The Nerd and The Bean-counter

As I was reading materials on forecasting models for the project I’m assigned to, I came across this phrase – “The specialist may believe that the manager is too ignorant and unsophisticated to appreciate the model, while the manager may believe that the specialist lives in a dream world of unrealistic assumptions and irrelevant mathematical language.”  (website by Professor Hossein Arsham)

How aptly it describes the situation. Although I am far from attaining that “specialist” status, I fully understand where the “specialist” is coming from. In fact, that sentence put the entire situation in context, and I’m beginning to understand better why the clash of ideas came about.

Lack of experience and personal preference make me approach the problem at a more conceptual level. When faced with this forecasting task that is entirely new to me, I chose to read textbook methods, case studies and learn some of the existing models people use. As usual, I dug through my favorite databases of academic journals and Harvard Busines Review articles, googled the web for modeling tutorials and test out how statistical softwares can help me in completing the task. At meetings, I brought out concepts, big models and macro analysis ideas. But the “ignorant and unsophisticated” accountant naturally didn’t appreciate them and cannot see beyond the implementation problems she is familiar with.

From her perspective, I am a fresh-out-of-school kid – inexperienced, agressive and impractical. I do not understand the real world problems, I cannot anticipate the problems of sick leaves and other work priorities that make people unwilling to cooperate with me when sourcing for information. Unlike the kid who uses “irrelevant mathematical language”, her approach to the project (based on her vast experience in day to day operations) is to understand the problems causing inaccuracy in current models and then devise ways to improve them. Therefore, she is appalled that I do not put understanding the details of existing models in top priority, and cannot understand why I suggest reading up on industry trends and competitors before meeting with the relevant staff when “they should know better and you can’t try to show that you know better”.

We can’t see eye to eye because my approach is to trash the lousy old model (if they even had any) and design a scientific model based on existing approaches and good practices, while her approach is to understand the problems of the old model and fix it up. Theoretically (pardon me), this should mean that we complement each other and will finally come out with a fantastic model incorporating the best of both worlds.

However, stereotypes of the narrow minded bean-counter and ridiculous academic combined with all that misunderstandings of “trying to show off” frustrate the cooperation. Multiply all that with the huge generation gap and our stubborn characters and we have the most impossible couple possible for a team project.

I realise this is actually the first time I have to work closely with someone who has a wealth of experience and who creepily speaks like my mother. I’m tired of her worldly-wiseness that is desperately trying to rein in my progressive ideas and “just try it out” attitude. Barely one week into an internship where I have proper work and I’m already missing the energy, ignorance and lack of fear of my peers.

On the positive side, I hope this will make my negative EQ at least slightly less negative, drive some tact into this rock-hard skull of mine and add some worldly-wiseness into my empty repository.