Articles

The power of story

Accountants and the power of good business advice are the focus of John Haylock's debut novel.

Stories are an incredibly powerful communication tool. Messages of any sort (and that includes the business advice you provide) have much more impact when they're crafted into a story. That's because stories make the message come alive and by doing so help us remember the message so much better. Our ancestors knew this, which is why all cultures have such strong oral traditions.

Writing a book has been a lifelong ambition for me. It's great to bring that dream to reality with the publication of my first book – 'Absolute Certainty: how to give your clients exactly what they want.' It's a business novel with a strong focus on accountants.

Becoming an author didn't come naturally. When I was younger I knew I wanted to write a book, but had no idea what it was going to be about. What I did realise was that I had to get plenty of experience writing. So, whenever the opportunity to write occurred I've grabbed it.

Back in 2003, I approached the then Journal editor Jean Cryer to see if she was interested in publishing an article on the innovative approaches to practice management we had applied at STRATAGEM, an accountancy firm. She was interested and that initial article on STRATAGEM has lead to some 65 other articles on management and marketing issues targeted at accountants in public practice.

As those articles were being written I found a focus for my book. I even started planning a guide to running an outstanding accountancy firm. But the guide idea didn't work. It just felt dull and boring. I was stuck again.

One day I was reading a magazine article comparing the literary and cinematic phenomena of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The article discussed the power of story and how both JRR Tolkien's and JK Rowling's tales are modern versions of a story that has been told around campfires for millennia.

A university academic was interviewed for the article and said that storytelling is both powerful and simple – all literature is just variations of 15 stories – one of which is the battle against evil.

It got me thinking about the business books I had read which had the greatest influence on me. They were almost all stories. Some were stories of real businesses and business people. But many others were fiction. There was Michael Gerber's 'The E-Myth', Eliyahu Goldratt's 'The Goal', Stephen Lundin's 'Fish' and several books by Ken Blanchard such as 'Raving Fans,' 'Gung Ho' and 'The One Minute Manager.'

The best business novels share a simple consistent structure. The details of the stories are completely different but most involve a business person in trouble who inadvertently meets another person who reveals the way forward. This structure allows business novels to work. So I took that tried and true system and crafted my story about an accountant who wants to run a better practice but has been struggling to find the way to do it. The outcome was Absolute Certainty.

Once I had found the system, writing the book that I had dreamt about was much easier. The lesson from my story about a story – when you're stuck, look for the system.

This article first appeared in The Journal. It is reproduced with the permission of the NZICA.