The Human Element

We take for granted how the physical elements of our environment affect us. Sunlight is an easy example. It is key to producing serotonin, which fights off depression, and melatonin, which affects our circadian sleep-wake cycle. Something as simple as a window will elevate your work space, your mood, your livelihood. The paint color on your wall can also improve your mood, influencing your productivity. A window is a good investment; a change of paint is good therapy.

But people aren’t like paint. We can’t simply change out a person to improve our mood. Our interconnectedness with others—the relatedness that we talked about in Accelerator, chapter 3—is what makes our ecosystem work.

Florence Knoll Bassett is a case study. For two decades, Florence was the driving creative force behind Knoll Associates, a New York City design firm that produces office systems, files and storage, seating, tables, and desks.

Born Florence Schust in 1917, an only child, her father was an immigrant engineer and baker who died when she was five.¹ Her mother died when Florence was twelve. But her mother had the foresight to designate family friend Emil Tessin as Florence’s legal guardian.² Tessin took Florence on a driving tour of the Upper Midwest of the United States to explore boarding schools she could attend. At the Kingswood School for Girls in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Florence saw “home.” The beauty of the building and the design of its interior spaces spoke to her, and it was populated with like-minded young ladies interested in the arts and gifted instructors. It was a promising place for Florence to pursue her education and develop her talents.

Emil Tessin was a foundational element in Florence’s early ecosystem. Tessin encouraged young Florence to investigate schools for herself, and he gave her the autonomy to make her own choice. Choosing Kingswood School wasn’t blind luck. It was the result of launch point exploration resulting in an astute choice.

Kingswood was a recent addition to the Cranbrook Academy of Art, one of the top art, architecture, and design institutions in the United States. It was led by, and designed by, Eliel Saarinen, a giant in the Arts and Crafts movement and an influential twentieth-century architect.

Florence’s profound interest in architecture and design began to unfurl in Kingswood’s beautiful spaces. Saarinen took notice. He and his wife, Loja, became informal parents to the orphaned girl. Their children, Pipsan and Eero (the latter became a famed architect himself), befriended her. They took her on summer holidays. They spent leisure time at the family home in Helsinki; she was immersed in the art, architecture, and culture of Europe. Eliel and Eero Saarinen became permanent fixtures in Florence’s personal and professional ecosystems, and she did in theirs. With the Saarinens’ patronage, Florence secured opportunities to study with several of the great architects of the day: Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.³

Nineteenth-century American sculptor Harriet Hosmer said, “The great thing in every profession … is to get a good ‘start,’ then all is right. I never read the life of any artist who did not date the rising of their lucky star from the hand of some beneficent friend or patron.”⁴ The Saarinens were critical contributors to Florence’s early ecosystem. In 1941, at twenty-four, Florence Schust took her stellar credentials and ecosystem relationships to New York City, bent on becoming an architect.

Virtuous (Not Vicious) Growth Cycles

More on Florence soon, but first notice how all the stories in this book play out against the backdrop of an ecosystem. Some people, like Florence Knoll Bassett, despite being an early orphan, are lucky to land in a pond rich with resources, with plenty of carrying capacity. For others, like Astrid Tuminez from Iloilo City, resources are limited. Their rhizome may be anchored in the mud of an impoverished puddle of a slum. Even with abundant ability and determination, Astrid Tuminez couldn’t grow on her own. No one can. It’s not just artists who need beneficent friends and patrons. Tuminez needed her overburdened teenage sister and nuns, among others. “No person in this world is self-made,” she said to me. “It’s a delusion.”

That’s why we are talking about ecosystems as our final chapter. We’ll start with what we need from our ecosystem to grow, depending on where we are on our current S Curve (we have talked about how to grow our people at the end of each major section). We’ll then consider the ecosystems that made the S Curve stories in this book possible. We will discuss not what we are getting from our ecosystem, but rather what we are giving to it.

