The difference, the difference makes <br>AKA<br>Power of perspectives

For a change I am going to retell a story - The story of six blind man and an elephant.

There were six blind men and they embarked on a quest of finding how the elephant would be. Since they were blind, to get a picture of how the elephant would be like, they have to start feeling the animal. The elephant being huge, the 5 of them feeling around the animal at different places.

The first blind man walked over to see how this thing would be. He bumped himself into the side of the elephant. He put out his arms to either side, but all he could feel was the big body of the elephant. So he claimed that the elephant is like a wall.

The second blind man walked over to the front and grabbed the trunk of the elephant. He started screaming and wailing. "Elephant is like a wall! That is ridiculous. This is like a snake. Step back! Step back! Just in case that this thing is poisonous".

The third blind man who perched himself at the back of the elephant, felt its tail. He says, "Hey you two. There is no wall or snake. You both are wrong and please don't fear. Elephant is like a rope and seems very harmless".

The fourth man started feeling the legs and of course, he had pass a judgment too. He declared, "The elephant is but four tree trunks. No wall, no snake and of course, no rope either. Lets move on now."

The fifth man went over to the front and started feeling its tusks. "I feel two sword like things. Strong and smooth. Is this animal like a sword?". Finally a question, instead of a declaration!!

Are any of them wrong? How can all of be so incorrect and yet so correct!

Wonder what happened to the sixth man? He was quietly listening to all this. He heard and realized that the 5 of them walked off in different directions and felt the animal. He was triggered by the question the fifth man threw out open and started wondering aloud and threw a question of his own.

"Guys, what if you are all true. What if the elephant is all that you said?".

There were objections and chaos, the primary reason being, the elephant could not be all of this since the animal would have to be really huge if it has to be all of what was described.

The sixth man, apparently the wiser and more creative of the lot, asked, "Well, why cant it be huge? Why are we curtailing our thoughts with the invisible restrictions? There is no rule that an animal could be only this big. What if we are all in front of the biggest animal on earth?".

The other 5 had to agree. It takes a some listening, some observation and some thinking to put all of the different pieces together.

You see, difference of opinion always helps if we take it constructively. The difference, really makes a huge difference in getting the complete picture. Multiple perspectives allow us to attack the issue from various fronts and dig out the strengths and complement the weakness. That is the power of having multiple perspectives. But do we as one single individual generate as many perspectives? In my opinion that is not possible. And here is where the wisdom of crowd pitches in. Precisely the reason why there is a jury of 12 men (or rather people) - with different backgrounds, education profile and ethnicity. In recent years, women are a part of jury. Now, corporations find that having such differences is important. They find that it is more effective to have at least a woman on board or in a team. The pull and push between the basic nature of men and women compensate so beautifully in a team. The woman in the team pulls the reins on the aggressive schedules which is typical of a man. The over-meticulous attitude of woman is complemented by get-it-done-fast-and-neat attitude of men.

But jury and corporations bring in differences by choice, not by chance. There is a process around working with differences. Even if the differences get bigger and unworkable, there is a process of iron-hand-sorting - basically remove people who have too rigid opinions. The loss is not very high for the institutions and could afford the luxury having differences with a certain risk factor.

How do we react when it happens by chance in a personal environment? Do we cope with it well? I am afraid the answer would have to be a no. We do not do too well on that front. We feel threatened and we are afraid of losing our "face" since our opinions are what we are when we come to our personal front. While having different opinions is encouraged in an controlled , professional environment, we shy away from that in an intimate relationship. We feel the risk is too high to cope with. We ignore that there are differences and try to work around it. The best path to solution of a problem is through it and not around it. We fail to realize.

All this happens because we feel we are the set of opinions we have. We are more than our opinions. We should be having opinions yes, but weakly held - not weak enough to accept things we don't believe but not strong enough to be blind to other facets.