{"id":1000,"date":"2011-09-03T18:49:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T18:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1000"},"modified":"2011-09-03T18:49:18","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T18:49:18","slug":"the-blind-men-and-the-elephant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1000","title":{"rendered":"Three Blind Men and an Elephant"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blind Men and the Elephant Story\u00a0\u00a0 – <\/strong>adapted from the poem by John Godfrey Saxe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“Three blind men were discussing exactly what they believed an elephant to be, since each had heard how strange the creature was, yet none had ever seen one before. So the blind men agreed to find an elephant and discover what the animal was really like. It did not take the blind men long to find an elephant at a nearby market. The first blind man approached the animal and felt the elephant’s firm flat side. “It seems to me that an elephant is just like a wall,” he said to his friends. The second blind man reached out and touched one of the elephant’s tusks. “No, this is round and smooth and sharp – an elephant is like a spear.” Intrigued, the third blind man stepped up to the elephant and touched its trunk. “Well, I can’t agree with either of you; I feel a squirming writhing thing – surely an elephant is just like a snake.” All three blind men continued to argue, based on their own individual experiences, as to what they thought an elephant was like. It was an argument that they were never able to resolve. Each of them was concerned only with their own experience. None of them could see the full picture, and none could appreciate any of the other points of view. Each man saw the elephant as something quite different, and while each blind man was correct they could not agree.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Elephant\u00a0in this parable is the NHS\u00a0and the three blind men are Governance, Operations and Finance. Each is blind because\u00a0he does not see reality clearly\u00a0–\u00a0his\u00a0perception\u00a0is limited to assumptions and crippled by distorted\u00a0data. The three\u00a0blind men cannot agree because they\u00a0do not\u00a0share a\u00a0common understanding of the\u00a0system;\u00a0its parts and its relationships.\u00a0Each\u00a0is looking at a multi-dimensional entity from one dimension only and for each there is no obvious\u00a0way forward.\u00a0So while they appear to be in conflict about the “how” they are\u00a0paradoxically in agreement about the “why”. The outcome is\u00a0a fruitless and\u00a0wasteful\u00a0series of\u00a0acrimonious arguments,\u00a0meaningless meetings and directionless\u00a0discussions.\u00a0 It is not until they\u00a0declare\u00a0their common\u00a0purpose that their differences of opinion are seen in a\u00a0realistic\u00a0perspective and as an opportunity to share and to learn and to create an collective understanding that is greater than the sum of the parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Blind Men and the Elephant Story\u00a0\u00a0 – adapted from the poem by John Godfrey Saxe. \u00a0“Three blind men were discussing exactly what they believed an elephant to be, since each had heard how strange the creature was, yet none had ever seen one before. So the blind men agreed to find an elephant and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Three Blind Men and an Elephant”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,21,22,30,35,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-governance","category-healthcare","category-operations","category-reflections","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}