In talking about how we learn, leap, and repeat, there has been an implicit assumption that these are virtuous growth cycles. In our case studies, the interactions of various elements in the ecosystem lead to growth for all participants in the ecosystem. But not all ponds are like that. A stagnant pond can become covered with surface scum and algae, sometimes toxic algae that can kill animals (and humans) who drink the water. The algae become food for bacteria that use up the available oxygen, causing the fish and aquatic insects to die. A vicious cycle of decay sets in. Cancer is another example of a vicious growth cycle, where malfunctioning malignant cells proliferate, preventing benign cells from normal growth, while also excreting toxic chemicals that damage or kill body tissues. Human ecosystems can have toxic elements as well, usually in the form of people who poison the work or living environment with their bad conduct, pursuing their own growth at the expense of others.

By talking about and acknowledging those who make it possible for us to grow, and the importance of helping others grow, I’m making it explicit that this book is about virtuous, not vicious, growth cycles. Not dumb, but smart growth.

In New York, the adult Florence had options. But not as many as we might think, at least not initially. Despite her education, experience, and powerful network, the larger ecosystem wasn’t particularly hospitable to women’s achievement. In 1941 America, women weren’t architects. They weren’t designers. At best they were decorators, and rarely professional ones. “I am not a decorator,” became Florence’s refrain. I suspect that the economic and employment conditions created by World War II helped her get her foot in the door at a design firm. Women seeking a professional opportunity suddenly found openings—temporarily. After the war, she’d have likely struggled to stay on at a firm if she hadn’t fortuitously met Hans Knoll.

Hans Knoll wandered into Florence’s firm, looking for customers. He was a recent immigrant to the United States, and founder of Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company. Florence had the autonomy to choose who she worked for, and soon she was working for Hans. They became collaborators, then business partners. They reinvented themselves, combining Hans’s furniture with Florence’s cutting-edge interior design, and rebranded the business as Knoll Associates. In 1946, they married.

Though details of their story are scarce, it’s clear Hans recognized and promoted Florence’s gifts. He seemed to understand the value of the ecosystem in a real way. His somewhat unusual decision (at the time) to let his wife have an equal seat at the table, sometimes taking a back seat to her, was the critical part of the ecosystem that made Florence’s superlative artistic contributions possible. Wise decisions about whom we work for, work with, and partner with in our professional and personal lives help us create an ecosystem where all participants can grow.

Writing in Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says, “I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.”⁵ A good choice of life partner doesn’t matter just for women. Warren Buffett makes the case as well, for all of us: “You want to associate with people who are the kind of person you’d like to be. You’ll move in that direction. And the most important person by far in that respect is your spouse. I can’t overemphasize how important that is.”⁶

Florence and Hans were a dynamic partnership. One of Florence’s lasting innovations was the Knoll Planning Unit. KPU’s holistic design approach has become standard in the industry, where teams work to harmonize all aspects of a building’s design rather than making ad hoc changes. Spatial organization, furniture style and arrangement, lighting, fabrics, and colors are all integrated according to the designer’s overarching scheme. KPU came close to fulfilling Florence’s vision of human-friendly “total design.”⁷

Tragically, Hans Knoll died in a car accident in 1955, just nine years after they married. He was forty-one. Eero Saarinen eulogized him, first commending Hans’s contribution to the world of interior design, then adding, “[Hans] dealt with each employee in a personal, human way. To designers he gave generously of his own creative imagination, encouraging them to undertake new and better things. He always freely gave credit to his designers, yet he—who played a big part in their work—never took any credit himself. The generosity, the enthusiasm, the inspiration and the concern for human beings … will long be remembered.”⁸ Hans Knoll cultivated an environment where his employees could grow. As they grew, so did the business.

