TheBanyanTree: In cahoots with the mahouts: a reflection on leadership

[Peter Macinnis]

I don't think I shared this here -- it arose when I was teaching a few
years back, and I tripped over it tonight.

There are four ways to lead an elephant. 

You can walk beside the elephant, giving it guidance where necessary.  The
drawback is that occasionally, if you or the elephant don't take care, you
may get pushed sideways into a thorn bush, but that is generally just a
minor cost to pay for the benefit of having the elephant's services at your
disposal.  Mind you, it doesn't make you look all that important, because
all you do is help the elephant find the best way to get the work done.

You can walk in front, playing the part of pointy end - and run the risk of
being trampled by the pachydermatous following when some obstacle arises,
and you get shoved against a wall, or worse, you risk being rammed into a
thorn bush.  People will see that you are in charge, they will notice how
ragged you are getting (all those walls and thorn bushes), but they will
certainly hear the noises you make.

You can sit on the elephant's head, pulling at its ears with a hook,
guiding the elephant to go in the desired direction, occasionally talking
to it, even.  The elephant is free to belt you with its trunk, or scrape
you off by walking under a low bough, but it knows you have the hook.
Through no great effort, you have risen to a considerable height, for which
achievement, most elephant drivers will take full credit, and people can
most certainly see that you are in charge.

For risk-free leadership, you can walk behind the elephant with a slingshot
and a pocket full of pebbles, administering shocks to the rear to guide the
elephant back onto the right path when it strays.  This is fun, because the
elephant has no idea where it is supposed to go until you offer your
bolt-from-the-blue guidance directive when it goes the wrong way.
Analogous forms include the electric cattle-prod form of leadership and the
boot up the fundament form of leadership.  The problem here arises from
which business end of the elephant you are standing near, and the risk that
your guidance bolts may cause unwished-for sphincter activity.

All elephants and humans mentioned here are fictitious.  Any relationship
between any conjectured mahout, any hypothetical elephant and any living
specimen of humanity or pachydermicity is purely coincidental.  No leader
in the author's experience has ever smelt that way because of any shocks
they gave their elephants.  

Got that?  Now excuse me, I have to get on, as I keep feeling these sudden
sharp pains in my nether fetlocks.

peter


  _--|\    Peter Macinnis                  macinnis at ozemail.com.au
 /     \   Theoretical chair in Iatrogenic Epistemology (note: the 
 \.--._*   Practical Chair in this School was taken during a brief 
      v    lull in the music)  http://www.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis