John proceeded to deliver the most heartfelt and emotional speech I had ever heard him give. He started by talking about candor, and how we spend a lot of time at Pixar talking about its importance. But candor is hard, both to deliver and to receive. He knew this firsthand, he said, because in preparation for Notes Day, the organizers had shared something else that had come in to the electronic suggestion box: A fair amount of feedback had focused on John himself, and not all of it was positive. In particular, people were upset that— because he was now splitting his time between two studios— they were seeing less of him. The bottom line was that they missed him, but they also felt that there were ways that John could better handle the inordinate pressure he was under.
John admitted that this hurt; still, he wanted to hear all of the specific criticisms. “So they prepared a list,” he said. “I thought it would be a page. Instead, I got two- and- a- half pages.” Among the things he learned: John was so tightly scheduled, and meetings with him were so precious, that people tended to overprepare to see him, which served no one. In fact, John said, “there were a lot of notes about my time management, and how I carry the emotion of one meeting into the next, making some people ask, ‘Why is he upset at us?’ I didn’t know I was doing any of this, and those two- and- a- half pages were really tough to read. But it was so valuable for me to hear, and I’m already working to correct those things.”
