Observation: Balancing Act Between Informing and Inspiring

 I never liked school.

I hated studying the thick volumes of textbooks of facts and numbers to be regurgitated verbatim back into tests. Because of the way questions were asked in multiple choice, rather than absorbing information, it became more about memorizing pieces of truncated data points word for word. I didn't grow up studying in the American education system and where I grew up (Malaysia), I felt that it was much more rigid, with less freedom for creativity and more focus on black and white answers. I recall being thrilled and astounded when I went to college here and being asked to write open-ended answers and essays. Being graded subjectively on how I chose to answer a question versus the actual answer. There were no absolute right or wrongs, everything was arguable and shades of gray, it was liberating.

I also remember being told that some students were terrified of this, trained in the education system of black and white facts. Unsure of how to answer an open-ended essay question, they would simply memorize entire paragraphs from their textbooks and literally rewrite exactly what the textbooks would say, much to the chagrin of professors who would receive carbon copies of identical essays which were basically just handwritten copies of the reading material they assigned.

Now in the corporate world, this mentality has become extremely relevant, especially in my field. The difference between data points and story telling. People who hide behind data or can't seem to actually make sense or use the information they have been given. You see presentations full of statistics and numbers, regurgitation of white papers and reports and data they have pulled. Informational certainly, but like the baffled professors of my college years, wasn't answering the question. They wanted the point of view of the writer, that important quality and filter of perspective that differentiates a human being from a text book. That's when data becomes insights or strategy - when it becomes interesting. That's what the human truth is all about, the big aha. It's extremely simple in the zen way that most insights are - to learn something you didn't realize you knew. That's why people argue most insights aren't new, they're just articulated in a way that resonates and inspires, but it's a known truth by everyone because well, it was sourced from data points from everyone.

I alluded to this briefly in this post on where to find insights. I mentioned you could pretty much find insights anywhere e.g. watching commercials. I can honestly say that the majority, at least 90%, of the knowledge I've retained over the years have not come from studying a text book. It came from reading a non-academic book, watching a movie, listening to a song. I hope everyone appreciates the irony that educational material is probably the least effective in educating.

One of my favorite song lyrics is from Death Cab For Cutie's 'A Lack of Color':

"And when I see you, I really see you upside down,
But my brain knows better, it picks you up and turns you around."

 I love this song and this particular lyric because I was never able to grasp this concept when I learned it in science class but I instantly understood it the moment I heard it in the song. It's deceptively simple but it stuck with me permanently.

This is what great insights or strategy or pretty much anything you want to present has to possess. A narrative. It's never going to be about the data, it's always going to be about the way you explain the data. When I recalled my experience about the students repeating the textbooks word for word, that was really a data point in support of my hypothesis. But it was told it in a way that wove the information into an anecdote, that then compelled the reader to absorb a piece of information without realizing I was trying to prove out something. I could've said x percent of people consider x as an educational format/channel, but I doubt you'd remember that next week.

Writers, artists, talk show hosts, comedians even are the most effective way I've gleaned insights from the world. I think I've learned so much more about human behavior and mindset from a Louis CK standup act than I did from a TED talk.

This storytelling trend that's taken like wildfire over the industry has some legs- but like so many concepts that people try to 'replicate' - there's no way to teach how to tell a story, to have classes on how to compel an audience. The moment storytelling becomes self-aware, just like textbooks that try to teach, that's when it fails. That's the balancing act between informing and inspiring. You need to do it without trying - it actually needs to be authentic. And there's no class that can teach you authenticity.