love, life, school and coffee.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Professional Storyteller

N is currently doing his Juris Doctor degree in SMU. This is a post-graduate degree in law designed for students with no prior undergrad law experience. After spending over a term in SMU, he remarked to me how being a lawyer was like being a storyteller, “You tell the judge the facts of the case. You tell the judge other cases which have similar circumstances. You tell the judge what the punishments were like in those other cases and then you tell him why your client should face a similar or lighter punishment.”

I told him that telling a story is basically what most professionals do. The doctor tells the story of the patient’s health based on what he observes of the patient. The accountant tells the story of the company’s financial health based on what he gathers from the financial statements. The engineer tells the story of the machinery or the processes, what their yields are, how much downtime they should be expecting in the coming months, the total productivity, based on their own monitoring.

I discussed with my dad how we studied so many years, to the point of achieving degrees, just to tell stories. It seemed silly to me that one has to study so long just to be able to tell stories. He didn’t dispute that professionals are paid by the society to tell stories. However, it is not the story itself, but how the story was derived that is the reason professionals are paid so highly by society. He brought 3 reasons why we require so many years of education to tell stories.

“You studied all the way to university to train your mind to think critically and analytically. Unlike skills which can be learnt given enough training, analytical thinking allows your mind to grasp new situations and assess them based on previous experience to figure out a solution. Analysis allows an adaptability to respond to situations that you have not seen before. Professionals are paid based on how well they can analyse, even though all of them might have this pre-requisite of being able to tell the story.” I thought about it, it’s true that the best accountants are not those who can only say, “Based on the cash flow and profit figures, this company is doing well.” The best accountants are those who can tell what exactly is providing the biggest profit margin, which items are costing the most to hold as inventory and what aspects of the business might pull the company down if it was not carefully monitored. Both accountants had access to the same financial statements and management accounts, but while the stories are similar, the better accountant fleshes out his story like a work of art.

To be a good professional, one needs to continuously build up his “story vocabulary” based on his experience and training. Part of this vocabulary is formed in university: accountants have their financial ratios and lawyers have their landmark cases. The story vocabulary forms a handy toolkit for the professional to study the situation and flesh out his story and thus become a better professional. Part of the reason for such a lengthy period of study before students are conferred their graduate degrees is to build up a large enough toolbox to provide useful contributions to society.

Combining the skills above, studying in the university trains the student professional to notice every new situation, observe the factors contributing to the new situation, analyse possible learning points and finally archive them into his “story vocabulary”. University was supposed to serve as a starting platform for the individual to continue lifelong learning.

The analysis and the building up of the toolbox was part of the reason I enjoyed my time in university and working as a financial controller in L company. I took each new situation as a way to expand my toolbox and of course it helped that my group mates and later on my supervisors were more than happy to contribute to my learning experience by guiding me and arguing the relative merits of each course of action. Even though I spent a large portion of my youth *just to get a degree*, I’m quite glad it now allows me to flesh out my stories and tell them well. –Jimmy

Continued in the other blog.