W. Shakespeare Inc., management consultant.

• Author: Augustine, Norman R.
• Position: LEADERSHIP

Several years ago my friend Jim Kristie, editor of Directors & Boards, generously made available a few of the journal's pages for Ken Adelman, a legitimate Shakespearian scholar, and me, an engineer with one college course in Shakespeare, so we could expound upon our management book Shakespeare in Charge. Thus I was pleased when Jim recently offered the opportunity to return to the scene of the crime to comment on Barry Edelstein's new book, Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions (Collins, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). Edelstein, you see, is the Real Deal. He attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, has endorsements from Steve Martin and Kevin Kline, and directed Gwyneth Paltrow in "As You Like It." No simple engineer here.

Of course, some skeptics might ask what business people could possibly learn from a theatrical director. While it is true that in theater it is dog-eat-dog whereas in business it is just the opposite, there is in fact much to be gained. Bardisms actually tells you how to quote Shakespeare: what to say, when to say it, and even how to pronounce it. Although a great read, the book does come across a bit like Cliff's Notes on Brain Surgery. Sort of like the note I once received from Yogi Berra about another of my management books, Augustine's Laws. Yogi said he had been reading the index (yes, that's what he said) and noted that I had quoted Socrates fourtimes, Shakespeare seven times, and Berra eight times. "You're my kind of guy!" he concluded.

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But better than pseudo-sophistication is the advice given to me by my wife of 47 years just before I delivered a graduation address: "Now, whatever you do, don't try to sound sophisticated, clever or charming. Just be yourself."

On the other hand, if you feel you simply must quote Shakespeare, it is handy to have a book like Edelstein's Bardisms around. For example, he reminds us that at the beginning of the war in Iraq Ted Koppel borrowed expansively from Henry V, exclaiming, "Wreak havoc and unleash the dogs of war." The only problem was that Shakespeare didn't say "wreak," he said "cry"; and he didn't say "unleash," he said "slip"; and it wasn't Henry V, it was Julius Caesar. Other than that, Koppel nailed it.

I've found the 500-plus Fortune 100 board meetings I've endured in my career to be made much more bearable by thinking what Shakespeare would have been thinking were he in the Bard Room instead of me. For example, there was Nestor...