Okay, sorry, but this was too interesting. There’s a book out, by a
consultant that lives in Walla Walla, called “The Blind Men and the
Elephant: Mastering Project Work”, and here’s a review on Slashdot:
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.”
http://books.slashdot.org/books/03/12/03/0413225.shtml?tid=187&tid=188&tid=192