After Hans’s death, Florence took the helm as president until she sold the company in 1960. In 1961, she became the first woman to receive the Gold Medal for Industrial Design from the American Institute of Architects. Knoll Associates was a leading design house globally, speeding along in the sweet spot. But perhaps Florence was at the top of her S Curve. After marrying Harry Hood Bassett, she relocated to Miami, becoming part of a new ecosystem, and cutting daily ties with the design community of Knoll Associates (some of whom, including her beloved friend Eero Saarinen, had passed away). She sought freedom to focus entirely upon her métier, architecture and design. Today, her work for Knoll is displayed in museums and treasured in private collections. After leaving Knoll, for the rest of her long and productive life—she passed away in 2019, at the age of 101—Florence would quietly work on projects for personal clients only.

Who and What We Need Changes

At the launch point of an S Curve, we can’t depend on serendipitous events or the right people magically appearing. We may get lucky, but it’s just as likely we will have to fashion our own luck through strategy. When we can choose the elements in our ecosystem, particularly the human ones, we should. Purposefully ask, “Who and what will help me grow?” and “Who can I invest in? How can I help others grow?”

Researchers Karen Fingerman and Melinda Blau compare our networks of people to a convoy on the move, “A handful of people travel alongside you for miles. The peripheral people, neither family nor close friends, your consequential strangers, are often there for a particular segment of the trip and tend to serve specific needs.” Our ability to bring people into the convoy is critical to our S Curve journey. Likewise, learning to be a meaningful fellow traveler in the convoys of others is an intrinsic factor in smart growth. “Our convoys,” they conclude, “represent our history and our potential.”⁹

Change is inevitable and necessary in an ecosystem. Those contributing to our growth as an Explorer may lose their utility or become unavailable as we become an Accelerator. People important to us at the Collector stage may not be present at the Metamorph stage. We need different types of relationships at different stages on our curve. On the launch point, we need support: teachers, trainers, and truth tellers to help us explore and collect data to determine whether we should continue on a particular curve. People like Florence’s mother, or Emil Tessin, and benefactors like the Saarinens, who were the foundation of Florence’s early life. We need guides to urge us on, to keep our spirits up when progress is slow, to pick us up if we fall down, or if a curve becomes unworkable.

In the sweet spot, we need focus. We need people to honor our growing need for autonomy, coaching us as we gain in competence and stature—Hans Knoll. The best advisers will also raise the red flag when necessary, not because they’re obstructive, but because they care enough when our need for speed (and a possible lack of focus) could lead to a crash.

In the mastery phase, we need people who can celebrate with us as we drop anchor on our new self (a role Harry Hood Bassett, Florence’s second husband, hopefully played in her ecosystem as she won awards that Hans didn’t live to see). We also need people who will give us a nudge to move on, to demand more of ourselves—–people who help us pick the next mountain and start the climb.

The Person behind Your S Curve

In my podcast interviews, I’ve noticed again and again how guests credit teachers with creating ecosystems where people thrive and can pursue smart growth lives.

Remember Mike Rowe, the originator of Dirty Jobs from Explorer, chapter 1? Rowe would never have ventured into the sewer, would never have stood in front of a camera, if it were not for a teacher. He said, “I had a music teacher in high school named Mr. King, who took me metaphorically by the scruff of the neck and changed the trajectory of my thinking.” King was an ex-boxer. “A force of nature,” in Rowe’s words. But hiding under his prickly exterior was a smart growth leader who cared about giving young Explorers the guidance they needed to launch and to thrive.

One of the things that surprised me most was learning that Rowe—future host of thousands of hours of TV programming—had a stutter. Rowe said, “When [King] realized that, he assigned me a solo in a song because you don’t stutter when you sing.”¹⁰

Then Fred King pushed him to audition for a school play. “This was impossible,” Rowe observed, “I had a stammer, I was kind of shy. I had no interest in being on stage. But he demanded it, and I trusted him. This is one of those moments that I look back on and think, ‘Oh, that was important.’ He reoriented me. He got me to ask, ‘What if I were a seventeen-year-old kid who isn’t afraid to sing?’ ”

Without Fred King, there might be no Dirty Jobs—no Mike Rowe, the charismatic Explorer extraordinaire of reality TV. Rowe changed the entertainment ecosystem because King changed the ecosystem of a small high school in Anywhere, USA. King’s tough-love encouragement brought Rowe out of his shell. He changed Rowe’s life. And in some ways, Rowe has changed the world.

