作为记者，我是少有的以讲故事为生的人，但不知何时开始，讲故事成了职场“流行病”，医生不再满足于看病，开始讲故事；建筑师们也有故事要讲；连数学家和科学家都加入了讲故事大军……并非所有人都要用讲故事来表情达意，总把故事挂在嘴边常常代表着表达能力不足。

Stories are best for the Bible and in novels, 

not the C-suite[高管]

What is your most valuable asset?

If you take the question in monetary terms, the answer is probably your house. Equally, you could say it was your health, family, time — or your brain. Yet according to a new book by Carmine Gallo, a former journalist, your most valuable asset is none of the above. It is your story.

Although I have the greatest respect for my own story, as I plunder it often enough in my columns, to see it as my most valuable asset is idiotic. It shows the storytelling craze has gone too far.

[1]plunder: to use up all or most of the supplies of something in a careless way胡乱耗尽，将…滥用殆尽

Unlicensed fishermen have plundered tuna stocks. 

无证渔民滥捕金枪鱼。

I first wrote about the fad more than a decade ago. I remember ridiculing an earnest American who had written a book, Around the Corporate Campfire, in which she urged people to "develop red-hot, value-based stories that spread like wildfire and propel them toward their vision".

She was right about the wildfire. Indeed, the corporate campfire has spread so dangerously, it is time to call the fire brigade.

I know a bit about stories as I'm a storyteller by profession[职业的；就职业来说]. That is to say, I am a journalist, and stories are what we produce. Yet now everyone is a storyteller. Doctors no longer exist merely to diagnose brain tumours; they are meant to tell stories too. Architects are supposed to be doing the same. The latter is particularly irritating to me, as I live in a house designed by a visionary architect that leaks every time it rains — making me long for less focus on stories, and more on designing structures that are watertight[2].

[2]watertight:

1)a watertight container, roof, door etc does not allow water to get in or out

〔容器、屋顶、门等〕不透水的，防水的，水密的

2)an argument, plan etc that is watertight is made very carefully so that people cannot find any mistakes in it

〔论点、计划等〕严密的，周密的；无懈可击的

Lucky for him, his alibi is watertight. 

算他走运，不在犯罪现场的证据无懈可击。

Even mathematicians and scientists are now urged to present their work as stories. Most preposterous of all[最荒谬的是], the craze has spread to auditors.

The head of HR at KPMG[毕马威会计师事务所(Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler)] recently wrote a blog in which he proudly described his firm's 'higher purpose initiative' — which has resulted in employees sending in 42,000 personal stories about how they are changing the world. You could say this was heart-warming, though as KPMG was the firm that did the audits on HBOS[苏格兰哈里法克斯银行], Countrywide Financial and Quindell, one worries that it is being distracted from the lower purpose of doing the day job competently.

Yet what distresses me most is that big name novelists are getting behind the fad. If a few impoverished[无创造性的] writers are fleecing story-crazed corporates, that is fine. But last week I read in Fast Company that Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has become chief storytelling officer at the image consultancy Wolff Olins. This is as sad as it is inexplicable[3]. How could the man who wrote the brilliantly funny How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia accept such a pompous[4], ludicrous[5] title? Storytellers can never be a chief anything, let alone an officer. They have no place in[不应发生；不应存在]the C-suite.

[3]inexplicable: too unusual or strange to be explained or understood

〔由于太不寻常或奇怪而〕无法解释的，费解的

inexplicable behaviour 费解的行为

For some inexplicable reason, he felt depressed. 

他无端地感到很沮丧。

[4]pompous: someone who is pompous thinks that they are important, and shows this by being very formal and using long words – used to show disapproval自命不凡的，自高自大的；浮华的，虚夸的〔含贬义〕

He seems rather pompous. 他看上去相当自负。

the book's pompous style 该书浮夸的文风

[5]ludicrous：completely unreasonable, stupid, or wrong荒唐的，愚蠢荒谬的，可笑的

The court granted him the ludicrous sum of £100 in damages. 

法院裁定他获得区区100英镑损害赔偿。

That's a ludicrous idea. 这个想法很荒唐

There is an inverse relationship between how often companies talk about storytelling and their ability to use words nicely. Job advertisements now routinely specify "outstanding storytelling skillsets", while on LinkedIn a company called DialogTech is looking for a chief storyteller who "will create creative and innovative marketing material that resonates with[与......共鸣]our target audience and compels them to engage with our brand across multiple touchpoints". Bingo: 14 clichéd words in one sentence.

Stories in the right place are an excellent thing. The Bible has some pretty good ones. Every journalist knows that if you have to write a dull article about tax changes you must leaven it by finding a real person to emote[6] about how the change will render their life impossible/fantastic.

[6]emote: to clearly show emotion, especially when you are acting〔尤指演出时〕表现感情

Siskind encourages the children to emote to the music as they dance. 

西斯金德鼓励孩子们跳舞时要根据音乐表现出情感。

We all like stories because we like emotion, and because they are easy for our befuddled[昏沉的] brains to follow. They liven things up. They cheer us up. They can inspire us.

This is to state the obvious. There is nothing magic about it. There is no need for a fad, or for Gallo in The Storyteller's Secret to peddle[7] the standard neurological guff about how "masterful storytelling triggers neurochemicals in our brains to pay attention (cortisol) and to feel empathy (oxytocin)".

[7]peddle: to try to persuade people to accept an opinion or idea which is wrong or false散布，兜售〔错误的观点、主张〕

politicians peddling instant solutions to long-standing problems 

宣扬用速效方法解决长期问题的政客们

The trouble with stories is that to have any effect they have to be good ones — and most people are rubbish at telling them. A further problem is that the more interesting you make them, the less likely they are to be true.

At the start of this column I said everyone was a storyteller. That turns out to be a tall story[夸大其辞]. After tireless work on Google I have found two occupations that are still strangers to storytelling — plumbers and dentists.

This stands to reason. If you need a root canal you most emphatically do not want a story; you want someone who can master one of those super-skinny dental drills. Ditto with[...同样如此]plumbing. Plumbers don't tell stories because they are too busy unblocking your toilet.

That the corporate world is so very badly in need of storytellers is a very bad sign. It shows that we don't think our jobs are enough without them.