edmondson, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, shows that hospitals with high psychological safety — where people feel safe to share their views regardless of hierarchy or role — actually report more failures. This might sound contradictory, but it’s not because they fail more; it’s because they hide less.

For Professor Edmondson, this is the hallmark of a Fearless Organization. It’s how the organisation learns, improves, and thrives. A strong organisation isn’t one that avoids failure — it’s one that grows because of it. So don’t aim to be a company that never fails. Aim to be one that learns from failure.

Build your own Braintrust

So how can you create a Pixar-like environment where honest feedback fuels creativity? Focus on three essentials:

1. A shared purpose
   In a hospital, it’s about patients. In a company, it’s about customers. When a team aligns itself around a higher goal, then personal agendas and egos take a back seat — and real dialogue begins.

1. Psychological safety
   People contribute their best ideas when they know they won’t be punished for mistakes or rejected for bold thinking. Safety fuels openness.

1. People who nurture ideas
   You don’t need to bring in a separate team of ‘idea machines’. Use the people you already have. People who will:

• Ask the questions that spark new thinking
• Challenge assumptions and open up new perspectives
• Build on the ideas of others to take them further.

Get these essentials right, and your own version of the Braintrust will start working its magic.

Boost the power of feedback

Finally, one last tip. If you want to make the most of your feedback sessions, try adding a moderator. And remember that their job isn’t to solve the problem. It’s to work with the team, and focus their work. It’s to:

• Frame challenges as thoughtful questions
• Redirect negative comments toward constructive paths
• Connect ideas and deepen the conversation.

You’ll be surprised at how this single role can transform the quality of your team’s discussions.

Embrace failure

In short: stop fearing bad ideas. Embrace them as the raw material of greatness.  Because in the end, the teams that win aren’t the ones that avoid missteps — they’re the ones that know how to shape each and every one of those missteps into masterpieces.