“But Antinous who was the head and front of the offending lies low already. It was all his doing. … We will make everything good among ourselves, and pay you in full for all that we have eaten and drunk.”
~ The Odyssey - Book XXII (Samuel Butler Translation. p306)
Book 22 of The Odyssey is action-packed. Ulysses finally reveals himself, and with the help of his son, a couple of others, and the goddess Athena, he kills all the suitors (except two that he pardons because of Telemachus’s plea), starting with Antinous.
The moment Antinous is dead, the rest of the people change their loyalty and blame everything on him. They are ready to pay Ulysses for what they feasted on for years and more. This made me think about loyalty to leadership in today’s world. The scenario of people putting a lot of blame on a past leader plays out often, especially in the corporate world, in small and big ways. It may be more true in the tech industry, where things change quickly, new technologies often emerge, and leadership changes are frequent. It is probably more pronounced when the prior leader was more authoritarian than what people liked. Some leaders sacrifice themselves on the altar of getting every tiny detail right. Being authoritarian and directing everything from a central place often leads to burnout - for the leader as well as the team. So when a new person comes in and sets a different direction, everyone is happy to align. But my feeling is, more often than not, the reverse happens. A new leader comes in and sets a new direction that people who want the status quo don’t like. For the sake of their job, though, most agree to go along with the new direction.