Hamlet. Leader without Leadership E-Book

Beppe Carrella

• Herausgeber: goWare
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Hamlet is someone eternally at war with the necessity to choose his path. A struggle management experts and business leaders are well-acquainted with. Hamlet is the epitome of the chronically undecided, who has made procrastination, indecisiveness and therefore, inaction, a way of life and of conduct. The heir to the Danish throne’s most famous line: “To be or not to be, that is the question”, an open declaration of skepticism, is strikingly applicable to managers, and not only them – as, deep down, Hamlet’s story is about each and all of us, regardless of our held position. Eventually, you come to understand that, perhaps, Hamlet is “just” a man, desperately, viciously fighting his destiny. Like we normally do everyday. So, how do we get out of this impasse? Shakespeare’s masterpiece will show us the way, we just have to read it carefully, like Beppe Carrella did.

Leseprobe

Cover

Introducing the book and the Author

Foreword by Maria Cristina Koch

Start reading

List of Names and Places

Table of Contents

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© 2020 goWare, Firenze, first digital edition

ISBN: 978-88-3363-361-9

Translation: Lucrezia Pei

Editing & Layout: Ornella Soncini

Graphic Design: Marco Arrighi

Cover & Illustrations: Eleonora Cao Pinna

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Colophon

Description

How to read this book

Foreword by Maria Cristina Koch

Illustrative Path by Eleonora Cao Pinna

Introduction

How many obstacles to overcome? Bastante.

The Scenery

Part one

I Believe in Life Before Death

Some Words of Advice by the Poloniuses

The Ghost

Anything and Everything

I Believe In Life After Death

Part two

I Believe In Life Before And After Death

I Don’t Believe In Life After Death

Epitaph

Bonus Track 1The Critic

Acknowledgments

List of Names and Places

Description

Hamlet is someone eternally at war with the necessity to choose his path. A struggle management experts and business leaders are well-acquainted with. Hamlet is the epitome of the chronically undecided, who has made procrastination, indecisiveness and therefore, inaction, a way of life and of conduct.

The heir to the Danish throne’s most famous line: “To be or not to be, that is the question”, an open declaration of skepticism, is strikingly applicable to managers, and not only them – as, deep down, Hamlet’s story is about each and all of us, regardless of our held position. Eventually, you come to understand that, perhaps, Hamlet is “just” a man, desperately, viciously fighting his destiny. Like we normally do everyday.

So, how do we get out of this impasse? Shakespeare’s masterpiece will show us the way, we just have to read it carefully, like Beppe Carrella did.

. . .

Beppe Carrella is the founder and a current partner of BcLab as well as a professor at a number of universities both domestically and abroad. He has a background as CEO of several international companies in the ict field. In 2013 his book Provocative Thoughts ranked among the ten most prominent works on hrm practices according to prestigious American magazine HR.com. For goWare he has published Pinocchio. Leadership without Lies (2018), Don Quixote. Leadership of near-win (2019), Beatles. Leadership a tempo di musica (2020) and Parlane pure col mio robot... ma gli androidi fanno le spremute con l’arancia meccanica? (2018) co-written with Fabio Degli Esposti .

How to read this book

Hamlet. Leadership Without Leadership might surprise you: on the one hand, a multilayered non-fiction management book in ceaseless dialogue with Shakespeare’s classic; on the other hand, a cutting-edge work with clickable links (in the digital edition) and scannable codes (also in the printed edition, decodable using your smartphone or tablet devices) leading to a vast range of media contents.

Provided here is a brief legend aiming to facilitate the understanding of the text and the enhancement of its multimedia potential.

“I know who I am” The grey highlighted text is a quotation from Hamlet. The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare (Volume Seven), by William Shakespeare, edited by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Sections marked by margin silhouettes are author’s digression, branching out into larger topics linked to the core subject matter

Pinocchio The blue words (in the e-book version) signal the presence of a hyperlink

QR codes leading to video and audio files. Please see the relative Wikipedia page to learn how they work. In the digital edition, audio files may also be reached by clicking on Listen, Watch or Read thus activating the link

This widget signals the beginning of an excerpt from a song-lyric, which may be listened to in its entirety on YouTube, or other sites, by activating the QR code (in the printed edition) or the applicable link placed on the blue links (in the digital edition).

