The second Herculean management task

Task Two: Killing the Hydra of Lerna

The Hydra was a venomous, swamp-dwelling, multi-headed water snake. For the task of exterminating the serpent, Hercules is assigned a management trainee, Iolaus.

Hercules’ initial approach to tackling the Hydra is to employ the same strategy that had worked with the unfortunate Nemean lion. He plunges in directly, wielding arrows and club and the first couple of heads are successfully severed. The problem here is that the harder Hercules clubs away, the deeper he sinks into the foul mud of the swamp and, to complicate matters, for every severed head, the Hydra instantly grows two more. Iolaus persuades him to withdraw and conduct some form of mid-action review. Time out, buddy, you're making things worse.

Their eventual solution is crude but effective teamwork. Iolaus helps Hercules to brand each severed head in turn, thus cauterizing the bleeding and neutralizing the creature’s exponential reproductive powers. Hercules dips his arrows in the Hydra’s dying blood thereby equipping himself with a lethal set of missiles for subsequent encounters.

A couple of things seem to be happening here. Firstly, our hero has encountered the familiar management syndrome of ‘the more you succeed, the worse the problem gets’. The more accounting errors we uncover, the more we are aware of on the next project. The more controls we put in place, the more deviously they are circumvented. He is forced by a junior but perceptive team member to back off and then tackle the problem closer to its root cause. He is fortunate in that Plan B, robustly implemented, proves too much for the exhausted serpent.

Saved from his own strength, Hercules is free to move to his next task.