The Blind Men and the Elephant 136
| 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.
Elements of Style (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Elements of Style (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Elements of Style (Score:1)
I'm not sure if you're criticizing the use of lengthy words in general, or if you're saying that it was (in this particular case) too confusing to understand because of the vocabulary. I usually avoid big words for the sake of big words (read almost any academic journal). Sometimes, though, you can say something with one big word better than ten smaller words. (Poster is president of Wordsupply.com, after all).
As for the post itself, I'm in the middle of researching project management and pr
Re:Elements of Style (Score:3, Insightful)
Care to cite a passage of such? The biggest word I saw in the review was "prefabricated", and that's hardly a word that's cumbersome to the intended geeky audience.
Re:Elements of Style (Score:1, Offtopic)
Your post is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of Slashdot. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden to sedulously avoid it, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.
Ha! =P
Re:Elements of Style (Score:1)
Sorry (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sorry (Score:2)
Re:Sorry (Score:1)
I am one of two males on a team of over a dozen. The other male is my boss, generally thought of as "the boss" rather than as a teammate, and my cow-orkers are pretty much all in the "hi I'm fresh out of college and my name is Bambi wanna see my old sorority house photos?" stage. Don't tell my boss this, but if my teammates are groping, I'll stay on and work more or less for free.
For a reasonable $699 license fee, I'll generously give the whole
Re:Sorry (Score:1)
This is not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And the corollary is... (Score:1, Flamebait)
OK, all three female Slashdotters can flame me at once now. I'm ready...
Re:And the corollary is... (Score:1)
(As a sidenote, I almost made the funniest typo ever; "Tarding Spaces"
Re:And the corollary is... (Score:1)
Punk.
Re:This is not surprising (Score:1)
Some people can figure out the overall shape, and the other two can deal with the wrinkles?
I like this metaphor..
Re:This is not surprising (Score:1)
By analogy, it would take two blind people to survey the surface skin of an elephant, and then two other men to explore the functionality and limitations of its genitalia. It would take the remaining two men to successfully handle the wrinkles of the situation in such a way that they could harvest the productions of the elephant's workflow.
In short, Zoology is a fascinating area of fascination. And I truly believe that the analogous contents of its correlation t
And a second collorary is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Men tend to solve problems in this way, defining approximate solutions, slicing the problem into pieces and delegating the smaller tasks, focussing relentlessly on technical details, until the elephant has been hunted, killed, skinned, chopped, carried back, eaten, and the fat melted down into candle wax.
Women tend to solve problems by exchanging points of view and information, and arriving at approximate solutions by averaging the solutions they have learned about.
The difference is crystal clear: technical problems cannot be solved by "averages", social problems cannot be solved by "analysis" (unless you're a genius for understanding people).
Of course there are many man who think like women, and vice versa. Gender roles are not iron-clad, they are poles to which people stick more or less.
Both types of problem-solving skill are necessary in solving real-world problems, which are as often social as physical. I.e. if it's a real elephant you're hunting, it's a man's job. If you're constructing a new house, you really need to have a lot of discussion first.
Well-organized teams therefore mix women and men not because they are equal and equivalent (we are not), but because we're complementary.
You've got it way to gender based (Score:2)
It does no good to mix women and men on a project if all you get are people that think the same. The best idea is to mix a number of different styles on a projectt, even if that means all men or all women.
Personally I find the Meyers-Briggs definition for personality types to be pretty accurate - many companies have employees take this test to "learn how to
Re:You've got it way to gender based (Score:2)
Because it's simple and accurate and honest. Personality differences are not random or accidental, people are adapted to working in social teams of various kinds and the primary factor deciding what "role" someone will take is gender.
Since most teams are not built by psychologists, and most people are more complex than it is possible to pinpoint with a "category", profiling people with psychological tests prior to placing them in teams simply doe
Re:And a second collorary is... (Score:2)
I think it's what you get when you spend all day programming while drinking coffee, smoking and eating doughnuts.
graspee
Ugh (Score:5, Funny)
It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates.
Honestly, I don't really want to picture a bunch of geeks 'groping' around trying to 'reveal' something.
GMD
Re:Ugh (Score:2)
Yeah, same here. Sounds a little bit too much like a furry convention [coolfreepages.com] for my tastes.
Re:Ugh-Feelings (Score:1, Funny)
DAMN someone has cold hands!
or
Watch were you put those!
or
Who signed me up for this sensitivity training?
or
Is it bigger than a breadbox?
or
Wrinkle cream. Lots of wrinkle cream.
or
Help! Help! Somethings got me!
Groping Teammates? (Score:2, Funny)
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
Yeah, but how many teams can ge the Governor of California to participate?
elephant analogies (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the analogy was that each blind man felt a different part of the elephant and they couldn't reach a consensus on what it was, since all the parts felt different.
a different elephant analogy is that there is an elephant (a large problem) in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, so that no one has to deal with it.
The Blind Elephant Meaning/Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Blind Elephant Meaning/Problem (Score:1)
Re:elephant analogies (Score:1)
Re:elephant analogies (Score:2)
Proper analogy (Score:2)
The analogy works because the problem is the product is the elephant. Each developer cannot see the entire problem, product, or elephant, and must focus on their aspect of the problem, product, and elephant.