To everyone who knows they have so much to learnTo everyone who loves a challenge not for the thrill of winningbut for the taste of learningTo everyone who is humble enoughto also learn from their failuresTo everyone who sees otherness as a richness,To everyone who starts their day with a smile, giving thanks for the gifts to come.

Paola Pomi

Foreword by Maria Cristina Koch

Some time ago, Beppe said to me: «Hamlet first gets at you, then gets into you».

And that’s exactly how it is. At first, with our problem-solving mania, essentially stemming out from our refusal to put any effort – that’s just outdated! – into facing and going through any issue whatsoever, to our eyes, Hamlet was just this obsessively perfectionistic snob, also known as “over-procrastinator”. For heaven’s sake, your father is dead, or rather, he has been murdered, and your mother is in a relationship with the culprit, only now he is back from the dead just to tip you off and what do you do? You think about it. Just unbelievable, you think about it.

Right, because the fact of the matter is, Hamlet is no legendary hero, he doesn’t just up and take on this bad world with his righteous sword, there is no raging suite of henchmen who follow him around whatever happens, eyes closed. Indeed, Hamlet is like us, hesitant, indecisive, someone who takes the time to think, to analyse, to try and make sense of things. So much so that he eventually becomes overwhelmed.

Beppe’s saga holds up the greatest fictional characters of the high(est)-class literature as reference models for leaders to (or consider to) follow here in our own day and age, juxtaposing Pinocchio with Don Quixote, Don Juan and Faust.

Yet, Hamlet is the only one among them who is just a regular youth: of course he is a king’s son, a student at the prestigious Wittenberg University, but still, just a youth; someone who grew up, one could say, while his family had bigger fish to fry than raising him. We are going to “adopt” this very youth, so we can keep him close and keep a close eye on his affairs which, after Shakespeare, Beppe is going to tell us about all over again. In his very own way.

As early as the introduction, Beppe offers us some crucial interpretative keys.

 The necessity of not knowing, or the privilege of not knowing

As you read a story, you let it unfold, you don’t take a sneak peek at last pages and spoil yourself the ending just so you go back and be “one step ahead” of the author. Just to arrogate to yourself the right of saying «Uh, well. Of course». That everyone can playing fortune teller with hindsight is not the point; what’s bad is that it seems we are no longer able, or used to handling suspense. Then again, when you are the leader, or you are playing a leading role, can you even afford to admit your ignorance? Wouldn’t that most likely lead to other people being included, whom you will have to reason with; to you being disputed, to everyone looking at things together and finally coming to a decision?

That’s when Shakespeare encourages us to be avid, active spectators. He might be the one telling the story, but it’s up to us to decide whether and what and in what way to understand, to connect the dots, to make other people’s stories our own. That’s the active listening everyone speaks of: to gather information from what we have seen/heard/read about and own it, make something out of it, lay claim to our “creation”.

 Carving out our future (but what of the fragments?)

The theme of carving, of Hamlet learning to remove the excess, the backwardness in his thoughts and actions, at Wittenberg, is the thread that weaves together the events of the play and Beppe’s observations. Carving becomes a mean to expunge from our reality all that confuses us with its commonplace triviality, and to keep and focus on all that we can make use of, all that can be worked, all that we can turn into our own masterpiece.

Yet, what if, as we go over the fragments we so carefully removed, we were overcome with nostalgia, what if we couldn’t bear to forsake them, to do without them? Are they to be cast out no matter what, under all circumstances, unhonored and unwept?

Building a future: can that only using entirely new, pristine elements? The real danger lies in getting away then quickly retrace our steps and forget the invigorating experience of removing the excess, as the art of sculpture teaches us: we are stuck with the infamous, ever-present bastante, the undetermined “just enough”: one hardly dumps the whole salt-box in the pot, but doesn’t eat salt-free, either. Yet again, it’s up to me, us, to do things “to taste”: leader, how much new or old should you add to the future you are building in order to complete it, so that you can put your name on?

