Chapter 4: Herding Cats
Excerpt from The Visionary and the Vizier, Jim Henson and Frank Wells at Disney, by Derek N. Dedominos, MBA.
The go-to description of Jim Henson as a creative leader has been to call him the “eye of a creative hurricane”. The secondary go-to description of Henson is as a “champion wrangler of cats.” These are useful shorthand descriptions, but they represent only the tip of the iceberg that is Henson’s managerial style.
Looking back over his creative career, the words that emerge are “emotional intelligence”, or the ability to interpret and react constructively to another person’s mental and emotional state. Time and time again Henson demonstrated his ability as a leader to listen to others and understand their needs and wants with empathy and compassion. And despite what many type-A leaders would assume, this is a critical managerial skill, particularly in the emotionally-driven entertainment industry. He has shown an ability to discuss projects with others in an open and non-confrontational manner, keeping egos in check and minimizing the likelihood of conflict. Over the years he developed tools for managing and resolving conflict where he once worked studiously to avoid it (the product of his time at Disney where interpersonal conflict was unavoidable). And he demonstrated an ability to gain buy-in with his employees, even his most creative and egocentric ones, by showing that he has heard them and understands them. He fostered a sense of teamwork while leaving room for individual creative visions. And he did so in ways so subtle that Henson often got his way in a disagreement while the other person walked away thinking that the final plan was their idea all along!
And when it became necessary to turn people down or reject an idea, he did so in an empathetic and constructive way, often with a simple well-placed grunt, that encouraged the person to accept the disappointment and to come back another time with an even better idea. He also encouraged folks to experiment, and if an employee went their own way to try something different, and if that employee’s way worked, Henson not only let it slide but thanked the employee for their insight.
“You can’t stay mad at him,” said animator Brad Bird in 1989. “You can’t even get mad at him most days! He has this genteel way of smiling and showing genuine interest in your ideas. He has a knack for digging through the details and finding the ones that worked and artfully letting you know which ones do not. You’ll walk in with a clear idea of what you want to happen, have a few words and inevitably a few laughs, and then walk out with a different clear idea, suddenly wondering what happened!”
I certainly doubt that I will shock any of my readers when I say that creative people can be stubborn, arrogant, and confrontational. It’s typically a combination of a big ego with a fragile sense of self-worth, which makes someone arrogant enough to assume that they’re a creative genius while simultaneously subconsciously terrified that they’re a fraud. Compounding this is the fact that many entertainment executives have the exact same pathologies (large but fragile egos), but have entirely conflicting goals compared to the artist. Where the creative artist wants the creative freedom and resources to enact their “singular vision”, the studio execs want things done as quickly, cheaply, and as mass-market as possible. This creates the eternal conflict between the creative artist and the profit-minded executive that is at the heart of nearly every creative dispute in Hollywood. And when such conflicts come to a head, particularly when big, fragile egos are involved, the results get stormy.
Henson, however, managed to avoid this cycle of confrontation. Rather than argue over points with the creative artist, he’ll put himself in their shoes, which as a long-running creative person himself was like second nature to him. He’ll listen more than he’d talk, and gather all of the facts. Only then did he determine what the needs of the creative artist were, and then align them to his overall creative strategy and to the fiscal needs and strategic vision of the Disney company.
“It’s like Aikido Management,” said Imagineer and designer Joe Rhode, a frequent collaborator, in a interview. “He talks with you about creative projects and he listens and he asks questions, and soon you’re answering his questions and getting new ideas and the two of you brainstorm something together that not only captures what you wanted to accomplish, but [accomplishes] other things that you hadn’t thought about until that very moment! It’s only days later that you realize that the other stuff was his ideas all along. If he hadn’t been so willing to let you bring your vision to life, and if you weren’t having so damned much fun with it all, then you’d almost feel manipulated!”
One instructive example of this management in action involves his longstanding relationship with writer, producer, director, and animator Terry Gilliam. Gilliam has a reputation in Hollywood as “difficult to work with”. He demands big budgets and then endeavors to spend what he originally asked for regardless of what he actually received, as if to prove a point. He demands creative control over the final cuts and makes his dissatisfaction with “studio cuts” well known in the press. He pushes back against any perceived management interference. And as a result, most studios loathe to work with him. Disney Studios under Jim Henson was the major exception. Henson and Gilliam had what the latter called “a creative understanding.” Gilliam was given a lot of free creative reign up front, and when Henson picked his battles with Gilliam, he did so in an understated way, approaching it as a “creative collaboration” rather than a boss-employee relationship.