The idea is that with some sort of strategy and baseplan, a room full of developers can come out of the project with a single conclusion: An elephant, a product, and solution.
You are like me. (Score:1)
But are you able to avoid posting? Or is simply shouting "WTF!" enough for you?
Another review (Score:2, Informative)
Here's another review [niwotridge.com] on this book.
Re:Poem (Score:2)
It all makes sense now (Score:3, Funny)
It's this invisible elephant I will now use and cherish when I don't get my work done. I will not gleefully explain to my CTO when he asks about why routers bork, and systems go down, that - this invisible elephant sir, you don't understand. I don't think you cherish the value of dumping a high salary in my hands without trusting my judgment, and I sir believe in invisible elephants... Now about that raise
Re:It all makes sense now (Score:2)
Nice, but how about some concrete answers (Score:4, Informative)
Plus, you can probably dig up a used copy of it for super cheap, as appossed to lining some hack author's pockets.
So rely only on the classics? (Score:2)
Saying this book is only about a "cute 'invisible elephant'" analogy is like saying that The Mythical Man Month takes 300 pages to only say that there is no silver bullet for the problems of the dev cycle. My hope would be that newer books derive common ideas from the foundations of modern software engineering, like Brooks' works. Keep an open mind.
And (Score:2)
And people still wonder why programmers all get fired and replaced with marketing people.
Re:the poem (Score:1)
PARENT HAS REVOLUTIONS SPOILER INSERTED! (Score:2)
Is this what the customer really wants? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyhow, the developers keep insisting that the elephant is untenable and deadlines slip. Instead we roll out a beta elephant (which is really just a pile of dung molded to look like an elephant) and ask the client for feedback.
Naturally, the client has no buy in from the folks who are going to be using the elephant, so the change requests start pouring in until, budget exhausted, half the developers have been laid-off. At this point, the pile of dung does not look like an elephant but the client has spent so much money that, ala Emperors New Clothes, everybody marvels at what a great elephant it is. QED.
Re:Is this what the customer really wants? (Score:1)
"Have you shipped my ADSL modem yet?"
"I'm sorry, our system doesn't give us that information."
What kind of ordering/shipping system DOESN'T SAY WHEN THINGS HAVE BEEN SHIPPED, for CHRISSAKES!?!?!?!
Re:Is this what the customer really wants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well put.
I find it interesting that there are so many hostile responses to this book and/or review thus far. That more or less lets me know where most slashdotters are on the corporate totem pole. As I've recently started doing a great deal of project management work myself, many of the topics mentioned in the review that seem "fuzzy" or "stupid" merely reflect meta-generalizations about concepts and interactions that just don't enter into the strictly goal-oriented world of the people being managed.
Let me put that in a less obscure way: the day-to-day skills involved in molding order out of chaos when you're trying to get ten different people to achieve ten different but integrated goals, while simultaneously fielding nonsense requests from above and money strangulation from the side, are just not the same challenges that most people face. Hence talking about them sounds a great deal like mumbo-jumbo.
Or something like that.
Re:Is this what the customer really wants? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I do believe you are a project manager. How many times this week have you told the customer, "yes, we can do that" before checking with the boys to see if it's actually possible?
Re:Is this what the customer really wants? (Score:2)
Actually, just for the record, I manage a major scientific project. Making unachievable promises in my case is a perk of being one of the money-men and industry-liason types above me.
However, many of the concepts that are commonly thrown about in project management are meaningful and useful, even though they sound like crap upon first hearing them. I defend my use of the prefix "meta" - there are organizational skill sets which can be applied to a variety of project structures, regardless of the actua
Amazon... (Score:2)
Seriously, what a worthless review. It's all fluff and puff, and no actual substance. Next time, try reviewing a book that doesn't talk about "invisible" garbage.
Feel Good (Score:5, Insightful)
-theGreater Ranter.
Re:Feel Good (Score:2, Interesting)
Recently, it was found that the author of "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" is a fraud. The guys has no degree in psychology, though he still calls himself a PhD (only thing remotely close is an honorary degree from somewhere where he gave a speech - but they don't have a graduate program).
The author for this book seems to be cut from the same cloth. Calls himself an "expert" but has nothing to back up that claim except for that he teaches it.
Hmmm.... I t
Re:Feel Good (Score:4, Funny)
Have you even read this book? It's one of the greatest modern day studies of the differences between the sexes, and has helped millions of people understand their friends and partners better. This book has incredible value - it's even helped to get people I know laid. Just because something is obvious, does not mean that the techniques used to deal with it are obvious.
War is bad... *obviously* but dealing with it, and understanding it are two of the hardest takes humanity will face.
Re:Feel Good (Score:1)
The book (and all the other clone works it spawned) is even more galling because so many stupid Sleepers out there read it and believe it more-or-less unquestioningly. Oh, that's what Bob is thinking? Why didn't I know tha
Even without RTFA... (Score:5, Funny)
If the project is going to father other projects - start other issues and then wanders off leaving you to "take care of them", it is a male. You can then be assured that there's a prick and a couple of nuts on the project team.
