Zenobia

Zenobia is a former industry giant bedeviled by paralyzing hierarchies, grossly inadequate communications, and distrust. It is a broken place, a fortress doomed to collapse upon itself.

Enter Moira, a young woman responding to a cryptic help wanted ad that asks her to report to room 133A – but there are no directions, no sign of the room, and nobody seems inclined to help her find it. As she moves through the Zenobian maze, Moira makes some surprising discoveries about the power of teamwork and the qualities that define true leaders. Her story is interwoven with that of a long-time Zenobia employee named Gallagher, who watches and comments as Moira tries to find the ever-elusive room 133A.

Zenobia reminds us that imagination is one of the most powerful, and most overlooked, elements of business success. Like Moira, those who succeed see what is not yet there, keep faith in their vision, take risks to achieve it, and inspire others to join them. This unusual book will move readers to take a fresh and fearless look at their own organizations and to remember that leadership is not determined by title or position. Rather, as the want ad Moira answers puts it, “Creative persistence a prerequisite. A desire for the extraordinary an absolute must.”Preface
Chapter 1: Make of the Unknown an Adventure
Chapter 2: Take Care, Lest Your Success Lead To Ruin
Chapter 3: Conceive a Plan; Pursue It
Chapter 4: Celebrate Differences, or Watch Them Breed Distrust
Chapter 5: Prepare for Ridicule
Chapter 6: Know the World Will Change, Despite or Because of You
Chapter 7: Envision What Could Be, Not Just What Is
Chapter 8: Step Beyond Your Walls to Find Your Way
Chapter 9: Listen Well
Chapter 10: Yield Nothing to Those Who Can’t See Past Themselves
Chapter 11: Seek the Unlikely Alliance
Chapter 12: Embrace the Arrival of the New
Chapter 13: Invent Your Own Future
Chapter 14: Honor the Imagination
Acknowledgments
About the AuthorsMatthew Emmens began his career in international pharmaceuticals with Merck & Co., Inc., in 1974. There he held a wide range of sales, marketing, and administrative positions before volunteering in 1992 to help establish Astra Merck, the joint venture between Merck and Astra AB of Sweden. He later became president and chief executive officer. In 1999 he joined Merck KGaA and established EMD Pharmaceuticals, the company’s U.S. prescription pharmaceutical business. Subsequently, he was promoted to president of the global prescription business and lived in Germany. In 2003, he joined Shire Pharmaceuticals as chief executive officer and member of the board. As CEO of Shire, Emmens has engineered an extraordinary revitalization, transforming Shire into one of the top specialty pharmaceutical companies in the world in just a few years’ time.
Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of five memoirs and a partner in Fusion Communications, a company that collaborates with leading U.S. companies on the creation of special publications. She was a 1997 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant winner, a 1998 National Book Award finalist, a 2000 winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a winner of a 2005 Pew Fellowship in the Arts grant, and a winner of the 2005 Speakeasy Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal Europe, Salon.com, and elsewhere. Her sixth book, Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, was pubished in the summer of 2007, and Undercover, her first novel for young adults, was recently released. Two more young adult novels are forthcoming. Please contact Beth Kephart through her blog, http://beth- kephart.blogspot.com.MAKE OF THE UNKNOWN AN ADVENTURE

There was, to begin, no apparent way up. The doors of the elevators had been sealed long ago. The stairs zinged this way and that, crossed over and through, circled back and endlessly in. Some enterprising soul had thrown a ladder up, but it was perched at a delirious angle. Someone had tried to launch a lavender kite, but its tail sagged sadly around the balustrade. There were precarious rope bridges tethered across the atrium. There were tunnels threaded east and also north. There were doors that were locked, there were rooms with no lights, there were windows blackened over, sealed shut. Hardly ever did the old phones ring. At Zenobia there was trouble.

“Excuse me,” Moira said, for she was new to this place and she had only just now made her way from her car, across the moat, to the guard at the turnstile. “How do I find room 133A?” She was wearing red shoes and a neat woolen dress. She was thinking about something her sister once said: No one has ever seen a black hole straight on. The evidence has forever been entirely indirect. Moira always remembered her sister’s best instructions at opportune times, for her sister was an astronomer who knew darkness as well as light.

“Room 133A?” repeated the guard, after mulling the question for a surprising stretch. “Room 133A follows 132B and precedes 135C. And just for the record, there’s no 134 nor, to my knowledge, a 135A or B. But that last part is just between you and me,” he said, lowering his voice. “Tell no one that I told you.”

Moira pushed her round glasses up the bridge of her nose, flipped back her bangs, and took in the scene—the ropey overpasses and crooked stairs, the forlorn kite tail, the smudge-colored tunnels. Arrows pointed in a thousand directions, but there was no way of divining their meaning. For whom had those arrows been hung and painted? Moira wondered. And when? It seemed to her to be some kind of code, the sort of thing a lucky archeologist might find in a prehistoric cave.

“But which way,” Moira said, hoping to be clearer this time, “might I go to find room 133A?”

“I’ve told you enough,” the guard said sulkily, as if he’d been asked that question a thousand times before. “Much more than enough for one day.”

Moira glanced at her watch. It was 8:10. The classified ad that had brought her to this place had presented but two key instructions: find room 133A and arrive no later than 9:00 a.m. That was it—no interview, no references, no vetting of her credentials—just a time and a room number. She had recently left a job that had bored her to tears. She had promised herself an adventure. This sounds appealingly odd, she had said to herself. But odd is one thing, somewhat mild. Zenobia, so far, was quite strange. Nevertheless, she boldly entered—through the turnstile, straight into the atrium.

“Thanks for your help,” Moira told the guard, and, reluctantly, he buzzed her in. Taking a left, Moira started walking. This would be, she decided, like finding her way through the night. And she had practice at that, the sort of grit that comes from years of persevering. She had, with glasses on, the keenest pair of eyes. She could see through mess and muddle. She could see what wasn’t there.