Hephaestus is the God of the forge, armorer to the Gods (Vulcan in the Roman Mythology), the forger of the armor of Achilles which is invincible and the creator of Athena’s shield which is invulnerable.
Hephaestus works the magic of the smithy and produces the brightest, illumined arms from dross material. He works in the bowels of the operations. He is lame, having been dropped from heaven by his mother (Hera).
So what business lessons here?
In the contemporary corporation the forge was once upon a time, accounting and finance; now it is systems and technology; closely wed to finance. Hephaestus is the CIO, the director of systems, the technology guru, and sweats over the data forge attempting to make invincible armor for the enterprise.
Intel was founded in 1971 and we now have decades of legacy dross data in most enterprises and not exactly sure what to do with it. And often our forgers are a bit lame (read grumpy and stubborn here) but they have the metallurgy for making the brightest armor.
This is called in our current world Business Intelligence (BI).
New Year suggestion: make friends with Hephaestus and do your research and homework on the metallurgy necessary for your enterprise be it big or small.
