There is a book on project management titled Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work. This is one on my least favorite PM books for all the reasons in the review.I came across the page below while building materials for Essential Views activities for DoD programs.
What I like about this picture, I also like about many other approaches to the simple and simple-minded approaches to complex problems in complex programs. It inverts the argument. The author of Blind Men assumes those on the elephant can't figure out that they are touching an elephant. They are missing the Systems Engineering aspects of their project. This is a common approach. Point out a problem - a real problem - but provide the wrong solution.
The solution to the Blind Men and the Elephant problem is to institute a Systems Engineering approach to the problem. Turn on the lights, stand back and look at the big picture, see the problem as a whole not as a set of disconnected parts.