Teachers, parents, coaches, colleagues, partners, and managers can all be (or not) smart growth leaders.

What if, for example, Mikaila Ulmer’s parents had said, “just stay away from bees,” after she was stung twice in a week? A perfectly normal response! But Ulmer’s parents were focused. They took the time to teach their daughter about the ecosystem of insects; a multimillion-dollar company followed.

What if Maria Merian’s stepfather had said, “Caterpillars are disgusting. Stick to the cleaning. Women don’t paint.”

What if Zaza Pachulia’s first NBA coaches—Doc Rivers with the Orlando Magic, Jason Kidd with the Milwaukee Bucks—had benched a rookie immigrant with a substandard vertical jump? Instead, like smart growth leaders in any industry, they spotted his potential, trained, and encouraged him. Zaza was an integral part of a Golden State Warriors team that won two NBA championships.

Jason Licht didn’t tell Michelle McKenna that it was impossible to conduct the entire 2020 NFL draft online. He said it would be hard. He said the time frame was brutal. But he trusted McKenna, the NFL’s CIO, and she trusted him. They leveraged their resources through the type of human-to-human connection that precipitates breakthroughs. They created a subsystem never seen before: the virtual draft.

Emily Orton didn’t say “get a real job” when her husband, Erik, recently laid off, proposed they pack up the kids and go to sea. Erik wasn’t born a sailor. He was a graphic designer with a queasy stomach. This wasn’t Emily’s dream (initially), but Emily was present, so present that when the family literally found themselves in the same boat, Emily navigated a ten-month trek from the Caribbean to New York City, a challenge even for experienced sailors.

Shellye Archambeau’s boss at IBM didn’t say, “Traditional Asian culture is patriarchal. You’re too young and inexperienced. You haven’t got a prayer working in Japan.” Instead, he pointed out the quality that could help Archambeau conquer the challenge: her intelligence. The future general manager of IBM Asia’s public-sector services—the future CEO of MetricStream—started her climb with a solid, yet caring push.

What if Hans Knoll hadn’t been willing to cede the spotlight at a time when women rarely played leading roles in companies? By recognizing his wife’s potential, Knoll collaborated with her to create a groundbreaking design firm in which Florence’s genius could flourish.

Remember Harry Kraemer, whom we met at the beginning of this book? Kraemer gave many an employee the solid-yet-caring push when he was CEO at Baxter International. But first, Kraemer got the push himself, from his own ecosystem-minded CEO.

Back when he was first working for Baxter—a young analyst with just a few months on the job—Kraemer’s manager charged him with valuing Baxter’s proposed acquisition of another company. How much was the target company worth? How much should they offer?¹¹

The target company was worth $50 million, Kraemer reckoned. He drafted his report. “I turned it in to my boss [Jerry] who said, ‘Harry, that’s fantastic. You did a great job.’ ”

Feeling gratified (and curious), Kraemer asked Jerry if he knew how much Baxter was going to offer for the company. “Jerry said, ‘We’re gonna pay $100 million.…’ Now I was a little confused.” Jerry had just told Harry he’d done a good job. So, who was making the $100 million call?

Jerry’s answer: “Those guys.”

“Who are ‘those guys’?” Kraemer was persistent. His boss recited the org chart. The division president must have made the call. And if not, then the CFO. And if not the CFO, then the CEO, Vernon R. Loucks, must have made it.

“What if I happen to run into him?” Kraemer ventured.

“Harry, it’s done,” Jerry replied.

