Make Art Make Money: Lessons From Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career (43 page)

Junior: Wow, you must be the boss around here.

Wembley: Me? No, Fraggles don’t have any bosses.

Junior: You mean you don’t have somebody like my daddy who
tells you what to do?

Wembley: No, we each lead ourselves, and we all lead each
other.
^[154]

The Fraggles then sing a song explaining, “You can never ever
ever … be the boss of someone else. You just gotta be the boss—of just y
ourself
.”
^[155]

This somewhat subversive song seems to say,
Lead by
example
. When Henson—the boss—came to
Fraggle Rock
to direct or
puppeteer, Terry Angus said the mood didn’t turn serious:

We were still just a bunch of clowns, basically, and
Jim was the biggest clown of all. He kept the atmosphere so light that nobody
knew the boss was there anyway. Very rarely were we conscious of, “Okay, the
boss is here. Maybe we ought to be a bit better.” He was just one of us.
^[156]

In a hierarchy where pecking order is important, there is
much competition and aggression, but in Henson’s business, much of that could
be channeled into the work itself. “Upstaging” was a common practice that was
encouraged
on set, where one character would steal the show, even if he was not supposed
to be the star. And it is likely much of Henson’s own egotism was channeled
into various haughty characters, such as the Mayor of Waterville, Link
Hogthrob, the Vanguard of the Poohbahs, or the Ritual Master Skeksis. Henson delighted
in this kind of role:

I was doing the ritual master, who’s sort of a high
priest, very pompous, arrogant. And I enjoyed that. I think there’s probably a
part of me that’s that way, and it so that sort of comes out while you’re doing
it.
^[157]

With his most pompous self coming
out
on screen,
Henson was able to enjoy the thrill of power while his true self could afford
to be a bit more humble.

Finch noted the odd function of Henson’s office during
the making of
The Muppet Show
:

Here too is a small refrigerator stocked with soft
drinks, beer and cider. Unrefrigerated bottles of soda water and cider are
stored in crates.…[T]his is Jim Henson’s office, but you will not often
find him in it.…[H]owever, it is used by just about everybody else.…Jerry Juhl making amendations to a freshly typed script; an Italian interviewer
watching tapes; Dave Goelz, during a break, fetching himself a tonic water from
the refrigerator.
^[158]

If you can walk into your boss’s office, open a refrigerator,
and have a beer, that beer in a sense kills convention, and the conventional
idea
of a boss. Henson did this again when he told a reporter he hired a boss. If
you can hire and fire your boss, are they really a boss at all? Henson’s
business seemed more like a family, where dominance is replaced with teaching,
training the employees to become their own bosses.

A case in point is Bonnie Erickson, who notes:

I joined Jim as a free-lance costume designer
for
The Frog Prince
in 1970.…Jim cleverly gave me a
place to work at the brilliant and mischievous Donald Sahlin’s worktable.…Don also became a mentor, sharing tricks and techniques.…At the same
time I was learning about business from Jim.…[O]nce we completed that
first year of
The Muppet Show
I felt I could leave.…[I]t
was time for me to establish a business.…When I told Jim I was leaving he
said, “Well, I know this is what you need to do. And we’re not going to lose
touch.” Luckily, we never did. Jim became one of our first clients, hiring me
for productions like
Fraggle Rock
,
Bunny Picnic
,
Christmas
Toy
and to consult on licensed product for
Sesame Street
where
I was a Creative Director for fourteen years.
^[159]

Henson didn’t seem worried that his designer was leaving or
would somehow compete with him. He
wanted
Erickson to be her own boss.
Knowing what it was like for himself as an artist to own a company seems to
have made him want that same freedom for her.

Maybe superficially, the “hierarchy” shifted
when Erickson started her own company. She went from employee to contractor.
Henson went from boss to client. Yet these titles don’t seem to matter as much
as the more essential relationship—between collaborators. As two artists
working together, the
status
of it all would only get in the way.

