I wish to share with you part of the presentation given to all students at the Welcome Back assemblies last week. In addressing students, I told them a story about the company, PIXAR.

PIXAR can be thought to be a machine that creates hit after hit; and on the surface that appears to be accurate with 17 feature films since 1995 receiving 13 Academy Awards. It has generated some of the most important cultural touchstones of our generation.

The journey of how PIXAR was established and evolved is interesting. The founder, Ed Catmull, grew up idolising Albert Einstein and Walt Disney and his ambition was to create a small studio aimed at fusing computers and film making. For many of the early years, PIXAR struggled as the movies they made had main characters that were not likeable, and story lines that fell flat. This all changed in 1995 with the breakthrough movie Toy Story. The challenge for Ed Catmull and his team was how do they maintain this success?

Ed’s response? The people that worked for PIXAR needed to understand that success is built on the right choices members of the team would make and that Resilience, Resourcefulness and Respect are essential traits that should be integral to how the team functions.

All creative puzzles are a cognitive puzzle of thousands of choices, thousands of potential ideas and the realisation that you never get it right straight away. The team (and individuals working within the team), need to build purpose within the group in order to generate new ideas and unearth the right choices. If you give people the right supports and tools to make the hard choices, they can navigate the journey towards positive outcomes. If you bring people together in safe environments with high expectations for success and positive behaviours, there is movement towards better solutions.

St Bernard’s College is like the PIXAR of Essendon. I invited students to think of their peers, family, and teachers as the creative team who will work with them this year to generate ideas towards the right choices leading to better outcomes. This is what the Japanese call Kaizen – The art of continual improvement.