The odds of junior analyst Harry Kraemer running into Loucks were slim, right? Kraemer shares, “What [Jerry] didn’t realize … is that when the CEO was in town … at 7:00 every morning he’d go into the cafeteria to grab a grapefruit. So, the next morning, quarter to seven, I’m sort of hanging around the grapefruit.”

Loucks showed up. Kraemer pounced. You can probably guess what he wanted to talk about. Kraemer introduced himself. He steered the small talk toward the valuation. Loucks wanted to know what his obscure analyst thought about the offer.

“I said, ‘It’s a nice company, but I’m having a hard time coming up with it being worth more than $50 million.’ ”

Loucks was intrigued. Whom did Harry work for, he wanted to know. Harry worked for Jerry. “Grab Jerry,” Loucks ordered. “Come on up to my office at 11 o’clock. We can talk about it.”

Harry, Jerry, and Vernon talked about it. Baxter revised its offer. Kraemer felt gratified again, to have his intelligence taken seriously by a seriously intelligent CEO. Then Loucks gave Harry a push: “Make sure you challenge [the boss]. Whatever role you’re in. You’ve got to ask questions. Challenge them.”

It was a teaching moment Kraemer never forgot. Don’t reflexively accept the decision of your so-called superior. Trust your own judgment and assert it. Loucks meant to foster an ecosystem where smart employees didn’t get shut down. He wanted an ecosystem where valuable information didn’t get overlooked, whatever the employee’s role might be. Because Kraemer questioned his leaders, a company saved $50 million, and a future CEO was nudged up the curve.

Stocking the Pond

How do we ensure we are part of a virtuous growth cycle, not a vicious one? Consider Redfish Lake, high in the Sawtooth Mountain range in Idaho. This pristine lake is home to the remarkable Idaho sockeye salmon.¹² As young fish, they travel a thousand miles to reach the Pacific Ocean, farther than any other North American salmon travel. There, the Idaho sockeye roam the Pacific for one to three years, feeding, gaining weight, and growing fast. Then, in midsummer, the fish start the thousand-mile journey back to their ancestral spawning ground. They swim back into the mountains, defying predators, defying obstacles, defying the dizzying 6,500-foot ascent up rivers and fast-moving mountain streams. Arriving back at Redfish Lake, the female sockeye will lay her eggs, often in the very same patch of lake-bed gravel where her life began.

Unlike many types of Atlantic salmon, Pacific salmon stop feeding once their homeward trek begins. Female sockeye will lose about 30 percent of their body weight by the time they reach natal waters—if they reach them at all.¹³ Ragged, exhausted, fins disintegrating, the female lays her eggs in the gravel, covers them with her tail, and dies.

Most female sockeye die en route to the ocean or on the trip home. But whether they ultimately lay eggs or not, every sockeye contributes to its ecosystem. Predators such as bears gorge on the sudden glut of fish, storing up fat to survive the winter. The salmon’s decaying bodies release a surge of nutrients into the comparatively sterile mountain water. In dying, the salmon make life possible for their own offspring (called fry) who feed on their remains. Dead salmon supply nutrients to Redfish Lake’s animals and plants.

Idaho sockeye salmon are an example of what is known as a keystone species, meaning they influence the survival, or reproduction, of other species. Redfish Lake cannot thrive without the sockeye salmon, nor can the salmon survive without the resources in their ecosystem: open streams, spawning grounds, food for offspring.¹⁴

Water lilies are a keystone species in their ecosystem. The pond and its environs cannot survive without the lilies. Tadpoles find food and shelter in the lilies’ shade. Tadpoles morph into frogs. Frogs sunbathe on the convenient lily pads. Snakes hunt frogs—and the cycle goes on.

