On working well together...at DreamWorks Studios

This weekend WSJ Magazine has an insightful article on how Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider lead and manage a the highly successful and creative DreamWorks Studios. Leaders of cretaive groups will enjoy how they view each other and hence work well together.

"If you took our names off of our schedules, you would think that we were VPs of production," says Snider on a recent cool, gray day in Los Angeles. "Reading the scripts, taking story meetings, looking at the location-scout materials—there's just not a lot of hierarchy at the company. We're all production execs."

I can count on one hand the people I felt I had a creative brotherhood or sisterhood with. Stacey is one of those people. We do most everything together. There are no bosses here. We worry every thing to death and we hope everything to life.

...there are five guys in baseball hats and jeans. There was no indication in the seating, nor was there any indication in the flow of conversation, of hierarchy. And yet it is there in the room all the time. It doesn't intimidate because of his manner. What it does do is prompt you to rise to his standard so that if he asks your opinion, you are as thoughtful as you can be. And that's thrilling.