HOW TO
BECOME A RADICAL ENABLER

The first step to becoming a good boss is to throw off all
bosses, if not literally—by starting a business—then emotionally, as much as
you can, by thinking of yourself as the only boss of
yourself
. What can
you do to encourage more independence in yourself and others? Henson was lucky
that the WTOP network
didn’t
check in on him at
Sam and Friends
.
But in later scenarios, he negotiated for total creative control. Whenever it
is possible to get control of your project, fight for it. Start by acting as
though you already have it. As the saying goes, it is better to ask for
forgiveness than permission.

When you
are
the boss, you control
everything. Yet many bosses still don’t
feel
in control, and in their
insecurity they exert excessive control over others. If you are the boss, trust
yourself. Banish fear from your thoughts through meditation, and use meditative
activities that help you to understand what Henson said:

You’re not the victim, but instead you’re the one
who’s doing it.…[Y]ou are the person who ha[s] control of your life.
^[160]

When you have watched your emotions on television as much as
Henson had, you surely have a greater awareness of them and how they affect
others. Don’t stigmatize your faults or failures—the ways you negatively affect
others. Instead, look at what you’re doing
well
, and then try again. By
carefully observing your emotions and trying to do better, you can more fully
create
the world you want.

Your leadership needs to start with you. Like
the participants in the show
Undercover Boss
, Henson knew exactly how
difficult his employees had it, because even while he ran the company, he also
performed at the bottom rung—the puppeteer. In the filming of
The Muppets
Take Manhattan
, he was at the mercy of director Frank Oz, who could be
demanding. Even if you don’t have experience doing what your workers do, you
need to find a way to learn about it. By asking your employees to teach you
what they do, you not only empower them, but you can better conduct them like
Henson, the “great appreciator.”

Try not to rank your collaborators, even it
comes from generosity. Henson was mistaken to dole out bonuses of different
amounts in 1990,
^[161]
but years earlier, he had a much better idea. According to Jim Hill, under
Henson, “the Muppeteers received royalties from all merchandise sold relating
to their characters.”
^[162]
Giving an artist a share of the profits for the characters they create is the
best way to be generous, because it doesn’t create a static ranking. With
profit-sharing, the reward you give can grow infinitely over time. It is
surprising that Disney did not think it necessary to continue giving Muppet
performers this kind of Henson-like generosity. 

It would be naïve to think Jim Henson was a
perfect
boss. Brian Jay Jones’s biography chronicles many of the problems that Henson
Associates faced in the late 1980s when Henson hired management consultants to
“look at the structure of the organization” and identify “holes in the chain of
command.”
^[163]
When Henson was spread too thin in what I call his “producerman” years, it
seemed like the best way out was to become a small company again—by selling his
merchandizing department to Disney. While I don’t think “organization” experts would
have helped Henson, I do agree that Henson’s unique center-out model works best
when it is kept to a manageable size. In the next chapter, we will take a
closer look at what an artist can learn from these troubled years.

The Henson Company’s chaotic structure may have
exacerbated his problems in the late 1980s, but at the same time, it was this
same anarchic style that made the company possible in the first place, and that
anarchy allowed the company to entertain over a hundred nations in 1981. As a
boss, Henson was best suited to lead smaller groups, where innovation and
creativity thrive. For most artists, this is exactly where we want to be
anyway, not at the helm of a corporate behemoth. Henson may not have been the
perfect boss, but for many artists struggling today, his methods seem pretty
attractive and pretty rare.

While it is possible to find bosses like this
today, it might be better still to
be
a boss like this. It is hard to
change a calcified business model. It is hard enough to change another person. The
easiest person to change is yourself, and that is easiest to do when you are
your own boss. Jim Henson’s spirit was decidedly entrepreneurial. The inner
calm that he brought to his leadership stemmed from a fundamental
satisfaction
with the amount of control he had over his life.

If we are the ones in control of our lives, it
becomes only natural to be other-directed, since our own plans, once achieved,
start to bore us. Being surprised by the talents of others is the antidote to
boredom. The way to encourage others to surprise you is to work with them—not
above or below them, but with them—and to try to have
fun
doing it. And
most importantly, exercise your appreciation of others.

Point out what someone has done really
well
.
Let that be the next thing you do. If there’s no one around you right now, then
be a
good boss
and heap some well-earned praise on your best employee—yourself.
What are you doing really well? Let that feeling of accomplishment inspire you.