A healthy creative culture requires the open sharing of ideas, which itself requires candor. Pixar uses a braintrust to embrace candor. Still, people are prone to block candor, and instead return to fear, intimidation, retaliation—the braintrust is intended to address that squarely and protect the compact of collaborative meetings.
Braintrust's working groups only requirement is a knack for storytelling and a demand for candor. At first, every idea, every film sucks, and it is the team's job to make a project not suck. A creative idea has to start somewhere and through bracing, candid feedback and iteration, a product finds it's meaning and form.
Why a braintrust? Because people get lost in complicated projects. How do you get leaders to address problems they cannot see? How do you see what a person sees only in their head? How do you address what will technically work and what won't? Finding such clarity takes patience and candor.
How does this process work? First, it's important to hear each other's ideas and understand that everyone has a vested interest in one another's success. Once a project and lead has been identified, they will at some point be blinded to problems of complexity. The braintrust is the counsel that offers feedback—it is on them to address that feedback. The counsel surfaces causes of the problems without demanding specific remedies.
This is a challenging process and braintrusts are structures to minimize personal pains—it is the product under the microscope and the lead should not identify too closely with the idea. The counsel are a set of trusted advisors, but it is the lead who decides on the wisest course. Distilling the observations of a braintrust into digestable takeaways always helps.
Every company can draft a braintrust into service around people who exhibit a mix of intelligence, insight and grace. The requirements for a braintrust are that they make you think smarter and put lots of solutions on the table quickly. Fundamentally, you don't want a company that shows more candor in the hallways than at meetings.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-the-pixar-braintrust