This interdependence characterizes smart growth companies as well, companies that see themselves as an ecosystem with interdependent human elements, rather than disparate objects operating in isolation from one another, each tasked with its own exclusive routine. Apple understands this principle. Steve Jobs’s genius lay in organizing the world’s fifth largest corporation as if it were a small startup, where managers must cooperate laterally to overcome disagreements and stalemates. Managers don’t get to operate in a bubble. None of Apple’s divisional senior vice presidents (SVPs), for example, will oversee an Apple product start to finish. SVPs from different divisions must work together. Business sociologists Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen write that “the many horizontal dependencies mean that ineffective peer relationships … have the potential to undermine not only particular projects but the entire company. One bad apple really can spoil the bunch. Consequently, for people to attain and remain in a leadership position within a function, they must be highly effective collaborators.”¹⁵ In other words, succeeding in a top job at Apple requires cooperating—not competing—with peers and contributing to the ecosystem.

Keystone Species: You

I cannot underscore this truth enough: We are responsible for making our own life decisions. But we achieve very little by ourselves. There will always be people who help make us—whoever we become—possible. And, in my experience, the last person we think to thank is quite possibly the person who has helped us the most, the person we have taken most for granted as a constant—our water, our sunlight.

Just as you cannot grow without others, there are people who cannot grow without you. There are people for whom you are the keystone species. Are you contributing to a vicious or a virtuous growth cycle? Do you claim more than your share of resources—time, patience, energy, support—leaving a barren ecosystem for your fellow humans? Or are you generously contributing to the ecosystem? Are you a force for positive growth? The health of your ecosystem depends not only on what you get, but on what you give.

Joe DiSpenza, the New York Times–bestselling author who studies the neuroscience of change, reminds us, “Don’t work on the relationship. Work on yourself, and the relationship [ecosystem] takes care of itself.”¹⁶ By “work on yourself,” DiSpenza does not mean work exclusively in your own self-interest.

Let’s look at the case of Erik Bursch, who in 2017 was a talented cloud-computing vice president at media and marketing giant Gannett Co., parent company of USA Today. Bursch led several critical tech and engineering teams in Gannett’s technology division. He was advanced in his career. His teams were winning. But he felt that stagnant, I-could-do-this-job-in-my-sleep feeling we’ve encountered before. He’d maxed out his potential for learning and growth on his current S Curve and was bored and looking for a fresh challenge.

Getting a job at a different company would have been simple. His skills were in high demand. But Gannett felt like a friendly ecosystem to him; it felt like home. A good Explorer, he was looking for something with a substantial degree of familiarity but enough novelty to challenge him. His job was more than just a paycheck to him. Bursch wanted to help others grow as much as he wanted to grow himself.

He reached out to Jason Jedlinski, who was Gannett’s SVP of consumer products at the time (today he has a similar role at the Wall Street Journal). Bursch proposed they combine their engineering teams. Internal mergers of this sort can generate a lot of counterproductive resentment and infighting, poisoning the ecosystem. But Jedlinski says that Bursch not only brought the best of his software development expertise to product development, he was also smart in his approach to people. Jedlinski said, “[He] helped everyone level up in a way that wasn’t arrogant; he didn’t come in saying, “You’re going to do it my way.’ He took time to understand where his colleagues were in their growth.” When leaders learn, their teams learn with them. “More than two dozen employees from this team were eventually promoted and we maintained one of the lowest attrition rates in the company,” Jedlinski told me.

I asked Jedlinski how he created situations where growth happens, especially in a sensitive situation where divergent ecosystems are involved?

His answer: “First, help people understand how to successfully integrate.” Bursch was already rooted in Gannett’s ecosystem when he suggested they join forces, but company cultures have subcultures. The new team needed smart leadership and time to integrate. “Work to avoid cultural tissue rejection,” Jedlinski told me. “Don’t give pat advice [to incoming leaders], but specific, actionable intelligence. Second, respect the skills, experience, and insights [that Explorers like Bursch] bring to the table.” For his part, Bursch says that it was mutual respect and shared goals that led to a series of platform and technical architecture innovations. He says, “It came from listening to our team, who organically came up with these ideas, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars while creating new strategic capabilities for the company.”