If it creates more projects inside itself that it must nurture along until they take on a life of thier own, it is female. There's going to be a cunt and at leats a couple of dumb tits working on it.
In either case, however, there is always an asshole.
Soko
My dream last night... (Score:2)
Very very similar to that...
The analogy doesn't hold (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike the blind men, the programmers on a given project know what the finished product is supposed to be.
If you know you're building an elephant, and someone hands you the tail...you're not going to think the whole thing looks like a snake. Sorry.
This strikes me as nothing more than a cutesey metaphor laden book for your PHB.
Weaselmancer
The analogy does hold (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe not. There are probably hotshot programmers out there who might decide to put wheels on the elephant instead of legs, just to soup things up a bit.
After all, if you can assemble an elephant Lego(TM) style, you shouldn't be limited to just legs, right?
Re:The analogy doesn't hold (Score:1)
Ha-ha, you're funny. Pull the other one
Re:The analogy doesn't hold (Score:1)
Re:The analogy doesn't hold (Score:1)
Sometimes, trying to comprehend how some comments get modded up to +4 or +5 here on /. really makes my brain hurt. It's like someone goes trolling and people come al
Shameless Karma groping (Score:2, Informative)
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
Slightly different version (Score:2)
Once upon a time, there were five blind men who had the opportunity to experience an elephant for the first time. One approached the elephant, and, upon encountering one of its sturdy legs, stated, "Ah, an elephant is like a tree." The second, after exploring the trunk, said, "No, an elephant is like a strong hose." The third, grasping the tail, said "Fool! An elephant is like a rope!" The fourth, h
Re:Shameless Karma groping (Score:1)
Moral:
So Oft in Theologic Wars
The disputants I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen.
The comments here, commenting on a review of a book that, it seems, not one of the reviewers has seen, only proves the point of this verse.
Redundant analogy (Score:1)
Not originally Saxe's by a long shot (Score:5, Informative)
I for one... (Score:1)
Talk about a tangled up analogy (Score:2)
I can get the part of comparing employees to blind men, and I can follow that we're trying to understand something [the project] that we can't see, but the project is an elephant?? And what's more, it's not important that it's an elephant, but that we improperly deduce what it is in exactly the same way as six Indian blind men... (a fan, a spear, a snake, a wall, etc)
What really worries me now that I've heard the concept though, is
talk about sophsitry... (Score:1)
n.
1) Informal.
Excessively sentimental art or music.
2) Maudlin sentimentality.
3)Liquid fat, especially chicken fat.
The Sculptor and the Elephant (Score:1)
``How do you make an elephant from a big rock?''
``You just chisel away everything of the rock that doesn't look like an elephant.''
I usually start with a rock of old COBOL or sphagetti FORTRAN 66, and just chisel away everything that doesn't look like C code or Java or whatever.
We don't always get all (or any) of teh desired features, but we *do* end up with *very* small programs.
Sculpture and Caves (Score:1, Interesting)
Doing mantainance on others code is like spelunking. You drop-in, only seeing what your looking at for a while. Eventually you build a mental map and get to know your way around. Sometimes you only get to see part of the cave... I never try too hard to "imagine" the rest of the cave! Perhaps someone will tell you a bit about it or give you the general layout... Of course having a bright headlamp
Continuing the analogy further.... (Score:2, Funny)
A room of groping team mates... (Score:1)
Wilderness Exploration (Score:2, Informative)
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 hav
I was wondering (Score:1)
what a picture [riken.go.jp] of an invisible elephant looks like.
Thanks google image search!
Now I get it! (Score:2)
Similar to Peopleware? (Score:2)
From the same community (Score:1)
Six blind elephants and the man (Score:2)
The first wise, blind elephant felt the human, and declared, "Humans are flat."
The other wise, blind elephants, after similarly feeling the human, agreed.
Holy Cow! (Score:2)
Only she's taken the story and placed the six blind men in six different rooms, they don't know about each other, and only gives the information she feels each blind man needs to know.
Now build that elephant!
Micro managing noncommunicative hag that she is!
Sometimes she'll pass out the same project to two people just to see which one finishes it first. Nothing like duplication of work!
-Goran
Groping Teammates (Score:1)
RUMI is author of the Blind Men & The Elephant (Score:2, Informative)
An Elephant Is Soft and Mushy (Score:1)
Blind Views of one Blind View (Score:1)
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Saxe's poem was yet another version of the many different versions of the ancient Eastern fable. As with such fables, they hold true in many situations -- project work, and various posters to reviews of
Re:In case of /.ing (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:i have a story with a moral too (Score:1)
"Once upon a time, three friars decided to open a floral business. Everything went well for a time, but as things progressed, the other florists in the town got tired of the men of God stealing business from them. So, one day, the local Rotary club hired the local blacksmith, Hugh, to run the friars out of town. Which he did. With extreme prejudice.
The moral of the story, of course is Hugh, and only Hugh can prevent florist fri