On budgetary issues, rather than just give Gilliam the typical executive blanket statement of “you have this much, figure it out,” he worked up front and during production with Gilliam to balance creative need with the budget allocated by COO Frank Wells, who was himself happy to play the “bad guy” in the arrangement. Henson would then collaborate directly or through dedicated creative agents with Gilliam and the effects and cinematography team, coming up with creative ways to accomplish Gilliam’s “vision” within Wells’ budget constraints.
But most of all, he listened to Gilliam, allowing him to express his wants and frustrations without showing frustration or impatience himself, and then worked with him to plot a course. This not only let Gilliam know that his creative vision was appreciated, but that Henson and the rest of the creative leadership will willingly work with him to see it through. Thus, when irreconcilable conflicts did arise, they could be negotiated from a position of solidarity and not come preloaded with the stress and antagonism of past conflict, thus making the possibility for finding a mutually beneficial solution for the impasse far more likely.
Employees and collaborators have expressed their love for working with Jim Henson. Henson “made the work fun,” as many employees described it. The productive hours at the Disney studios improved significantly over where they’d been in the 1970s. Henson also encouraged individual creativity in his employees, encouraging them to develop, nurture, and share their unique creative artistry and pursue their own creative projects, even if they were for other studios. This resulted in a strong sense of loyalty that avoided long running feuds.
“Jim always makes you want to be more than what you currently are,” said longtime collaborator Frank Oz. “He not only recognized my desire to direct and gave me the encouragement and opportunity to do so, but he helped me to see my own limitations, particularly in dealing with other people, and did so in constructive ways that let me grow and excel as an artist. I had some opportunities with other studios and I took them, but I always come back to Jim and Disney.”
Henson also demonstrated an eye for talent and a talent for connecting talented people together, from seeing the potential of Frank Oz in Star Wars to his recognition of Tim Burton’s dark genius. He found ways to pair up mutually-reinforcing talent, such as linking Burton and Brian Froud together for The Black Cauldron. And showed an ability to find teams that can work together and avoid the type of ego clashes all too common in the creative arts.
Henson’s reputation for “being good with talent” became well known within the industry and creative artists that might have thought twice about working for Disney, whose reputation with talent had been frankly rather poor prior to Henson’s ascension, clamored for a chance to work with them.
“I doubt I ever would have worked with Disney if it hadn’t been for Jim,” said director and producer Steven Spielberg. “To be honest, in the early ‘80s following E.T. when I was thinking about expanding further children’s entertainment, I saw them as a potential rival. And then Lisa [Henson] guilted me into becoming a White Knight [in the 1984 ACC hostile takeover attempt]. Suddenly I’m a shareholder and an Associate Director! I’d never worked with Jim but knew many like George [Lucas] who had, and they always had great things to say. And they were right: he’s a sweet and engaging man, full of brilliant ideas and a childlike enthusiasm. We’d spend hours talking over ideas and things we’d like to see, like dinosaurs, and the ideas would just flow. Suddenly instead of Disney being the rivals, they were the go-to partners!”
“The biggest problem with Jim,” said then Disney Animation Vice President Roy Disney in a 1987 interview, “Is that there’s only one of him. He can’t be everywhere at once no matter how hard that he tries.”
Such stories became common, and Henson’s reputation reflected positively in the share price. Chairman, President, and COO Frank Wells began to openly advertise Henson’s contributions to the press and investors as a sign that the company was on as good of a creative footing as it was a fiscal one, highlighting their partnership that balanced the fiscal and creative forces and their mutual respect for one another. The Disney stock price continued its steep climb through the 1980s and proved less volatile than other creative stocks during the period.
“Disney is a solid investment,” Warren Buffet told the Wall Street Journal in 1989, “Despite the inherent volatility of the entertainment industry, Disney’s diversified mix of media, merchandise, and physical parks and hotels, each integrated in mutually-supporting ways, helps smooth out the peaks and valleys and creates a reliable long-term growth stock. Disney’s solid creative arm is continually coming up with good and marketable IP. If a single major project sputters, there will be three more to take its place.”
And it’s that last statement that is the true testament to Henson’s contribution as The Visionary to Wells’ Vizier. There’s a “culture of creativity” in place that keeps so many innovative projects in work on the big screen, small screen, and in the parks that the creative risk is defrayed.
This “diversified creative portfolio” did as much to position Disney for the future as Frank Wells’ solid fiscal and managerial plans. And creative managers across the entertainment industry and others would do well to pay attention to the Henson style of management, and by extension pay attention to the wants and needs of their creative employees.