And so, this ties in with the question of other people’s esteem for us: are we entirely certain that we can/should live without the acknowledgment from our people, clients and co-workers alike, or even, that should we suffer their rejection without wistfulness? Perhaps it would be wise to take their criticism into account without letting it to destroy us, but the dividing line is just so hard to determine…

Unless it becomes the kind sported by those who return after entering the divine realm – because one is meant to do some stumbling before gaining access to true knowledge –, this limp, which makes us wobble and hampers our decision-making, is a choking dilemma: in order for me to choose, to make my decision, I need at least three options.

The quandary between his ethos and his allegiance to his father’s ghost harnesses Hamlet, depriving him of his right to freedom. Hamlet lacks right arms to assist him, to play on and cheer for his team. Horatio does care about him, but that’s a whole other story.

 The funeral roasting

Every piece of data, every piece of information takes on new, opposite meanings depending on how it’s handled.

Coming home from studying abroad, we may feel our domestic routine, the room we used to sleep in, the things we used to love and have grown up around are useless, stale, flat, which stems from our foolish, arrogant desire to be all cool and clever. Or maybe, our eyes are suddenly cleared out and we can see the previously indiscernible harm and pettiness of it all. Where is the line between our ability to wonder and wander around, looking for opportunities and places we could never imagine, and the discontented disloyalty which prevents us from getting attached, from being sociable? No question, Hamlet lacks any team-building skills. Beppe is right when he says you can’t make a story out of monologues; granted, Claudius is adept at rallying the court around himself. It is also true that, although Hamlet listens to his mother when she begs him to stay in Denmark, it’s Claudius who thanks him and makes promises of future glory to him.

Whom should he confide in and where, with the court becoming so unfamiliar it’s now utterly foreign, hostile even: Hamlet is either paranoid or mercilessly lucid, cruelly forced to acknowledge whatever reveals itself with shameless clarity before his eyes.

The envy that poisons and twists a friendly meeting, the invitation to be afraid, to become riddled with anxiety, the tangible unreality of his father’s ghost: crushed between such elusive yet substantial walls and borders, how could Hamlet fail to grasp the madness he is being plunged in by the court and, consequently, not play mad? Madman, maniac, freak, words which apparently say the same thing, by which we are captivated nonetheless, as spectators, so that we are all co-writing the text together with its author.

Much like we see Hamlet, thorn between his ethics and his imposed revenge, as a brother: a fool who is not the best at navigating the world, a madman steeped in and overcome by what he thinks he grasps and sees, a lunatic hoping against hope that, in time, he’ll be granted a way out with this integrity intact. And there is none one who would be able and willingly to stand by him, who’d reflect back some loyalty.

Perhaps madness is all-encompassing, our main focus, even more than achieving our relentless pursuits, such as taking down our opponent, the ultimate enemy.

That one thought that makes the rest of the world disappear, leaving no room for anything else. Our own and other people’s room. Sometimes, this is called perseverance, sometimes, stubbornness.

Whereas some other times, when we can’t make ourselves understood, when we can’t make people share our “madness” and to set off toward our own fulfilment, that’s when we play the fools, acting like we’ve shut rest of the world off. Some will say we are “out of it”, that we are a little touched, which will grant us some extra rights, after all, nobody expects some poor lunatic to follow the same rules as everyone else. On this reading, if we seriously accept that not everyone is willing be put in a box and “rationalized”, playing the fool might also mean being far-sighted, wandering into different levels of reality.

Perhaps, and thank you Beppe for including this notion, which is must at his meetings, it means sewing the world back together, tiqqun ‘olam, that is, to fix our violated, tattered universe through little gestures. And for the most part, one needs time, lots of time, for that. Some might accuse us of procrastinating. Especially in our day and age, when time is seen as some silly luxury, which goes to waste in senseless idleness, such as thinking instead of doing.

 To see the rubble as the masterpiece

Perhaps, when you take your time you are also giving some. I’m thinking about job interviews, about our conversations, I’m thinking about the many times we “carve” our words, in order to keep things brief. Convinced we are getting rid of the rubble when, all too often, we are flattening out their uniqueness in that particular moment, under those particular circumstances, the fact that they are addressed to that one, specific person.

