The ancient Indian parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men, who come across an elephant for the first time.
Each describes what they encounter.
The first blind man walks into the side of the elephant. He says, ‘An elephant is like a wall’.
The second blind man feels the elephant’s trunk. He says, ‘No, an elephant is like a snake’.
The third blind man feels the leg. He says, ‘You’re both wrong, an elephant is like a tree’.
The fourth blind man feels the tusk. He says, ‘Sorry, but an elephant is like a spear’.
The fifth blind man feels the elephant’s tail. He says, ‘You’re all wrong! An elephant is like a piece of rope’.
I was reminded of this story recently when trying to explain why organisations made up of many functions and specialist teams often have trouble defining a holistic view of their customer’s experience.
It perfectly illustrates how we tend to view our partial experiences as the whole truth and ignore other people's. As each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, so each team has different touch points along the customer’s journey which will never fully describe exactly what an elephant is or, indeed the whole customer experience.
Perception and bias
In addition, different people can have very different perceptions of the same thing. And, individual biases can also lead some people to only ever see what they believe to be true, even when presented with the whole elephant. In practice, this can often lead to miscommunication and mistrust.
For teams discussing ways to explore the whole customer experience, consider that one may be partially right with partial information, but unless you have all the information you’ll never have the complete picture. So, unless one views the elephant through the eyes of the customer you’ll never see things from their perspective and will continue to be blind.
For anyone who’s interested here’s a link to ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ – A Poem by John Godfrey Saxe.
Picture credit: robertwwilliams.wordpress.com
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