In 2019, the GateHouse Media conglomerate acquired Gannett. In the aftermath of the acquisition, the team’s innovative work saved scores of jobs when GateHouse selected Gannett’s proprietary platform (some of the new strategic capabilities Bursch refers to) to power apps and websites for more than five hundred newspapers in forty-nine states. “[W]e were able to make a persuasive business case for our systems and our people,” Jedlinski told me. Bursch was integral to that success. His smart growth leadership of the recently combined teams fostered collaboration rather than competition and resentment, stocking a pond where all could flourish. Jedlinski grew Bursch, Bursch grew their team members, and the team grew first Gannett and then GateHouse. These small, people-to-people ecosystems generate results far beyond their seemingly modest size.

There’s a common cliché in corporate speak: People are a company’s greatest asset. Not so fast, says Scott Miller. Miller is the former chief marketing officer at FranklinCovey, and the host of On Leadership, the world’s largest leadership podcast. “It’s the relationships between people that are a company’s most valuable asset,” says Miller. “You can copy everything: patents, logos, technology, supply chain, board of directors. What you cannot copy is how well people work together, how [they] defuse conflict, how they forgive each other, how skillsets complement deficiencies. People don’t quit their jobs; they quit their bosses, they quit their cultures. They don’t quit leaders who love them.”¹⁷

Who needs you to be a smart growth parent, partner, coach, teacher, colleague, or manager?

Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, created an ecosystem almost as famous as the studio’s computer-animated films. He describes having basically stumbled into people management when he was seeking an opportunity to incorporate technology tools in movies. Essentially, he’s a scientist. But Catmull was fascinated by fostering connection and cooperation between people, and studying how to build high-performing teams. This captured his imagination as much as emerging technologies did. Just as he aspired to give filmmakers technology tools, Catmull gave Pixar team members the psychological tools they needed to do great work. He focused on hiring skilled people who wanted to grow, but were hungry for an opportunity, rather than experts. He checked references, but didn’t put new hires on probation. He instilled confidence by expressing confidence that they were equal to their responsibilities.

Catmull leads by believing people are worthy of his trust. He knows that trusting people fuels reciprocity—they trust him back, and it’s natural to follow a leader we trust. On many occasions at Pixar, he says, he would share confidential things with individuals, and yet there was never a leak of sensitive information.

In the Pixar ecosystem under his leadership, employees felt connected to each other, unified in a common cause. They knew that their work mattered; but, even more, they mattered as human beings. That belief was forged during what Catmull describes as the “defining moment for the character of Pixar.” Well along in the process of making Toy Story II, someone made a critical mistake, something as simple as pushing the wrong button. Backup procedures were inadequate, or perhaps weren’t followed. It wasn’t a technology failure; it was operator error. Perhaps several mistakes were made, and 90 percent of Toy Story II was lost. Thousands of hours of work were gone, except for what could be retrieved from the personal computer of an employee who’d been working from home on maternity leave.

Stunningly, there was no witch hunt for the responsible parties and culpability was never determined. “Accountability is something that we need to have, but it shouldn’t be used as a weapon against people,” he says. “And it often is.” Catmull’s message to his employees was that in Pixar’s high character ecosystem, people were safe in making mistakes, and setbacks were expected. The work mattered, but his people mattered more. Perhaps because it renders so beautifully what we need from our ecosystem when we jump to a new S Curve, one of my favorite Pixar quotes is from the character Anton Ego, the food critic from one of Pixar’s wonderful movies, Ratatouille. Ego could destroy restaurants with a single bad review and often delighted in doing so. Everyone feared him; no chef or maître d’ wanted to see him at their door. Late in the film, a reformed Ego says,

The work of a critic is easy. We risk little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and themselves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. The bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. They need new friends.

