WHAT COULD THE GREEK GODS HAVE DONE IN MANAGEMENT ROLES TODAY

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
American spiritual teacher, author and lecturer Marianne Williamson

I have long had a fascination with the Greek Gods and particularly in the way that they were so good at allocating responsibilities across their team members, ensuring that every element of mankind’s needs was well covered.

I have also recently been swamped on Facebook with seductive questionnaires that have established for me that, amongst other things, I would have been a tailor in medieval times, that my animal is a wolf, that my bird is an eagle, that my city is Paris, that my colour is purple and that my true psychological age is 32.

It made me wonder, along similar hypothetical lines, about where the Greek gods could have slotted, had they come down to earth, and rather than coupling with some hapless humans to create demi-gods as they normally did when visiting, they had instead spent their time more wisely and completed some personal management development, such as an MBA, and then entered the business world.

Would their individual skills, together with their newly found business knowledge have equipped them well for a corporate career in management ?

Here are 10 of my favourite Greek gods, and my recommendations for their business career options:

– Aphrodite … Goddess of Love, Beauty, Desire and Pleasure would have definitely been ready-made for a role in Marketing, whose practitioners generally see themselves as being creators of beauty and pleasure in everything that comes out of their creative temple, whether it is TV advertising, sales literature, web-site design or T-shirts, coffee mugs and sweat band giveaways.

By Lepota; CC BY-SA 2.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

– Apollo … God of Music, Arts, Knowledge, Healing, Plague and Poetry would have been perfect for a role in Human Resources as no other part of any organisation would see poetry or healing as being part of the job description. I have also many times heard managers from different parts of the organisation make statements such as “a plague on the house of HR for saddling me with yet another employee satisfaction survey.”

By Saw1998; CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

– Ares … God of War, Bloodshed, and Violence would have been ready for a career as a VP of Sales, as many sales organisations (at least according to the customers) are known for leaving a trail of destruction behind them, and most sales managers tend to see Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” as their bible for human interaction, (see “Sun Tzu would go broke today” posted October 3, 2011).

By Phe; via Wikimedia Commons

– Artemis … Goddess of Hunt, Wilderness and Animals seems destined to be the Head of Corporate Overlay in a matrix organisation, as these acolytes seem to spend most of their time hunting for time-killing reports and activities to foist on those parts of the organisation that actually do something to benefit the business, just to justify their own existence and to save being banished to the wilderness of oblivion, where they truly belong (see “Stupid management ideas” posted August 29, 2011).

– Athena … Goddess of Intelligence, Skill, Battle Strategy and Wisdom would seem most suited to a career in one of the large Consulting Organisations such as McKinsey or Accenture, who tend to be peopled with highly intelligent, skilled people who can sell the same strategy document multiple times to large numbers of different organisations in diverse industries, and have the wisdom to do this in a way that enables them to deliver this service at massively inflated costs by convincing clients of the uniqueness of their battle formation.

– Dionysus … God of Wine, Parties, Madness, Chaos, Drunkenness and Drugs and was obviously built for a career in Partnerships and Alliances, who generally seem to believe that the way to build long term business relationships and loyalty is based on providing large amounts of alcohol, entrance to corporate boxes at sporting events, mid-week golf tournaments and the possession of photographs of executives in the partner organisations in compromising situations.

By © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5

– Hades … God of the Underworld and The Dead would be perfectly placed for a career in any Public Sector Tax Authority, who seem to have an uncanny ability to regularly bring down new near-death forms of taxation thus ensuring that as few people as possible have any chance of financial longevity. Unlike taxation authorities, other blood-sucking leeches will actually drop off when there is no more blood left in their victims.

Author: Prevezamuseum; via Wikimedia Commons

– Hermes … God of Boundaries, Travel, Communications, Language and Writing would have been perfect for a management role in Corporate Communications, particularly with having some increasingly rare skills in the use of language both written and oral, which are two areas under considerable threat with our love of abbreviations, texting, twitter boundaries, and blogging brevity (see “Abbreviation is gr8tly changing our world” posted April 16, 2012).

– Poseidon … God of Seas, Rivers, Floods and Droughts seems to have all the characteristics needed for a senior role in Corporate Finance, who are generally in charge of controlling the “feast or famine” approach to budgeting. They also have an ability to generate a sea of indecipherable data, flood management with queries about their travel and entertainment expenses and dry up any joy in a room simply by entering.

By Arman musikyan (own work); CC BY-SA 3.0 license; via Wikimedia Commons

– Zeus … King of the Gods, Sky, Weather, Thunder, Lightning, Law, Order and Justice is definitely in line for the role of a Global CEO, although a very autocratic one, as he was known to eat his children, or at the least banish them from Olympus when they displeased him or when they didn’t do what he asked or expected of them.

In the words of French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) “If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.”