September Teller 1

People
Lessons from our childhood stories
By Darren Tan
Chief Financial Officer
Darren gave this speech to the graduating
class of the Bachelor of Accountancy,
Nanyang Business School on 25 July 2018.
In the age of internet where the best
speeches are easily available on
YouTube, it is a daunting task to prepare
an original commencement speech that
could capture your attention, much less
inspire you.
So you may ask “why” then did I take up this
challenge to address you? And I will answer
you “why not” as one of my key messages
from the stories that I am going to share
with you today.
I have always enjoyed reading and from
time to time, I would pour over books that
I bought for my children. Over the years,
I’ve come to realize that children’s books
contain some of the most important and
beautifully crafted advices. So, in preparing
for this speech, I decided to draw upon
three stories that we have read as children.
These are the stories of the “Holy Cat”, the
“Golden Eagle” and the “Wizard of Oz”.
Holy Cat Ask —“Why?”
Let me start with the story of the Holy
18 TELLER September 2018
Cat. The story of “why”? The story goes
as follows: in an Ashram in ancient India,
when the guru sat down to worship each
evening with his disciples, a cat would
come and distract them by making a lot of
noise. Hence the guru ordered his disciples
to tie the cat up during their prayers. After
the guru died, the cat continued to be tied
up during worship. And when the cat died,
another cat was brought into the Ashram
to make sure that the guru’s order was
faithfully observed. As the years went by,
the habit hardened into a religious ritual
without anyone asking why the cat was
tied up in the first place.
You may laugh at the silliness of the
disciples in the story or even dismiss that
such follies could only happen in ancient
society. But trust me, there are many holy
cats that are tied up today, and an equal
number of people who have not asked
“why?”.
Let me give you an example. My team
used to spend two weeks each month
to produce a market share report for the
Bank. I noticed that we never received any
questions after the report was emailed
to the bank’s management team. Why?
Either the report was perfect, hence no
questions, or the report was unread, and
hence no questions. So, I encouraged the
team to analyse the relevance of the report,
rather than continue with the routine of
producing the report. We discovered that
some data in the report were no longer
relevant or necessary. Furthermore, the
report was too complicated and provided
no meaningful insights. No wonder there
were no questions! Hence, we worked to
simplify the report, eliminate unnecessary
information and synthesise key insights
from the data. We moved away from the
task of merely reporting the numbers to
telling the stories behind the numbers.
When the revamped report was circulated,
we started getting questions, and received
positive feedback on the usefulness of the
report. All these from just asking “why?”.
My team felt appreciated and became more
motivated to release more Holy Cats.
So, as you embark on your career, I
encourage you to be passionately curious,
take a step back every time, and ask “why”.
You will be amazed at what you can achieve
with this very simple question.
Golden Eagle — “Why Not?”
Next – the story of the “Golden Eagle”. The
story of “why not?”. This is the story of an