It’s not surprising that when I asked Catmull to approve the above excerpt for this book, he said to me, “Brad Bird (who also directed The Incredibles) gave voice to Anton Ego. These are his words. Is there a way to credit him?”¹⁸ Like Hans Knoll before him, Catmull wants to give credit wherever and whenever possible.¹⁹ Clayton Christensen once said, “If done well, management is the noblest of professions.” Ed Catmull is a noble practitioner of the craft. He is a Creator of friendly environments, not a critic of people. Catmull helps others be smart about their growth.

Enriching the Ecosystem

In 1943, as World War II raged, the British House of Commons debated an important matter: architectural style.

During the Blitz earlier in the war, the Commons Chamber had been seriously damaged. Rebuilding it was a given, but hot debate centered on whether to do so in the old style. Some members wanted to change the “adversarial rectangular pattern” to the form of a semicircle or horseshoe design seen in some other legislative buildings, which was felt to foster a more cooperative spirit. Prime Minister Winston Churchill came down hard on the side of keeping the old design. Churchill insisted (a bit hyperbolically) that the shape of the old chamber was “responsible for the two-party system,” which is the essence of British parliamentary democracy, famously claiming, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”²⁰

I suspect Florence Knoll Bassett would have opposed Churchill’s rebuild of the Commons Chamber on the old adversarial pattern. But she understood his point that a building is its own ecosystem; the form of the building informs the outlook of the people working in it. Perhaps when she sat down to create, she wanted us to feel something of what she had felt when she first saw the Kingswood School for Girls, a—twelve-year-old orphan alone in the world, walking through the front doors of a new home.

The connections between people are at least as critical to our growth as the relationships of roofline to wall to windows to floor are to the form and function of a building. We can work to design the human ecosystem purposefully and beautifully, so that it will inspire those who live and work in it. We can shape it to shape us. David Whyte, the Irish-English poet who you met in Metamorph (chapter 4), said that our legacy is embodied in what we leave behind, the “shape of our own absence.”²¹

Like the water in the pond, or oxygen, or the sun (or even the snake), we all have a part to play in our ecosystem. We pull resources from our ecosystem to nourish ourselves. But our greatest legacy will be how we draw from our stores to help others grow. We must balance our take with our give, not depriving others, not poisoning the system. We must add sunshine. We must encourage young stems to grow.

As you join the convoys of your fellow S Curve travelers—some for a day, a few forever—what will you leave behind when you depart?

What will be the shape of your absence?

Ecosystem Takeaways

The S Curve of Learning sits within an ecosystem. This final chapter considers your place within the ecosystem where your growth happens. Our human tendency toward competition and independence hides the fact that our growth is entwined with the resources and relationships that surround and support us. The rate of growth and success you experience will flow directly from the wise cultivation of relationships and practical resources (for example, technology, tools) that comprise your ecosystem.

Relationships. Many of the important relationships in your life spring from environments you cannot choose, such as the family into which you were born or the friends you met in your first schools. As you become an autonomous adult, actively cultivate long-term relationships that can help you succeed along the S Curve. We—all of us—live, work, and grow in relation to other elements that can be purposefully organized.

What we need depends on where we are on the curve. Your ecosystem needs to provide different levels of support at different stages of the S Curve. You need support on the launch point: teachers, trainers, and mentors. In the sweet spot you need help to focus. You are going fast and feeling confident, but you still need people who are focused on you and can raise the red flag if your speed could lead to a crash. In the mastery stage, you need people who can celebrate with you and then give you a nudge to keep climbing.

Keystone species—you. Just as you cannot grow without others, there are people who cannot grow without you. You are their keystone species. Ask, “Am I contributing to a virtuous or a vicious growth cycle? Do I claim more than my share of resources—time, patience, energy, support—leaving a barren ecosystem for my fellow humans? Or am I generously contributing to this ecosystem? A force for positive growth?” The ecosystem you cultivate is about what you get and give.

As you travel the S Curve of life, your greatest legacy will be how you help others grow.