The Bard’s Business Advice

Not of an age but of all time

Not of an age but for all time

Later today I’m going to be interviewed, along with my son Darien, by Boomer Alley Radio.  As producer Sharon Glassman described it to me, this is “a weekly hour-long show of upbeat, useful information that airs on the CBS news affiliate in LA, across Colorado and nationally via podcast.” Finding a post I had written about Shakespeare and business, Sharon contacted me about doing a segment on the subject. I mentioned I have a son who has a marketing company so now the plan is for the two of us to be interviewed jointly.

I’ll report on the experience tomorrow, but I’m going to use today’s post to sort out some of my ideas.

No one, to borrow Shakespeare’s own description of what makes a great playwright, has held the mirror up to nature as well the man from Stratford. By providing us with a vast array of memorable male and female characters, putting them in a wide variety of situations, and having them speak words that have never been surpassed, he has entered into the fiber of our being. Thus, when we need resources or perspectives to handle a challenge–including a business challenge–Shakespeare is there to guide us. The better we know him, the more effective we can expect to be.

Here’s an example. In Julius Caesar Brutus famously says to Cassius as they debate whether to fight now or later, “There is a tide in the affairs of men,/ Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Any owner of a business contemplating an expansion asks him or herself whether now is the right time. After all, waiting may mean missing a precious opportunity: “Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”


Okay, so maybe one’s entire future does not usually hang on a single decision. But as I’ve watched Darien and his wife Betsy make choices in their two-year-old business—when to hire their first full-time employee, when to move their business out of their small Manhattan apartment into official office space, when to pick up this client and drop that one—I think about those lines. It’s more than just citing the truism, “Strike while the iron is hot.” Invoking Shakespeare’s lines brings legendary Roman figures to mind. The drama feels big, and because it has grandeur and urgency, it provides extra incentive to sail out on that tide. Those invoking the line may feel an extra surge of courage as they move into the future. And by the way, Brutus wins that first battle.

Some people believe that America’s greatness lies in the risk-taking of its small business entrepreneurs. If so, then all our students should be reading Master Will, who lends his aid to the bold.

I had fun over the weekend applying Shakespeare to different business situations. If one’s thinks of business as ruthless competition, then Macbeth comes to mind: go for it all and don’t let conscience stand in the way. Hamlet offers a similar lesson: if you’re going to tip your hand to the opposition, then don’t let them hang around as you work through ethical dilemmas. Then again, Macbeth Inc. –which follows some of the advice of Machiavelli’s The Prince—is not a company built for the long haul. If you employ Macbeth’s tactics, you may discover that the blowback is fierce and that, next thing you know, your competition has marshaled Birnam Wood against you.

Better, perhaps, to operate as a Henry V, who knows how to enroll his employees in his grand enterprise. Note the psychological strategy he uses in the famous speech he delivers before going on to win the Battle of Agincourt.  By the end of it, the men are fully invested:

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.

But while Shakespeare can encourage us to be resolute, he also urges us to be humble. From The Tempest we learn that, no matter how carefully we’ve orchestrated everything, we can expect Caliban to come blundering through at some point. The scene I have in mind is when Prospero has set up everything as planned—his daughter Miranda and the son of his enemy have fallen in love and are sitting down to a magical feast—when our dark id disrupts the proceedings.

And let’s not forget the sage course of action followed by Viola in Twelfth Night. Finding herself in an impossible circle where she loves Orsino who loves Olivia who loves Viola (disguised as Cesario), she muses:

O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.

Wait a minute, I hear you say. At one point Shakespeare is telling us to take the tide at the flood and at another to sit back and let things sort themselves out? In fact, in Twelfth Night Shakespeare even seems to mock bold moves.  Malvolio is advised that, if he takes a chance, he will achieve his dreams (marriage with Olivia): “Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so/If not, let me see thee a steward still.”  But the words are just a trick to get him to humiliate himself, and Shakespeare’s very unAmerican lesson seems to be, “Remain in the station to which you were born.”

Advice in Shakespeare, then, can point in different directions, and even the best advice may be suspect. Literature’s most famous instructions, for instance, are delivered by a stupid man. I won’t cite the entirety of Polonius’s “to thine own self be true” speech here but only note that, even while he tells Laertes to “give every man thy ear, but few thy voice,” his voice goes on and on. In other words, be careful of those who tell you what to do.

One shouldn’t go to Shakespeare as one goes to a book on “how to succeed in business.” The poet is not going to make our decisions for us. But what business people most need is not a set of prescriptions but an understanding of people, both of others and of themselves. As I watch Darien and Betsy, I realize that they must be fluid and imaginative and courageous and resilient and thoughtful and smart. (Now I sound like Polonius.) Fortunately, the Bard has provided them with a wealth of experiences and articulations to help them find their way. By seeing the world as a stage, they have a better sense of what their parts entail.

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