A bit of Shakespeare in print leadership

These are: Hamlet the doubter, Richard II 'the skipping King', Iago the untrustworthy lieutenant, Falstaff the necessary maverick.

 

All this makes one wade through meetings, knowing that you have met this lot somewhere someplace, before.

 

Leadership requires rigour and discipline. So does Shakespeare. 

 

Too many executives and print champions don’t know how to effectively lead culture change initiatives or market their programs. Too many print heads don’t know how to ask for and get the support they need or promote their team’s success.

 

Shakespeare’s plays teaches leadership, communication, and presentation skills. Consider: the language of leadership, as practiced by Shakespeare:

 

We, in the print industry need to keep reminding ourselves that imagination is essentially the nature of enterprise. It is the great creative power in religion and art. It is only in the marketplace where we seem shy to speak its name. 

 

Print managers are much happier with what we can measure - and that's important - but what we're unable to measure can turn out to be even more important.

 

Today, there is a lot of theatre in the print business.

 

The business –person is familiar with the routines and language of theatre these days. Print presentations rehearse in order to be word perfect at presentations; we know about run-throughs, we speak of our 'roles' and we get our acts together. When the results are good, corporate AGMs have something of the theatre ritual about them. 

 

The play is certainly the thing.

 

Yes, business is not merely about reading extra-ordinary lengthy minutes.

 

As Shakespeare stated, its all about the mastery of things …