On Leadership HBR’s 10 Must Reads

 

“Why does self-regulation matter so much for leaders? First of all, people who are in control of their feelings and impulses – that is people who are reasonable – are able to create an environment of trust and fairness.” (Goleman, 2011, p.12).

 

“They (leaders) ranged from extroverted to nearly reclusive, from easygoing to controlling, from generous to parsimonious. 

What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices: 

- They asked, “What needs to be done?”

- They askes, “What is right for the enterprise?”

- They developed action plans.

- They took responsibility for decisions.

- They took responsibility for communicating.

- They were focused on opportunities rather than problems. 

- They ran productive meetings.

- They thought and said “we” rather than “I”.

The first two practices gave them the knowledge they needed. The next four helped them convert this knowledge into effective action. The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.” (Drucker, 2011, p.24).

“But effective executives do not splinter themselves. They concentrate on one task if at all possible. If they are among those people – a sizable minority – who work best with a change of pace in their working day, they pick two tasks. I have never encountered an executive who remains effective while tackling more than two tasks at a time. Hence, after asking what needs to be done, the effective executive sets priorities and sticks to them” (Drucker, 2011, p.24).

“Asking “What is right for the enterprise?” does not guarantee the right decisions will be made. Even the most brilliant executive is human and thus prone to mistakes and prejudices. But failure to ask the question virtually guarantees the wrong decision.” (Drucker, 2011, p.28).

“Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course.” (Drucker, 2011, p.28).

“The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It must not become a straitjacket. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities.” (Drucker, 2011, p.28).

“Napoleon allegedly said that no successful battle ever followed its plan. Yet Napoleon also planned every one of his battles far more meticulously than any other general had done.” (Drucker, 2011, p.29).

People decisions: “If they find that a decision has not the desired results, they don’t conclude that the person has not performed. They conclude, instead, that they themselves made a mistake. In. well-managed enterprise, it is understood that people who fail in a new job,especially after a promotion, may not be the ones to blame. 

Executives also owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. It may not be the employees’ fault that they are underperforming, but even so, they have to be removed.” (Drucker, 2011, p.230).

“Effective executives make sure that both their action plans and their information needs are understood.” (Drucker, 2011, p.31). “The best way around this problem is for each executives to identify the information he needs, ask for it, and keep pushing until he gets it.” (Drucker, 2011, p.32).

“But problem solving, however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results.” (Drucker, 2011, p.32).“Effective executives put their best people on opportunities rather than problems.” (Drucker, 2011, p.32).

“It’s also necessary to terminate the meeting as soon as its specific purpose has been accomplished. Good executives don’t raise another matter for discussion. They sum up and adjourn.” (Drucker, 2011, p.32).

“Effective executive know that they have ultimate responsibility, which can neither be shared nor delegated. But they have authority only because they have the trust of the organization. This means that they think of the needs and the opportunities of the organization before they think of their own needs and opportunities.” (Drucker, 2011, p.35).

“Most U.S. corporations today are over-managed and under-led.” (Kotter, 2011, p.37). “Management is coping with complexity. (…) Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.” (Kotter, 2011, p.38). “Management involves planning and budgeting. Leadership involves setting direction. Management involves organizing and staffing. Leadership involves aligning people. Management provides control and solves problems. Leadership provides motivation.” (Kotter, 2011, p.39).

“Just as we need more people to provide leadership in the complex organizations that dominate our world today, we also need more people to develop the cultures that will create that leadership. Institutionalizing leadership-centred culture is the ultimate act of leadership.” (Kotter, 2011, p.55).

“Second, adaptive change is distressing for the people going through it. (…) Rather than fulfilling the expectations that they will provide answers. Leaders have to ask tough questions. Rather than protecting people from outside threats, leaders should allow them to feel the pinch of reality in order to stimulate them to adapt. Instead of orienting people to their current roles, leaders must disorient them so that new relationships can develop.” (Heifetz and Laurie, 2011, p.58). “The work of the leader is to get conflict out into the open and use it as a source of creativity.” (Heifetz and Laurie, 2011, p.67).

“If executives try to communicate that they’re perfect at everything, there will be no need for anyone to help them with anything. They won’t need followers.” Goffee and Jones, 2011, p.81).

“Instead, they are seeking to engage in mutual mentoring with peers who are already part of their networks (such as board members, top managers, or leaders within a scientific discipline). The objective of this senior-peer mentoring is not, in conventional terms, to increase the chances of success but to create a sustainable community of people who can challenge the emergent leader’s assumptions.” (Rooke and Torbert, 2011, p.157).

“Discovering your authentic leadership requires a commitment to developing yourself. Like musicians and athletes, you must devote yourself to a lifetime of realizing your potential.” (George et al., 2011, p.165). “Integrating their lives is one of the greatest challenges leaders face. To lead a balanced life, you need to bring together all of its constitutent elements – work, family, community, and friends – so that you can be the same person in each environment.” (George et al., 2011, p.175).

