Unless you have been living in a cave (or have better things to do than attend to happenings in the Marvel universe) you know that Thor, the Thunder God of Norse mythology and compelling hero of three blockbuster movies, is now a woman. But the topic of gender, as much as it may have swept the denizens of Comicon into an uproar, is not what occupied my attention.
Rather, I could not stop thinking about the nature of the character – man or woman.
The modern incarnation of Thor was created by Marvel comics in 1962. Thor, the son of Odin, lord of the Asgardian gods, was intended by his father to take up his mantle of protector when he was worthy. A hammer, forged in the heat of a star, was created and bore the legend Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.
Recently, I read a CNN interview with Jason Aaron, the writer behind the new Thor, recently revealed in the issue designated Thor #1, and I became aware of just how much Thor has in common with most CEOs.
“Worthiness,” Aaron stated, “was a big theme for Thor. The idea that he’d wake up every morning and look at that hammer, and not know if he could pick it up, then that means, one day, he wouldn’t pick it up.”
Among all the superheroes, Thor was the only one who had to prove himself daily at the risk of losing everything he had worked so hard to build.
His past achievements counted for nothing. All that mattered was whether he was still up to the challenges to come.
There is not one CEO who can’t sympathize.
It’s not so much the financial statements that matter, it’s the projections.
How are we going to get there? How are we going to get better?
Now, at the end of 2014’s fourth quarter, each of us has to look squarely at 2015 and ask these same questions.
We may have accomplished much, but the road behind us is not our focus – it’s will we be worthy tomorrow?
We’ve learned that the question can be daunting even for a thunder god. How much more so for us mere mortals?