What Pixar’s ‘UP’ Can Teach Your SLT About Strategic Discipline

• Learn the powerful principle from Pixar's UP and how it applies directly to capital allocation decisions.
• Uncover a 5-minute strategic discipline litmus test any SLT can run using documents they already have.

There is a golden rule in storytelling called "show, don't tell" and it applies as much to business as it does to life.

One of my favorite examples is the Pixar movie Up. In just four minutes, it communicates the entire emotional arc of a 50-year marriage without a single line of dialogue.

The film shows their shifting reality through the physical objects in their lives: the recurring breaking of the piggy bank signals life's constant interruptions, while the transition from a brightly painted nursery to a silent, darkened doctor's office wordlessly conveys the tragedy of infertility. By the time the sequence ends with Carl sitting alone in a silent, empty house, the audience doesn't just know of his grief, they viscerally share in it.

Imagine if instead a narrator had stated "Carl was a very devoted husband and he and Ellie had happy times and sad times until she died". Would you have been anywhere near as invested in Carl's journey to Paradise Falls?

Follow The Money

In business, we do a lot of "telling." We write strategy decks, paint mission statements on meeting rooms walls, and make lofty claims in job ads. But these are just words.

It's my belief that one of the CFO's most important jobs in business is to hold a mirror up to the Board and the SLT and do the "showing."

What we say reveals what we want to be true. Where we allocate our spend reveals our true priorities.

The 5 Minute Strategic Discipline Litmus Test:

1. Open last year's strategy document. List your top 3 strategic priorities.

2. Open your CapEx and OpEx reports. List your 5 largest capital allocations from the last 12 months.

If the two aren't aligned, you have a capital allocation issue and you are at risk of building a business that repeatedly raids the piggy bank to pay for the day-to-day while your dream destination stays permanently out of reach.

What did this quick exercise reveal for you?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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