“No individual achievement can equal the pleasure of leading a group of people to achieve a worthy goal.” (George et al., 2011, p.177). “It is replaced by a deep inner satisfaction that you have empowered others and thus made the world a better place.” (George et al., 2011, p.177).

All’s well that ends well – Shakepseare 1996

“Helena: (…) withal, full oft we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.754).

“Lafeu: 

They say miracles are past; and we have our

philosophical persons, to make modern and

familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence

is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing our-

selves into seeming knowledge, when we should

submit ourselves to an unknown fear. Why, ‘tis

the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out

in our latter times.

Troilus and Cressida – Shakespeare 1996

 

“Troilus: (…)

Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me

The knife that made it.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.715).

“Agamemnon:

The ample proposition that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below

Fails in the promised largeness; checks and disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear’d;

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,

Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain

Tortive and errant from his course of growth.

Nor, princes, is it matter new to us,

That we come short of our suppose so far,

That, after seven years’ siege, yet Troy walls stand;

Sith every action that hath gone before,

Whereof we have record, trial did draw

Bias and twart, not answering the aim,

And that unbodied figure of the thought 

That gave’t surmised shape. Why, then, you princes, 

Do you with cheeks abasht behold our works,

And call them shames, which are, indeed, naught else,

But the protractive trials of great Jove

To find persistive constancy in men?

The fineness of which metal is not found

In fortune’s love; for then the bold and coward,

The wise and fool, the artist and unread,

The hard and soft, seem all affined and kin:

But, in the wind and tempest of her frown,

Distinction with a broad and powerful fan,

Puffing at all, winnows the light away;

And what hath mass or matter, by itself

Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.719).

“Nestor: (…) In the reproof of chance

Lies the true proof of men.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.719).

“Ulysses: (…) To end a tale of length,

Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.720).

“Hector: (…) O, theft most base,

That we have stoln what we do fear to keep!” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.725).

“Ulysses: 

We saw him at the opening of his tent.

He is not sick.”

Ajax:

Yes, lion-sick, sick of a proud heart.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.727).

“Agamemnon: (…) He that is proud eats up himself; pride

is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own 

chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the

Deed, devours the deed in the praise.” 

“Troilus: (…) This is the monstrosity in love,

lady, - that the will is infinite, and the execution

confined; that the desire is boundless, and the act 

a slave to limit.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.732).

“Ulysses: (…) O, let virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.735).

“Ulysses: (…) 

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,

And case thy reputation in thy tent.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.735).

“Ulysses: (…)

Farewell, my lord: I as your lower speak;

The fools slides o’er the ice that you should break.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.735).

“Troilus: 

While others fish with craft for great opinion,

I with great truth catch mere simplicity;

Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,

With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.

Fear not my truth;” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.740).

“Hector: (…)

Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate.

Life every man holds dear; but the brave man 

Holds honour more precious-dear than life.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.748).

Strategy Montgomery and Porter (1979)

“Andrews and Christensen identified a pressing need for a holistic way of thinking about an enterprise. They articulated the concept of strategy as a tool to for doing so.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xii).

“The central concept in this early work was the notion of fit between the unique capabilities of a company and the competitive requirements of an industry that distinguished it from others. The challenge for management was to choose or create an environmental context where the company’s distinctive competence and resources could produce a relative competitive advantage.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xii). “Present research continues to affirm the important role industry conditions play in the performance of individual firms. (…) average industry profitability is, by far, the most significant predictor of firm performance. It is far more important than market share  and much more important than the extent of a firm’s diversification.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xiv).

 

Functional strategy: “internal consistency – the extent to which a firm’s plan and policies reinforce each other and can be mutually achieved.” (Montgomery and Porter, 1979, p.xvi ).

“Business strategists can use their imagination and ability to reason logically to accelerate the effects of competition and the rate of change.” (Henderson, 1979, p.4). “Can evolution be planned for business? That is what strategy is for.” (Henderson, 1979, p.5).

“Chasing market share is almost as productive as chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You can never get there. Even if you could, you would find nothing. If you are in business you already have 100% of your market. So do your competitors. Your real goal is to expand the size of your market. But you will always have 100% of your market, whether it grows or shrinks.” (Henderson, 1979, p.5). “Market share is a meaningless number unless a company defines the market in terms of the boundaries separating it from its rivals. These boundaries are the points at which the company and are equivalent in a potential customer’s eyes. (…) The competitor that truly has an advantage can give the potential customers more of their money and still have a larger margin between its cost and its selling price.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).

