The Blind Men and the Elephant

David McClintock writes "In David A. Schmaltz's new book, The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work, we find a powerful metaphor for the collaborative work involved in software or systems development. The metaphor is simple -- like the book title, it comes from John Godfrey Saxe's famous poem about the six blind men from Indostan. Simply put, Schmaltz is saying that your project is an invisible elephant. It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates." Read on for McClintock's review to see how well the analogy stands.

The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work
author	David A. Schmaltz
pages	160
publisher	Berrett-Koehler
rating	10
reviewer	David McClintock
ISBN	1576752534
summary	With a powerful central metaphor, Schmaltz shows how to make your collaborative projects personally rewarding.

Each participant on a collaborative project encounters a piece of that project, rarely the whole elephant. We grasp whatever we can -- an ear, a tail, a trunk, a leg, a tusk, a broad, flat side. Based on what we grasp (our piece of the project) we extrapolate an understanding of the whole: a fan, a rope, a snake, a tree, a spear, a wall. Schmaltz develops these analogies in terms of project experience. We encounter a fan that brings us fresh air, a rope that binds us together, a snake that abuses our trust, a tree that evolves in structure above and beneath the surface, a spear that puts us on the defensive, a wall that challenges our personal progress. A chapter is devoted to each analogy.

This isn't a storybook, though. These simple metaphors are touchstones for Schmaltz's broad exploration of what makes projects meaningful. Schmaltz sheds light on the dark matter of project management -- the stuff that blocks us from succeeding on projects as individuals and as teams. He even leads us through the panicked self-talk that runs through a manager's head at the start of a project. With rich writing that's rare in management books, Schmaltz gives us a 360-degree view of project management itself -- project management is this book's invisible elephant. The elephant emerges.

You won't find any worksheets, diagrams, flow charts, procedures, instructions, or textbook problems in this book. Schmaltz gives us something more valuable and memorable: fresh ways to think about how we approach and manage projects. For example, managers should encourage each person to find a personal project within each project, something personally "juicy" to sustain interest and make the effort valuable. Going beyond the stated objectives of a project, each of us needs to ask ourself, "What do you want?" -- and to keep asking that until our personal goals emerge. These goals don't compete with the team's purpose -- they bind us to the project's success. This is the process of what Schmaltz calls "finding your wall."

Just as managers should encourage this kind of buy-in rather than try to externally motivate a team, managers should not impose a prefabricated structure onto a team. Schmaltz argues that when people find a personally juicy goal within a project, they will strive to organize their efforts in an efficient, organic manner -- without taking that twenty-volume project methodology off the shelf.

On a person-to-person level, Schmaltz asserts that despite the risk of getting cheated by snake-like deceivers, project members are most wise to interpret people's actions generously, assuming the best and freely offering trust and help. Using the results of a computer programming competition in which the Prisoner's Dilemma was solved by having the imprisoned conspirators refuse to implicate each other, Schmaltz shows that offering trust as a first principle can lead to bigger win-wins, more often.

Schmaltz consults on high-tech projects through his firm, True North project guidance strategies, based in Walla Walla, Washington. He hosts the Heretic's Forum, a Web space designed to "capture dangerously sane ideas." In addition to his periodic newsletter, Compass, he has published one previous book, This Isn't a Cookbook.

That invisible elephant, the powerful analogy at the center of this book, will enrich the way you approach new projects and reconsider problems -- especially the parts of problems that remain invisible to you on current projects. As Schmaltz wishes in a sort of benediction, "May this elephant emerge whenever you engage."

---

Reviewer David McClintock is president of Wordsupply.com. You can purchase The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Another review

[armando_wall3]

Here's another review [niwotridge.com] on this book.

Nice, but how about some concrete answers

[1ns4n3c4rb0nb4s3dl1f]

Sure, it's nice to think about a book that you "don't need charts or diagrams" for, but for practical help with project management, there's the old standby, Fredrick P. Brooks The Mythical Man Month [amazon.com]. That book alone has been the most helpful thing to me at my current job in managing projects, requirements, and all that. This book about an "invisible elephant" may have a cute analogy, but The Mythical Man Month will actually help you out.

Plus, you can probably dig up a used copy of it for super cheap, as appossed to lining some hack author's pockets.

Shameless Karma groping

[eclectro]

Here is the poem;

The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he:
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Not originally Saxe's by a long shot

[Prien715]

The poem may be Saxe's but story itself is much older than that. It originates from Indian philosophy and illustrates the doctrine of Anekanta or many sidedness of reality. The doctrine itself is essential to Jainism but many scholars are unsure whether it has Jain or Buddhist roots. For a copy of the original story (much older than the 19th century) go here [newphysics2000.org]

Wilderness Exploration

[Morris Schneiderman]

The bit about encouraging each person on the team to find something in the project that really motivates him or her, really makes sense.

But other than that, the concept of a bunch of people trying to 'reveal the elephant' through individual efforts is probably why so many projects fail or produce sub-optimal results.

Projects vary in many ways. The most significant is often Uncertainty. Towards one end of the continuum we have the Recipe Book project:- "We've done something very similar before - we have the recipe and we know how to follow it". Towards the other end, we have the Wilderness Exploration project:- "We have an idea of where we want to end up, but we really don't know how we will get there, how long the journey will take, nor what adventures may arise on the way."

There are a host of skills and techniques that can help in such situations. One of the most applicable general methodologies that I've learned is the Canadain Method. It was first introduced (so far as I know) to capture Vimy Ridge in World War One. The capture took one day and cost the Canadians 3,500 fatalities and 7,000 wounded. British and French efforts had previously cost over 200,000 lives and produced no significant results during two years.

Twenty plus years of leading projects has given me considerable insight into "The Art and Science of Making the Future Happen."

If you want to read the first chapter of the distillation of this experience, you can find it at: http://www.ProjectsDoneRight.com/pdr/pdrBook.asp [projectsdoneright.com]

RUMI is author of the Blind Men & The Elephant

[Johnny Pissoff]

The 13th century Persian Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi was the original author of the poem-parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant in the form which is most widely known. It occurs in his massive and delightful Mathnawi (Persian pronuciation: Masnevi.) Previously it appeared in a different form in the influential scholar/Sufi/theologian/philosopher Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali's (d. 1111) compendium the Ihya `Ulum al-Din (The Revivification of the Religious Sciences). The ultimate origin of the parable is a teaching story from the Buddhist Pali Udana.

Here's A.J. Arberry's translation (Though the standard translation, at least the one that most Persianists use is R.A. Nicholson's translation but while I have a hard copy I can't find the text on the net for convenient copying and pasting. Nicholson was Arberry's teacher. Incidentally, you'll search in vain to find a better translation of the Qur'an than Arberry's "The Koran Interpreted" despite it's use of archaisms-not too heavy though) with a few of my changes.

The Elephant in the dark, on the reconciliation of opposites

SOME Hindus had brought an elephant for exhibition and placed it in a dark house. Crowds of people were going into that dark place to see the beat. Finding that visual inspection was impossible, each visitor felt it with his palm in the darkness.

The palm of one fell on the trunk.

'This creature is like a water-spout,' he said.

The hand of another lighted on the elephant's ear. To him the beat was evidently like a fan.

Another rubbed against its leg.

'I found the elephant's shape is like a pillar,' he said.

Another laid his hand on its back.

'Certainly this elephant was like a throne,' he said.

The sensual eye* is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the best.

The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: of amazing! You behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water.

* sensual meaning the eye of sense perception, sensual is Arberry's translation.