POV playbook

Have you heard the story of the elephant and the six blind men?

Six blind men encounter an elephant for the first time.

Each man feels a different part of the elephant and tries to work out what type of animal it is.

One feels the trunk and says it is like a snake

One feels the leg and says it is like a tree

One feels the ear and says it is like a fan

One feels the side and says it is like a wall

One feels the tail and says it is like a rope

One feels the tusk and says it feels like a spear

They argue for a while because they each believe they are right.

They were each right about what they had experienced, but none of them had experienced the whole elephant.

It is meant to be a lesson about our perspective being shaped by what we as individuals see and experience. Two people can encounter the same thing and reach very different conclusions.

Another example is when Dr. Gabor Maté said that no two siblings have the same parents. They may grow up in the same household, but they don’t necessarily experience the same parents. Birth order, circumstances, and temperament can change the experience.

The challenge isn’t that everyone has a perspective. It is the believing that our own perspective is the whole truth.

If the six men could feel the whole elephant, would their perspective change?

This is a form of thinking that complaints managers must wear on a daily basis.

When weighing the merits of a case, they must wear :

• the customer hat - what was their experience?

• the client hat - what obligations, expectations or risks are relevant?

• the business hat - what process, policy or constraint shaped what happened?

• the evidence hat - what can we actually prove?

• our own hat - what are we bringing into the interpretation?

This is partly why the regulations call on complaints management to be fair, objective, reasonable and evidence-based.

Evidence helps us work out what actually happened and challenge the imbalance between interpretation and fact.

Perspective tells us how something was experienced. Evidence helps us validate it.