“Strategic competition compresses time.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).“Natural competition works by a process of low-risk, incremental trial and error. Small changes are tried and tested. (…) But unmanaged change takes thousands of generations. (…) By committing resources, strategy seeks to make sweeping changes in competitive relationships.” (Henderson, 1979, p.6).

“Cutting-edge Japanese companies today are capitalizing on time as a critical source of competitive advantage: managing time the way most  companies manage cost, quality or inventory.” (Stalk, 1979, p.39). “For these leading companies time has become the overarching measurement of performance. By reducing the consumption of time in every aspect of the business, these companies also reduce cost, improve quality, and stay close to their customers.” (Stalk, 1979, p.49).

“Because when the focus of attention is on ways to beat the competition, it is inevitable that strategy gets defined primarily in terms of the competition.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.62). “Competitive realities are what you test possible strategies against; you define them in terms of customers. Tit-for-tat responses to what competitors do may be appropriate, but they are largely reactive.(…) It also takes shape in the determination to avoid competition whenever and wherever possible” (Ohmae, 1979, p.62). “Getting back to strategy means getting back to a deep understanding of what a product is about.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.70).

“If you ask people whether they want their coffee in ten minutes or seven, they will say seven of course. But it’s still the wrong question. And you end up back where you started, trying to beat the competition at its own game.” (Ohmae, 1979, p.71).

“Ultimately, the only way to sustain a competitive advantage is to upgrade it.” (Porter, 1979, p.138).“either they (these companies) would make their advantage obsolete, or a competitor would do it for them.” (Porter, 1979, p.138).“But change is an unnatural act, particularly in successful companies; powerful forces are at work to avoid and defeat it. Past approaches become institutionalized in standard operating procedures and management controls.” (Porter, 1979, p.138). “the existing strategy takes on an aura of invincibility and becomes rooted in the company culture. (…) Change is tempered by the fear that there is much to lose.” (Porter, 1979, p.139).

“the uncomfortable truth that innovation grows out of pressure and challenge.” (Porter, 1979, p.160). “A company should seek out pressure and challenge, not avoid them.” (Porter, 1979, p.161).“Early-warning signals translate into early-mover advantage.” (Porter, 1979, p.161).

“The whole project got off the wrong foot. It asked people what features they wanted in a washing machine rather than what they wanted out of life.” (Levitt, 1979, p.198).

“The purpose of business is to get an keep a customer. Or, to use Peter Drucker’s more refined construction, to create and keep a customer. A company must be wedded to the idea of innovation.” (Levitt, 1979, p.203).

“a portfolio of competencies versus a portfolio of businesses.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.280). “Core competencies are the collective learning in the organization.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.281). “core competence does not diminish with use. Unlike physical assets which do deteriorate over time competencies are enhanced as they are applied and shared.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.292).“How strange that SBU managers, who are perfectly willing to compete for cash in the capital budgeting process, are unwilling to compete for people.” (Prahalad and Hamel, 1979, p.294).

“Strategies can form as well as be formulated. A realized strategy can emerge in response to an evolving situation, or it can be brought about deliberately.” (Mintzberg, 1979, p.407). “Actions simply converge into patterns. They may become deliberate, of course, if the pattern is recognized and then legitimated by senior management.” (Mintzberg, 1979, p.408).

“It embodies disciplined unity of purpose, a purpose which – to be powerful – must be clear and worthy of the commitment of energetic and intelligent people.” (Andrews, 1979, p.451). “Such strategy summons up imagination, innovation and a zest for risk.” (Andrews, 1979, p.451). “Nonetheless, imagination exists in all questing organizations and people.” (Andrews, 1979, p.459). “”What’s new?” is a question that should havean unending series of answers in the execution as well as formulation of strategy?” (Andrews, 1979, p.459).

The trusted Advisor – Maister et al. 2000

“You don’t get the chance to employ advisory skills untol you can get someone to trust you enough to share their problems with you.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.ix).

“the way to be a great advisor is to care about your client.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.13). 

“The key point is that trust must be earned and deserved. You must do something to give to other people the evidence on which they can base their decision on whether to trust you. You must be willing to give in order to get.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.18). “building trust. First, it has to do with keeping one’s self interest in check.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.22).

“The potential of trust violation is always there in a trusting relationship. The choice on the par of the advisor not to violate trust is what makes the relationship special.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.24).“I will trust you if I believe that you’re in this for the long haul, that you are not just trying to maximize the short-term benefit to you in each of our interactions.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.26). “I will trust you if you exhibit some form of caring. If you provide some evidence that my interests are as important to you as your own interests are.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.26).

“It is not enough for a professional to be right: An advisor’s job is to be helpful.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.27).

“Suggestions on how to improve always carry the implied critique that all is not being done well at the moment. Yet it is the person hiring you who is often responsible for the current state of affairs.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.28).

