Michelle Grady of Sony Pictures Imageworks and Janet Lewin of ILM on Bad Bosses and Changing Studio Culture: "Culture Is What You Tolerate"

TURIN, Italy – Michelle Grady, President of Sony Pictures Imageworks, said: "Culture is what you tolerate." "You work, you put a lot of energy into building it, you model it, you encourage people to understand what it is, and then, you know, some […]

Skydance Animation's Holly Edwards, Pixar's Dylan Sisson, and Guerrilla Games' Jan-Bart van Beek also discussed coaching and why new talent's chances of growing are shrinking at the Turin View conference.

TURIN, Italy - "Culture is something you put up with," said Michele Grady, president of Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Grady joined ILM Senior Vice President, General Manager and President Janet Levine, Skydance Animation's Holly Edwards, Hayley Edwards, Pixar's Creative Inc. at the Turin Insights Conference on Leadership and Mentoring: Educating the Next Generation of Leaders, moderated by St. John Walker of the University of Hertfordshire. Studio director Jan-Bart van Beek and Canadian National Film Board Eloi Champagne discuss the changing expectations of studio leadership and the challenges of talent development. Popular in Variety

In response to an audience member's question about "anti-coaches," Grady acknowledged that difficult experiences can provide valuable lessons.

"We've all probably had very difficult bosses at some point in our lives," he said. "You understand what you want in a boss and what you don't really appreciate in a boss."

Levine agreed that companies should be judicious about the leaders they appoint and the behavior they accept.

"Our job as leaders of a company is to create the culture and display the values that we want to see in other leaders of the organization," he said.

At ILM, this means coaching, mentoring and intervening when managers run into trouble, rather than simply hoping that problems will resolve themselves.

But studio culture is also changing as expectations among younger employees change.

"This business used to be top-down," Grady said. "It didn't work well at the time, but democratic participatory leadership is the way. This is a better way."

"I think this generation wants to have a voice," he added.

Levine described ILM's employee forums, town halls, and open-door policies designed to give executives access to perspectives that might otherwise be filtered through layers of management.

"A good idea can come from anywhere," he said, citing ILM veteran John Noll. But collaboration has its limits: "Encouraging participation and hearing different perspectives is great, but someone has to make decisions."

Leadership also means making painful decisions. When asked about his toughest career decision, Levin pointed to the closing of ILM's Singapore studio, which ILM announced in August 2023, and which employed more than 300 people. He said it was a business decision made with others about staying cost competitive.

“It had nothing to do with the talent that was in the studio. "They were doing an incredible job."

Levin went to Singapore to meet with the staff. "It was heartbreaking," he said, adding that ILM retained about 60 percent of its talent by moving to other locations.

The industry also needs to rethink how it prepares people for leadership in the first place.

For decades, studios routinely promoted exceptional artists to management without providing adequate training, Grady said.

"We take them out of the box and make them leaders and just send them to the chair and let them figure it out for themselves."

"What was really interesting is that it's a two-way street," Levin said. Getting the younger generation involved has been very beneficial for me and ILM because it's a different perspective and a different point of view.

Sisson said he never really had a coach. "When I was a kid, Pixar didn't exist," he says, so his generation pretty much figured things out as they went along. Pixar has since created a mentorship program in its RenderMan Challenge, which it says has "helped change people's careers."

Edwards, who began his career as a production assistant, recalls learning from a producer on several films, absorbing lessons about the leader he wanted to become and the behaviors he wanted to avoid.

Champagne described a turning point in the NFB. Frustrated with the way things were being run, he wrote a manifesto listing what needed to change and gave it to his boss - "potentially putting my job at risk", he said. "From that point on, the response was, 'Okay, now you're going to be part of the decision, and you're going to help us fix those things.' So sometimes complaining can pay off."

Van Beek said it's getting harder to find opportunities to develop emerging talent, especially in video games.

"Maybe you can't gamble on talent anymore," he said. He pointed to Pixar's animated shorts as a model that allows new directors to gain experience in smaller productions with less commercial risk.

Two members of the generation the panel was discussing shared the stage with the executives. ILM concept artist Emily Bland and concept artist Isobel Hein each founded organizations to address the lack of representation and guidance in their field. Bland's Women in Concept Art connects young artists with professionals. The Hein Women's Conceptual Art Society offers studio-style training through the Studio Jam program and includes artists at every career stage, from students on up, to its core team.

Both urged studios to push younger employees, especially women, into leadership positions sooner. "We tend to pick ourselves if we don't put every single point in the T criteria," Hein said.

"I think our role as leaders is to kind of help bring the next generation down the ladder," he added.