74. The Elephant: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts

In 1873, John Godfrey Saxe, an American poet, published a poem based on an ancient Indian fable about six blind men who were asked to describe an elephant by touch. One man said it was a wall, another a spear, another a snake, another a tree, another a fan, and the last man a rope. The final stanza of the poem concludes:

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!^F74.1

The point of both the poem and the fable is to demonstrate the importance of seeing objects—as well as objectives—from an overarching view instead of just as component parts; to see the forest, not just the trees.

Contextual perception also applies to presentations. Conventionally, people in business view a presentation as the individual parts of an elephant. One person describes it as the story, another as the slides, another as the delivery, and yet another as the handling of tough questions.

However, a well-told story can be ruined by a slide show that resembles a doctoral dissertation on quantum physics, or by a presenter stricken by the fear of public speaking, or by a zinger question from the audience.

The presenter must manage every one of these elements. More important, the presenter must integrate every one of these elements with each of the other elements, or any one of them can backfire and ruin the entire presentation.

The presentation is the elephant.