“the client is untrained in the professional’s specialty, while the professional may have seen the client’s problem (or variant’s of it) many times before. There is thus an almost constant threat of coming across to the client as patronizing, pompous, and arrogant.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.30).

“In many ways, advisory skills are similar to those of great teaching. A teacher’s task is to help a student get from point A (what they know, understand, and believe now) to point B (an advanced state of deeper undersanding and knowledge). It is poor teaching for the professor to stand at the front of the class and say, “B is the right answer.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.33). 

“To get what you want from someone, you must first focus on giving them what they want.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.51). “As Dale Carnegie said, “The only way to influence someone is to find out what they want, and show them how to get it.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.51).

“Then comes the crucial career transition, from technician to full professional, from content expert to advisor. (…) In contrast, our task as advisors is an “in-person,” “in contact” challenge to help the client see things anew or to make a decision.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.53). “The key to prior career success (technical excellence) can actually become an impediment at this level.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.53). “The kinds of people who typically in professional service firms are often driven, rational, and meritocratic, with a great need to achieve. It is the natural thing for such people (…) to look for confirmation that what they are doing is all right.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.54).

“The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.61).

“Humility is not weakness. Serving others does not require us to be servile. Ego strength means not having to have our egos stroked continuously. Recognizing and respecting the strength in others does not diminish our respect or strength.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.139).

“To be professional, we must point out possibilities. Some call that selling. We call it contributing ideas.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.169).

“Following our initial courtship with a client, we begin to enter a very short honeymoon period, where the client feels relieved that someone competent is now at work solving his or her problem. There is a natural evolution to the relationship where those feelings of comfort will quickly transform into feelings of wondering whether their advisros is devoting the time necessary and whether the approach is really going to work. 

Trust is built upon respect, and since respect comes from seeing some performance, it becomes imperative that we find the means to deliver small, fast result to evidence our efforts.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.175). “even compiling a status report can ensure our credibility.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.175).

“We need to be eternally alert for what comes next for the client. What should our client be doing as a result of our work?” (Maister et al., 2000, p.176).

“The relationship manager’s task is to make the team members want to participate actively in serving and nurturing the relationship (not the “account”). This can be done by providing what they often do not find in their regular work, such as challenge and meaning.” (Maister et al., 2000, p.183).

Hamlet Prince of Denmark – Shakespeare 1996

 

“King:

But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son –

Hamlet (aside):

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

King: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet:

Not so, my Lord; I am too much I’th’sun.

Queen: 

Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off,

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark,

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.673).

“Polonius: 

This above all, - to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.676).

“Ghost:

But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,

Taint no thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.678).

“Hamlet:

… to me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz: 

Why, then, your ambition makes it one; ‘tis too 

Narrow for your mind.

Hamlet:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and

Count myself a king of infinite space, where it not

That I have bad dreams.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.684).

“Hamlet: 

Is it not monstrous, that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit,

That, from her working, all his visage wann’d

Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;

Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant; and amaze, indeed, 

The very faculties of eyes and ears. 

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing; no, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.687).

“Hamlet: 

To be, or not to be,- that is the question:-

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? – To die, - to sleep, - 

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ‘tis consummation

Devoutly to be wisht. To die, - to sleep; -

To sleep! Perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause; there’s the respect 

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns 

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death, - 

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No travellers returns, - puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution 

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.688).

“King: 

Madness in great ones must not unwatcht go.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.689).

“Player King:

I do believe you think what now you speak

But what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave of memory;

Of violent birth, but poor validity:

Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;

But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.

Most necessary ‘tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending doth the purpose lose.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.692).

“Hamlet: 

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.694).

“King: 

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;

And like a man to double business bound, 

I stand in pause where I shall first begin

And both neglect.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.694).

“Queen:

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Hamlet: 

O, throw away the worser part of it

And live the purer with the other half.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.697).

“Hamlet: 

I must be cruel, only to be kind,

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.697).

“Hamlet:

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unused.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.699).

“Queen:

So full of artless joy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.700).

“Hamlet: 

… there’s a special

Providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,

‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be

Now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readi-

ness is all: since no man knows aught of what he 

leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. 

Twelfth night; Or, what you will – Shakespeare 1996

 

“Viola: 

O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me t’untie,” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.648).

“Viola: 

We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed,

Our shows are more than will; for still we prove

Much in our vows, but little in our love.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.652).

“Malvolio:

Some are born great,

Some achieve greatness, and some have greatness

Thrust upon ‘em.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.654).

“Sir Toby Belch:

Why, thou hast put him in such a dream, that,

When the image of it leaves him, he must run mad.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.654).

“Clown: 

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the

Sun, it shines every where.” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.655).

“Sebastian: 

What relish is in this? How runs the stream?

Or I am mad, or else this is a dream;” (Shakespeare, 1996, p.663).