One thing is the fluency of maxim-like brevity, which is indeed round, self-contained, complete.

Quite another is to keep it brief just to put an end to the whole thing, to get out of it as soon as possible and leave, with the other party forced to chase around us as they try to grasp what was that we were offering them/entrusting them with or throwing at them. Chasing us around like panhandles.

The other party shouldn’t be treated according to how much they are worth but according to our own sense of honor. Only when mankind learned to look at shards and rubble as the masterpieces again, the Renaissance took shape.

And who knows, perhaps Hamlet’s procrastinating also means putting Wittenberg’s unforgiving mindset on hold and go back enjoying the Danish court. Just to walk away in despair over its desolating corruption. So disappointed, pained, powerless, constrained by his impossible obligation of revenge, to which he’ll sacrifice his life and those of many others in the name of obedience. A father has no right to demand of his son an act which, to him, is intolerable, most taxing, which he can’t come back from. Old Hamlet is a vicious Chronos, entirely indifferent to the rights of a youth who is just barely tasting life away from home. Thus hampered in the process of changing by mixing up Denmark and Wittenberg in his own way, Hamlet is prevented from seeing things with a fresh pair of eyes, forced to go back to old schemes which he’s bound to navigate awkwardly.

An environment where he can’t spread his wings.

How can you share your dream, then, and is it even possible not falling back into complaining – which, at the very least, is immediately, universally understood?

You feel like loneliness is no longer such an impregnable, stifling shell.

We are animals, mammals, we live in groups in order to survive, we stick together.

If I can’t, if I can’t do it, the cunning mask of madness still provides some connection with others: I was given a name, they’ve acknowledged me, I do exist.

And maybe, this constant procrastination means I can keep things the way they are, however unsatisfactory and sordid they may seem to me.

The right amount of knowledge

I think it’s safe to say that people in our day and age don’t need to know, as much as they need to learn to choose. When we know something, when we learn something, we take some knowledge away with us: we are not the same as a we where moments ago, we are abound to be infected and remolded. Knowledge isn’t neutral, sanitized, it’s an act. It seems to me that, sadly enough, we have grown accustomed to drawing a line between what is called reality and words, thoughts, knowledge, ideas, as if part of two different realms. Yet, they have always molded us and have been molded by us, with or without our permission. Whatever we go on to study, to learn, shapes our person as powerfully as if we were working out at the gym or kneading shortcrust pastry dough in the kitchen.

The four substances forming DNA resonate in the same way as the so called universal language, whose grammar was outlined by Noam Chomsky and from which any given people, any given person derive and shapes their specific language.

Speech molds our DNA according to our beliefs.

And oftentimes or beliefs, our convictions are imbued with what we are in the process of learning. We all know fully well the charms of knowledge, we fall in love with what, we feel, we are beginning to understand and, much like falling in love, we want to know more, we delve deeper and deeper, indifferent to and unaware of any outside worlds or paths.

Yet, how hard it is to juggle between the pleasure of going deeper and the fear of becoming obsessed, monothematic? Sadly accepting of the certified opinions on the matter? Our reasoning bent to the customs of the place?

When it comes to knowledge, monogamous marriage isn’t the recommended choice, there is nothing better than some side-action and romantic getaways, as frequent and fun as possible!

One affair after the other, then, we begin to outline the boundless world ahead and around us, where knowledge is so potential and vast that it becomes meaningless. That’s when our journey begins, with the sextant of our ethics pointing the way, cajoling us into our adventure, choosing, trying, mixing the flavours and the taste of our experiences.

As for Hamlet’s experiences at court, their taste is and will stay the same, repeated ad nauseam: essentially, it’s the taste of spying, blackmailing, of being forbidden from trusting anybody. His closest friends have been bought, his girlfriend leaves him throwing accusations, his mother softens him up to appease Claudius; Horatio alone stands by his side yet lacks the vigour to stick with Hamlet. How does one manage being a leader under such circumstances? When saying the place is a nest of viper is a kind understatement? Yet, his obligation of revenge is still standing: how is he supposed to choose, to identify the right moment?

