ZENOBIA: The Curious Book of Business

I want to dedicate today's blog to the kindness of Wayne Hurlbert, who brought an enormously generous spirit to his reading of ZENOBIA. His words can be found on his wonderful blog,

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/zenobia-curious-book-of-business-by.html

as well as below.

The heroine's adventure becomes a pathway to success for others, write co-authors Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart, in their imaginative business fable Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business. In a surrealistic dreamlike world worthy of Franz Kafka or Lewis Carroll, job applicant Moira's journey to the mythical Room 133A, is an inspiration to the power of imagination in business.

Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart (photo left) take the reader into a their business allegory where the characters are symbols and their actions are metaphors. Young job applicant Moira represents change and new ideas, as well as a vibrant creativity missing from the staid and declining Zenobia Corporation. Once an industry leader, the moribund company clings to past glories through suffocating rules, malignant office politics, and outright hostility to creative thinking or ideas.

Moira, in her symbolically outside the rule book red shoes, defies and overcomes that that institutionalized lack of imagination as she seeks her goal. Seizing a kite, as a metaphor for an idea, she literally climbs the treacherous corporate ladder. With unexpected help from unlikely sources within the company, walks a symbolic tightrope to achieve her dreams. In the process, others in Zenobia follow their dreams, and revitalize the hidebound company. Long stifled employees reach for the stars along with Moira, and dare to imagine what could be for the organization and for their own careers.

Matthew Emmens (photo left) and Beth Kephart take the reader on a voyage of possibility and of imagination. With their symbolic characters, aided by the delightful James Thurber-like illustrations of William Sulit, an alternative through the looking glass world is the creative result. Indeed, the entire book is a tribute to creative thinking, and of seeking new ideas for solving seemingly impossible problems.

The book is about dreams and imagination, and the importance of people within an organization. Moira needs help in her quest, and she receives it when it's needed most. By accepting help, she inspires greatness in others within Zenobia, as they reach goals they never imagined possible. At the same time, the Zenobians step out of their darkness, and help others to find the light of their dreams and ideas, as they too reach for the long dormant kite of imagination.

For me, the power of the book is its faith in the power of imagination and ideas, and how one person can act as a catalyst for change. Moira wasn't a high profile CEO parachuted into the company, and within the story, those closed minded applicants fail to reach Room 133A. They lack the imagination to expand their thinking beyond conventional wisdom. As a result, they are unable to revitalize the floundering Zenobia Corporation. Instead, a seemingly ordinary person, with her unconventional ways of thinking, applied imagination and creativity to the organization, and found the latent greatness within.

I highly recommend the business fable Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business by Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart for anyone who seeks to follow their dreams to greatness, and to awakening their imaginations to new and wonderful possibilities.

Read Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business by Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart and wear those non-dress code red shoes, grab hold of that kite of ideas with both hands, and let your imagination soar. Reach for the stars, and you can light up the sky.

Tags: Beth Kephart, Matthew Emmens, William Sulit , Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business, creative thinking, business book reviews.

Operti's Tropical Garden (and Moira Moody's Scrapbook)

It's been a few years now since my alma mater called and asked if I'd be willing to mentor a University of Pennsylvania writer—to give him or her a preview of the writing life to come. I had my choice of three students and one Moira Moody immediately intrigued me—I liked the way she answered the questions that I'd asked (not easy questions, they never are); I liked her apparent love of rousing ghosts from graveyards and scrapbooks. For an entire semester Moira and I worked together—sometimes on digging up a few of the historic gems that became integral to FLOW (most spectacularly the story of a dockside riot), sometimes on finding context for a history that I was writing for a corporate client, sometimes on shaping and placing poems.

We had fun, and we remained friends; not only that, but (because it just seemed so necessary, so right) Moira became the name of our most brave and perennially reasonable heroine in the corporate fable, ZENOBIA.

Long way of introducing Moira and her junior fellow project—something she calls Scrapbook. Moira's been inviting Philadelphians to help her build a website that pairs city artifacts with stories, responses, poems—all with a focus on encouraging Philadelphians to "imagine the city's past."

Which gets us to the photo up above. Though it has been suggested by one kind reviewer that I must be at least 700 years old, I will confess that I am not in fact old enough to have snapped this George Eastman House photo, which I discovered here: http://www.geh.org/ar/strip49/htmlsrc/m198322470035_ful.html#topofimage.

I'd been in the midst of researching a former Philadelphia establishment known as Operti's Tropical Garden when I happened upon this waterlogged marvel. I already had in mind what the place must have looked like, smelled like. I had in mind a certain sound. And then here was this image, here were the facts, here was another point of view.

Operti's Tropical Garden is featured in my novel in progress. It's also now featured on Moira's site, which I invite you to visit here: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/juniorfellow/scrapbook/

Lucky Days

I try not to do this too often, but today I am posting the first official review of Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business, a book I co-authored with Matt Emmens, the CEO of Shire Pharmaceuticals, and which my husband and business partner, William Sulit, illustrated. This slender book somehow took more than two years to write, and while I'm fond of saying that I'm keen on literary risk-taking, don't think that I haven't been over here shaking in my boots.

Reviews represent one person's opinion; I'm well aware of that. But I thank the kind soul at Publishers Weekly for taking the time to read Zenobia, and for reading so generously.

STARRED REVIEW/PUBLISHERS WEEKLY/JANUARY 14
Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business: A Tale of Triumph Over Yes-People, Cynics, Hedgers, and Other Corporate Killjoys
Mathew Emmens and Beth Kephart, illus. by William Sulit. Berrett-Koehler, $19.95 (144p) ISBN 9781576754788
A business fable in the tradition of Who Moved My Cheese?, but more closely akin to Alice in Wonderland, this work from pharmaceuticals CEO Emmens and poet-novelist-journalist Kephart (Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River) concerns a topsy-turvy organization which should prove oddly familiar for anyone who’s worked in a corporate environment. Our heroine, Moira, is a newcomer to the once-respected Zenobia company, now in physical and psychological disrepair. Without signs or helpers, Moira must navigate the bizarre office layout (“countless drab-green cubicles, like so many Brussels sprouts attached to a stalk”), overcome the entrenched mindset (“We excel at the familiar”) and find the elusive Room 133A, where she’s been summoned to help the flagging enterprise. Emphasizing the power of imagination, innovation, people and possibility, Emmens and Kephart’s tale of against-the-system heroism illustrates well the intangible human resources that business-as-usual can squelch. Though it may initially strike serious-minded readers silly, this tale makes an enchanting and worthwhile trip into the rabbit hole of nonsensical corporate culture, drawing out plenty of X-ray insight into the modern workplace. Whimsical line drawings from Sulit complete what could be the most enjoyable, readable business book in recent memory. (Jan.)