The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work - Softcover

Schmaltz, David A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576752534 ISBN 13: 9781576752531

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

If you work, you probably manage projects every day-even if "project manager" isn't in your official title-and you know how frustrating the experience can be. Using the familiar story of six blind men failing to describe an elephant to each other as a metaphor, David Schmaltz brilliantly identifies the true root cause of the difficulties in project work: "incoherence" (the inability of a group of people to make common meaning from their common experience).
Schmaltz exposes such oft-cited difficulties as poor planning, weak leadership, and fickle customers as poor excuses for project failure, providing a set of simple, project coherence-building techniques that anyone can use to achieve success. He explains how "wickedness" develops when a team over-relies on their leader for guidance rather than tapping their true source of power and authority-the individual.
The Blind Men and the Elephant explores just how much influence is completely within each individual's control. Using real-world stories, Schmaltz undermines the excuses that may be keeping you trapped in meaningless work, offering practical guidance for overcoming the inevitable difficulties of project work.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID A. SCHMALTZ had no idea what he was getting into when he volunteered to help clean up the mess following a bungled computer system conversion back in the ’70s. He found that his back- ground as a freelance singer-songwriter and a pot washer prepared him well for the realities of project work. While helping to clean up the conversion mess, he started looking for but couldn’t find much practical information about what makes projects work. He found instead endless recipes that seemed certain to cause messes like the one he was cleaning up. Between the fantasy that people should be able to accurately estimate novel efforts, the notion of “planning the work and working the plan,” and the vacuous idea that on- time, on-budget, on-spec could meaningfully measure success, he concluded that project management theory offered a nearly total lack of real-world utility. “The most popular placebo in business today,” he calls it. Nearly a quarter-century of experience hasn’t changed David’s opinion.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT
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 he 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!
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!
—John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

Edition details

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1576752534
• ISBN 13: 9781576752531
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160