Every attempt to evade this dilemma, to rely on a so called plan B, undermines our actions, makes our hand unsteady, erodes our beliefs, further impoverishing us.

 The need to know we have been loved

We all need to be able to convince ourselves that, at some point in the past, we have been cared for, that once upon a time we have been loved.

We might be deluding ourselves there, but then again, how could we possibly give our life any meaning without that?

How could we possibly see the alternation of life and death as helpful and heartening? What do these words mean to rulers? Is there even any point in being loved? And, to be more specific, is it really what they are looking for?

Occasionally, as we watch dictators kiss the children of the so-called ordinary citizens, after the immediate surge of disgust at sight, comes the question: what are they trying to achieve with these little acts? Or more precisely, what did they think they would accomplish with their bloody victories, their glorious conquests, the fear they inspired, having everyone bowing low as they passed?

They say about Old Hamlet that he was a strong, victorious warrior. Perhaps because he was murdered without warning, he didn’t get the chance to consider or even realize that, maybe, what he actually wanted was the tenderness of freely-given love. As for Young Hamlet, he was seen as neither honored nor victorious.

A carefree university student, he suddenly finds himself downgraded to a child meant to take the king’s orders without question. We are shown that his friends were up for sale, that his mother was rather more interested in keeping up close with power than with him, who hadn’t any besides that of killing out of vengeance by proxy. Bound in fealty to his bloodline and to a father who violates him as person and who never acknowledges him as a son to take pride in.

It is only when Hamlet realizes his unbounded loneliness that he comes to a point where he can make his glorious statement: “This is I, Hamlet the Dane”.

Hamlet has made himself his own father and mother, right there.

We are all born parentless and it takes a lifetime for us to become our own mothers and fathers.

But boy this is difficult without even a Yorick to love us, to hold us in his hands with sincere affection, much like Hamlet holds his skull!

And perhaps it is the delicate touch of a friend with no ulterior motives and at liberty to love us of their own free will that stays with us as we declare our own name.

Certainly, this a way to join forces and efforts to achieve shared goals.

Yet, many times this is born out of our ability to share, from the will and understanding that we share the same distress, so great that, faced on our own, it would overcome us both.

And who knows, perhaps the ugly deaths of young and old, kings and queens, maidens and students is the most explicit outline of the consequences of revenge, its clearest, most shocking picture.

Now we’ve made it to the end, it’s time to re-read the entire Hamlet all over again: each read will show us a different angle, like those magic fountains we always return to drink from, incapable of ever being quenched and satisfied.

Thank you, Beppe, for taking us by the hand and introducing us to your friend Shakespeare.

Illustrative Path by Eleonora Cao Pinna

“A journey through madness”: this is how Beppe describes Hamlet, and then adds that he’s just as crazy for trying to retell it. To make heads or tails out of it’s no easy feat, but this might just not be the point of this journey. Perhaps, the goal is to surrender and “look into the mirror and deal with your worries”, your shadows, before you find yourself surrounded by ruins. The art for this leg of our journey into leadership (and much more) falls within this framework.

Colours were the primary means used in the attempt to reflect madness. Psychedelic, overbearing hues which demand confrontation (which Hamlet avoids) and continuous inner analysis (where Hamlet loses himself).

The choice to depict animals other than humans stemmed from the need to make the book’s powerful message resound by touching the most ancient core of our being: our instincts. Each animal depicted was selected because of its intuitive, but also personal, meaning. I was amazed at how promptly these animals came to my mind, but it was their personal meaning, ambiguous, mysterious even, that enticed me to welcome them into the mad vortex of my imagination and, therefore, to portray them.

I could very well motivate every choice made but, as it’s the case in art, as in this instance, I thought it would prove self-limiting.

There are some scenes described in the book which is up to the reader to fill in with their own shadows and craziness, by stepping into the main characters’ shoes; I therefore put my focus on them, the characters, who are so ancient, so steeped in history and very much a part of the culture I grew up in, to the point they feel like old friends, even though they are actually complete strangers. It has been a pleasure to rediscover these characters filtered through Beppe’s sensitivity and I hope the illustrations encourage and aid you in rediscovering Hamlet (and yourself).