Apart from his boundless energy, there were specific elements in the way he organised his creative work force that tended to guarantee creative outcomes. When working on the early full length cartoons that made his name - Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia, he used a revolutionary approach to keeping his staff co-ordinated in their thinking on a particular project.
He moved the ideas round three rooms, each room had a different function:
Room 1 The place were dreams were dreamed, ideas were spun out, no restrictions, no limits - just every sort of outrageous creative hunch or idea was freely developed
Room 2 Here the dreams from Room 1 were co-ordinated and the story board created as events and characters fitted into sequence. (The idea of the story board - now ubiquitous - was a Disney invention)
Room 3 The "sweat box" - a small room under the stairs where the whole crew would critically review the project to date with no holds barred. The process was safe because it was the project not a particular individual that was being criticised.
Then the idea would return to Room 1 to allow for the work on the project to continue. The cycle always involved the three rooms. The outcome was that either an idea did not survive Room 3 and was abandoned, or it met with silence in Room 3, which indicated it was ready for production.
Robert Dilts studied Disney and distilled from his creativity this version of the Disney Strategy, which is a useful tool for practical creativity, either for individuals or groups.
Strategy This involves three distinct states :
Dreamer Realist Critic
- the person for whom all things are possible - the person who sorts things out - the person who picks up on the bits that don't fit
The Walt Disney Strategy
The participant activates all three roles, in the indicated sequence. The three stages require distinct approaches:
Dreamer “Want to”
Why are you doing this? What is the purpose? What are the payoffs? How will you know you have them? Where do you want to be in the future? Who do you want to be or be like? What range of topics do you want to consider? What elements of those topics do you want to explore?
Realist “How to” Establish time frames and milestones for progress with evidence and test procedures What will I be doing? How specifically will the idea be implemented? How will I know if the goal has been achieved? Who besides me is involved (time constraints)? When will each phase be implemented? When will the overall goal be completed? Where will each phase be carried out?
Critic “Chance to” How do all the elements fit together? What elements appear unbalanced? What parts do not fit with the overall objective of the project? What parts of the project are underdeveloped? How possible is this within the time frame? Why is each step necessary?
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