Perspective

"So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!"

I have come to believe that business transformation is like the Indian Elephant Story. Over the years, I've spoken with and listened to many different "customer" groups. Each group of customers I encountered seemed to carry similar perspectives or bias about the program. Perspective, I've found, really depends on what part of the Transformation elephant a person is standing next to. I've developed a sense for text I read and speeches I hear. I can usually tell which community wrote a piece or delivered a speech based on the language and assertions.

The acquisition community, the program management community, the leadership community, the architecture community, the financial community, the GAO, the Joint staff... each has their own slant. Some are more vocal than others. All are correct from their perspective.

Trying to present the whole elephant is difficult to do when the "ear" group is hollering at the "tail" group, who is hollering at the "trunk" group, etc. As one trying to understand the whole elephant, you may find that the hollering back and forth between the "ear" people, the "trunk" people and the "tail people, etc can get pretty loud and confusing.

The subject is important enough to read about, but I advise the researcher to read from a variety of sources and look for the problem and the root cause of the problem that we are trying to solve. Consider that every published work - including my own, is a perspective.

Look at what the IBM group wrote about Business Transformation here.

See some of the other stories I've posted from GAO reports, congressional testimony, etc here.

You have this Blog to browse through. And I encourage you to take a look at another piece of the Business Transformation elephant as well - the one from the Army's perspective.