By Sara J. Welch
With today's business books extolling everyone from Winnie-the-Pooh to Atilla the Hun, it was only a matter of time before someone claimed the Bard. Now thanks to Movers & Shakespeares, executives who slept through Lear senior year can get a crash course in the leadership secrets of Petruchio and Henry V.
Run by Carol and Ken Adelman of Arlington, Virginia, Movers & Shakespeares offers training seminars that take the dramatist's 400-year-old psychological insights from the boards to the boardroom. No reading's required - "I don't even read Shakespeare," admits Mr. Adelman. Rather, attendees watch movie versions, discuss management lessons like Brutus' ability to "get the job done" (read: off Caesar), then don jerkins to act in after-dinner skits. "The joy of this, says Mrs. Adelman, "is bringing the most beautiful words of the last millennium into the next."
Besides dinner and a toast to the Bard, the Adelmans have no special plans for the 23rd of this month, Shakespeare's birthday. But considering Will coined the phrase "happy hour" (along with "hobnob," "pander," and other biz-friendly terms), what, forsooth, could be more appropriate?