Pixar (btw, I enjoyed Toy Story 3) has an exceptional track record for making great animated movies. (Ed Catmull, the studio's president & co-founder, recently wrote an article for HBR called, "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity.") They don't have access — at least yet — to details of the particular decisions made at Pixar, though some must have been difficult: for example, the decision to make the film Up about a 78-year elderly man who loses his spouse & rides his balloon-floated house to South America.
How did Pixar make that & other lovely decisions? There appear to be several factors going on:
Its managers give its directors plenty of autonomy. The studio prides itself on being "director led" & gives them a high degree of autonomy. "Managers like to be in control," but Pixar fights it, according to an interview with Catmull at an event The Economist put on in March.
Although directors have autonomy, they get feedback from others. "Dailies," or movies in progress, are shown for feedback to the whole animation crew. In The Economist interview, Catmull also describes a more extensive periodic peer review system:
They have a structure so they get their feedback from their peers. \. Every five or three months they present the film to the other filmmakers...and they will go through, & they will tear the film apart. Directors are not forced to answer the feedback, but they usually do — & the films are usually better for it.
Pixar makes use of a system for "postmortems" on the major aspects of movies after they are done. Ed Catmull described it as "like taking cod liver oil," but the company insists on it anyway. In the coursework of the postmortems, the team involved in the film is asked to come up with three things they'd do again & three things they would not do again. Postmortems not only surface the information but also help to prevent the issues from festering among team members. Catmull comments that because people are beginning to game that postmortem system, Pixar is thinking of alternative approaches.
Pixar admits mistakes in other ways. Sometimes, when a film project is not going well, Pixar will "restart" it. Toy Story 2, for example, wasn't going well & had to be restarted. Catmull points to that restart as a catalyst for the articulation of several key values at the company.
Pixar has an extensive schooling program at Pixar University, with over 110 different courses. That is got to improve organizational judgment. & even there, employees are encouraged to make & admit mistakes. Randy Nelson, the director of Pixar University, says, in the book Mavericks at Work: "It's the heart of our model...giving people opportunities to fail together & to recover from mistakes together."
Clearly, Pixar tries to improve creative decisions through multiple means. Individuals still have an important role, but their individual judgment is enhanced by organizational judgment.