Columbia University offers a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine.
Yale Medical School has a required class where students learn to observe art.
Corporate CEO's are attending Hollywood scriptwriting seminars.
What gives?
A
few years ago I reluctantly agreed to be the MC for the school's
Student Film Festival. Reluctant because I suffer from serious
performance anxiety when I'm in front of a large audience. In my
introduction I explained to the audience made up of students, their
parents, siblings and friends, that what my students are really learning
and practicing is the art of story telling. That, and learning to be
visually literate. Both of these are parts of one of THE most powerful
languages used to communicate to individuals or whole audiences. I went
on to explain that only a few of my students will go on to be auteurs,
filmmakers, or videographers; but I am heartened, because learning these
two parts of communication is INVALUABLE - no matter what field they
eventually go into.
So I was especially heartened when I read Dan Pink's book, A
Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future where he describes six "right brain" oriented processes that are key to
the new economy. One of the six is NARRATIVE. By the way, the others
are DESIGN, NARRATIVE, SYNTHESIS (he calls it symphony), EMPATHY,
PLAY/WONDERMENT and MEANING. In my mind narrative is closely related to
MEANING.
As an old friend of mine used to say, "He's completely right!... AND, I totally agree with him."
Facts
and figures are data points. The more data points you have the clearer
the picture becomes. But all the data points still doesn't give you the
whole picture. But story does. Story gives you nuance, story give you
context, it gives you meaning (see how I did that?).
Apparently, a bunch of people much smarter than me, seem to think so too. Columbia Univerisity Medical Center has what they call a "Program in Narrative Medicine."
http://www.narrativemedicine.org In this program
they offer a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine and they've
organized the International Network of Narrative Medicine. The idea is
that doctors can glean much more information from and about their
patients if they learn to listen to and understand their stories.
Sometimes
visual art teachers will do an exercise where students look at
photographs and are to come up with a narrative that goes with each
photograph. They may look at a photograph and say, "The man and woman
are a couple, they just had a fight. They've been fighting for a long
time, they're tired. The woman has realized that she no longer wants to
be in the relationship, but the man still wants to keep trying - he's
feeling hopeful. The dog is the man's dog. She doesn't like his dog,
etc." Turns out that the Yale University of Medicine believes that
learning how to read paintings and other forms of art, observing details
and synthesizing a meaning has significant value. So much so that they
now have a required class where they do just that.
Have
you seen the movie Adaptation? Do you remember, Nicholas Cage's
character is suffering from writers block and he ends up at a 3 day
script writing seminar by a 'Robert McKee?' If not, check out this
scene:
Well,
Robert McKee is a real person. He is the author of the script writers bible:
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
and a famous speaker and workshop leader. These days, not only are film
industry types flocking to his seminars, but entrepreneurs, CEOs and
MBA types are attending. The Harvard Business Review even interviewed
Robert McKee. See links at the bottom. Here's an simple explanation from
an online article. I've just learned that because of this phenomenon, Robert Mckee is now doing a seminar called
Story in Business.
So what’s the story with Story? “Story, businesses are realizing, means big money,” writes Daniel Pink, in his new book
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.
“Economists Deidre McCloskey and Arjo Klamer calculate that persuasion —
advertising, counseling, consulting, and so on — accounts for 25
percent of U.S. gross domestic product. If, as some posit, Story is a
component of half of those persuasive efforts, then Story is worth about
$1 trillion a year to the U.S. economy.” The message to businesses?
Think Pink — who writes: “3M gives its top executives storytelling
lessons. NASA has begun using storytelling in its knowledge management
initiatives. And Xerox — recognizing that its repair personnel learned
to fix machines by trading stories rather than by reading manuals — has
collected its stories into a a database called Eureka that Fortune
estimates is worth $100 million to the company.”
It's
difficult for me to articulate, but I believe there is connection here
between what Daniel Pink describes about NARRATIVE and the kind of
understanding and communication we do through narrative, and the instant
understanding the Malcolm Gladwell writes about in his book Blink: The
Power of Thinking Without Thinking.
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/ I'll have to ponder more on this.
It makes sense what the
slew of books about Powerpoint presentations seem to be getting at: data
and bullet points are effective in giving you the WHAT and the HOW. But the essence of
WHY, which is really the most important part, connects with people the most
within a STORY.
Today, I ran across this commercial. The tagline (not spoken in English) is "Disconnect to Connect. A beautiful example of narrative.
dtac "Disconnect to Connect" from
eakeart on
Vimeo.
Harvard Business Review's interview with Robert McKee
