Bard Comes to the Boardroom

Ken Adelman prepares his audience--a roomful of middle-aged managers in the motorcycle industry, many wearing riding boots and a few dressed in leather--and promptly cues the video clip of “Henry V.”

The executives, squeezed in a hotel banquet room in Costa Mesa, are transported back some 500 years and listen carefully as Henry rallies his fatigued, outnumbered and desperate army into taking on the French at the Battle of Agincourt. By the time he is finished, the young king’s soldiers are not only committed to fight, they are certain they will win, and members of the Motorcycle Industry Council are wondering how they can make the stemwinder work for them.

They quickly list critical elements of the fabled speech: the king’s passion, his willingness to fight alongside his troops, his ability to make them see victory in the future.

“This is the perfect example of how you can boost morale and motivate workers to embrace your company’s vision,” said Adelman, an English professor who with his wife, Carol, a former Reagan administration official, have helped build a movement of businesses and academics using Shakespeare in management. “If we look closely at Henry’s speech, we can learn from his techniques and his language of leadership.”

He goes on to quote: “And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.”

“He’s telling them they are part of something big,” Adelman said. “He even convinces them that they don’t need to wait for more manpower because then they would just have to share the glory when they win.”

Drawing lessons from the bard may be the latest approach in polishing management skills. Companies are increasingly using offbeat training such as the Adelmans’ Movers & Shakespeares to motivate employees and introduce them to a learning environment that, unlike traditional lectures, they are likely to remember.

The Adelmans of Arlington, Va., latched on to the idea three years ago, when they held a workshop for public relations executives on “lying and truth-telling” and drew the audience into the presentation by having them “act out” the works of Shakespeare. The response was so overwhelmingly positive, the couple said, that they decided to do what King Henry V would have done: They took a chance.

“It’s much safer to get Colin Powell as a speaker at your corporate training sessions than it is to put your employees on the stage in fussy costumes,” said Ken Adelman, a Shakespeare buff who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. “We knew it was a risk, but we also knew we wanted to really go for it.”

For $10,000 to $20,000 a session, companies as varied as AT&T;, Ocean Spray and Northrop Grumman have hired the Adelmans to bring the bard into the boardroom.

The concept has inspired others to consider Shakespeare as a corporate consultant. A handful of books have been published about the author’s monarchs and their connection to the modern workplace. And several universities, including Columbia University’s master of business administration program, have launched classes solely on management strategy using Shakespeare.

Richard Olivier, son of the late actor Sir Laurence Olivier, also has focused on Shakespearean drama at the Cranfield School of Management in London, where he is a visiting fellow. Olivier is also the director of the Globe Theatre in London.

“Shakespeare has great lessons for managers who must lead amid continuous change,” Olivier said in Fast Company magazine. “People have to be more imaginative and more flexible than ever before, and ways of learning need to become more creative as well. That’s where arts-based learning comes in.”

Such lessons are given to students in the MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School each semester, when they are visited by the Adelmans and the Movers & Shakespeares workshop. Management professor Michael Useem said the Shakespeare theme is effective because of its fresh approach to a tired lesson and the way it draws in the audience on an emotional and intellectual level.

“I get so many guests who can’t relate to these tough-minded students, but [the Adelmans] have an animated, energetic style that’s impossible to ignore,” Useem said. “And the message has tremendous staying power. Shakespeare’s work translates directly into what happens in the corporate battleground today.”

To imagine how his students will benefit from the Adelmans’ program, Useem looks into the future: They are working for a company that is about to acquire a smaller one. As top managers, they are responsible for integrating this new work force into the existing one. How will they motivate these employees--many of whom may not want to be there--to trust their new company and support its goals and mission? How will they get the new workers to do what they want them to do?

“They’ll think about leadership and motivation,” Useem said. “And I suspect more than a few of these students will think about [King] Henry.”

For the last few years, the Adelmans, both 54, have traveled around the country with costumes and scripts, hired by companies to lead executives through the works of Shakespeare and apply them to their jobs. Interest is picking up, with the couple giving 14 presentations in the last two months. “Shakespeare had the best insight into human nature, more than any man alive,” said Carol Adelman, whose background includes theatrical management and heading the $3-billion Agency for International Development under former President Reagan.

Ken Adelman, who teaches at George Washington University, recently published “Shakespeare in Charge” (Talk Miramax Books) with the former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, one of many companies to add Movers & Shakespeares. Northrop now brings the Adelmans to various management seminars nine times a year.

The Center for Ethical Business Cultures brought the Adelmans to their Minneapolis offices last month for the first time, and Lisa Dercks, vice president of ethics, said the 200 or so participants “were pleasantly surprised and energized.”

“It was effective because much of the themes on ethics and responsibility applies directly to what we do,” said Dercks, noting that CEBC helps roughly 80 member companies develop business plans and promote productive workplace cultures. “No one can feel personally attacked by anything William Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago, so it was a safe way to address important issues and still get people talking.”

She added: “Plus I got to wear a hoop skirt for the first time in my life.”

By the end of last week’s Motorcycle Industry Council seminar in Orange County, more than 100 executives and managers were spewing 400-year-old literary passages as masterfully as they ride the road. And despite early doubts about “Bikers and the Bard,” many executives said they found a new appreciation for Shakespeare--and would remember Henry V’s management skills the next time they need to conquer a problem.

The motorcycle group engaged in a lively debate over Henry’s decision to hang a soldier who stole a pewter vase from a church in France despite the king’s order that they not resort to such crime.

“That speaks directly to the importance of being a decisive leader,” said Gary R. Christopher, senior manager of American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance. “You have to be swift in dealing with problems and firm in your beliefs.”

Said Ken Adelman, to a ripple of laughter: “It’s also the ultimate example of zero-tolerance.”

The final performance by six executives, all of whom wore costumes and acted out snippets of Shakespeare’s greatest works, had them quoting the scribe on a variety of business theories.

* On morale, the message came from “Taming of the Shrew”: “No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.”

* On mergers, it was “Pericles”: “The great ones eat up the little ones.”

* On training employees, it was “The Merchant of Venice”: “I could easier teach 20 what were good to be done, than to follow mine own advice!”

“It’s all about human relations,” said Bob Moffit, a vice president of Kawasaki Motor Corp. in Irvine, who donned a royal purple robe and gem-studded crown in a finale performance for other executives. “Shakespeare was the master in that field. It’s amazing to see how much his words apply to everything we do in the workplace today.”

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Much Ado About Bill

Could Henry V inspire today’s working troops? One management consultant group uses prose from Shakespeare’s leaders to help managers hone their leadership skills.

On mergers and acquisitions:

“The great ones eat up the little ones.”

--”Pericles”

On corporate downsizing:

“Superfluous branches we lop away that bearing boughs

may live!”

--”Richard II”

On critiquing/stroking employees:

“My lord, the truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

and time to speak it in. You rub the sore, when

you should bring the plaster.”

--”The Tempest”

On having fun in the workplace:

“No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.”

--”The Taming of the Shrew”

Source: “Movers and Shakespeares”