The power of storytelling
Geoff Day’s career has taken him to government, the Royal Family, and one of the UK’s most progressive universities before joining ICAS. Here the Executive Director of Engagement tells Ryan Herman how a classroom reading of Paddington taught him the need for great communication and shares his vision for ICAS
Earlier this summer, ICAS hosted an event on the future of chartered accountancy as part of the Edinburgh Finance Festival. The panel were unanimous that storytelling was key to attracting the next generation to consider the profession as a fulfilling career.
Sitting on the panel that day was ICAS CEO Gail Boag – and one of Gail’s key decisions since becoming CEO in January has been the appointment of Geoff Day as Executive Director of Engagement. Geoff started out on Radio Forth before moving into increasingly senior roles across government, the Royal Family, DaimlerChrysler, Mercedes-Benz and Edinburgh Napier University, among others. By any measure, that’s quite a CV. The one constant throughout his career has been the importance and power of storytelling, which goes right back to being a schoolboy.
Geoff was born in North Berwick, where his schooling began. “Scottish primary schools in those days were very much sit in rigid rows and ‘speak when you’re spoken to’ environments,” he recalls.
“Then when I was nine or 10, I went to a new school in Dartmouth [in south-west England] where – I’ll never forget this – the teacher put us all in a circle on the floor, and handed out books. It was Michael Bond’s Paddington, and we all read sections of it with each other.
Inspirational: the bear from darkest Peru
Inspirational: the bear from darkest Peru
“It was such an immersive, shared communication exercise. That sparked my imagination for the power of a good story well told. I was never the same again after that experience.”
Geoff earned a degree in business and economics at Edinburgh Napier University, a qualification that might easily have taken him into finance. “But the power of the story was more compelling to me than the power of numbers at that point in my life,” he says. Instead, he took what would now be called an ‘unpaid internship’ at Radio Forth, where he would go on to become a reporter and presenter on the station’s 6pm drivetime slot.
At the same time his newsroom experience brought him into regular contact with the UK government’s Scottish Office and its Head of Communications, Fred Corbett, who offered him a job in the comms team.
This was before devolution, so Geoff worked with three secretaries of state for Scotland – Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang and Michael Forsyth. He then went on secondment to work for the palace press office, looking after the Royal Family whenever they came to Scotland, completing his poacher-to-gamekeeper transformation.
Royal appointment
Then came another pivotal moment following a sit-down conversation with Sir Martin Gilliat, a former colonel who became the Queen Mother’s Private Secretary, which shaped Geoff’s thinking about how you create experiences and moments that matter.
He picks up the tale: “He said, ‘So how are things?’ I said, ‘Very good, Sir Martin.’ “Excellent!” he said. ‘Now here’s the thing, young man. You see, when you started this job, you couldn’t believe your day was spent going out with members of the Royal Family. Today, it’s the Queen Mother. How amazing! What a rare privilege! What a once-in-a-lifetime gift that is for most people! But for you now, young man, that’s just your job, and this is an everyday occurrence.
“‘But the one thing you must never forget: for the people you meet every day, for them it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And your job, young man, is to make it as special and as memorable for them as you possibly can.’
Geoff at this year's CA Rising Stars event
Geoff at this year's CA Rising Stars event
“Suddenly that made it feel significant. I realised that I’m just the vehicle of delivery, because only very rarely did the public get to speak to a member of the Royal Family. But I’m going to be around them, hustling and bustling, and I might be their only point of interaction with someone that’s in that orbit. I represented a touchpoint with one of the world's most important ‘brands’ and I was responsible for their experience on the day and ultimately the story they would then go on to share for years. It was at that point I started to think that it isn’t ‘showbusiness’, but, like everything in life, it is a business about how you show up. As Queen Elizabeth II famously remarked, ‘We need to be seen to be believed.’
“If you tell them, they hear; if you show them, they see. But it’s only if you involve people that they begin to understand and engage. That’s where real adoption and advocacy live. And that goes all the way back to that piece of advice that Sir Martin gave me.
“One of the amazing things about the CA qualification is that it gives you a standard, it gives you knowledge, but you can take it to other places”
“Now in my role at ICAS, when you join up all the areas, from business development through to member engagement, marketing, comms and events, it is all about creating better experiences for our members.
“It is that experiential part that sets us apart from any other professional body and gives us our unique selling point. You can train to be an accountant with other bodies, but what makes somebody choose ICAS is the experience, the support, the education, but also the regulation.
“Our size is our ‘superpower’, enabling us to be more personalised, practical and purposeful. We may be relatively small in terms of membership numbers, but those members are hugely influential and trusted with a powerful impact on business and society.
“Some people may see a conflict between educating and regulating, but I see it as a virtuous circle. That’s the community we serve, and we serve it for the full 360 degrees. And it makes for a richer, more robust and representative professional body.
Behind the wheel
After nearly 20 years in New York, 10 of which were spent as the US Director of Communications for Mercedes-Benz, Geoff returned to Scotland as Director of Marketing and External Relations at Edinburgh Napier University in 2018. The change of country didn’t alter his fundamental belief in the primacy of a good narrative.
“We’re all motivated by much the same things, and we all fear much the same things. It is said that there are only seven types of Hollywood movies because there are only seven human emotions [happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust and contempt]. And I think that power of seven is absolutely true.
“At ICAS we can break down what we do very simply as ‘retain, gain and restore’. We retain our members, we gain more members, and we restore their advocacy for us”
“What I’ve learned, and what is relevant here to ICAS, same as when I was at Mercedes and at Napier, and has become a mantra, is ‘fewer, better things’.
“At ICAS we can break down what we do very simply as ‘retain, gain and restore’. We retain our members, we gain more members, and we restore their advocacy for us by polishing the ICAS ‘badge’.
With the late Scottish F1 legend Stirling Moss
With the late Scottish F1 legend Stirling Moss
“I also think relevance matters more than awareness, especially in this digital age where everyone is desperately seeking attention and clicks. Don’t chase clicks over usefulness. We should always be thinking, are we making this more useful for our members?”
By way of example, the day before we speak, Geoff attended a Bank of England business briefing for ICAS members in Aberdeen. “I walked into the room, and out of around 50 people, perhaps only two were over 35,” he says. “Attending counts towards your CPD so that is one motivation, but I spoke to a few of them afterwards and they want to attend events that are purposeful, that provide expert knowledge, the sort of inside intel that is going to help them.
“The generation that’s going into the marketplace now feels that their elders have done a terrible job [looking after the planet], but they’re here to fix it, and they are absolutely passionate about fixing it.
“They’re not interested in just turning up for networking events where you have canapés and a glass of wine. What they learned at this event is that for the foreseeable future volatility and uncertainty are the norm.
“The challenge with AI and technology, and the backdrop of the changing world in terms of climate, is that we’re not going back. This is not a cyclical event. We haven’t dealt with this level of permanence before.”
He is relishing the challenge of delivering ‘fewer, better things’ for the members while also ensuring that ICAS and the CA qualification continues to attract new students every year against this backdrop of uncertainty.
“Growth will only come from two things: thinking about what our members need from ICAS now, whether it’s providing technical data so that they’ve got a single source of truth, all the way up to the thought leadership, and how their professional body is representing their views, and saying it in a way they find compelling.”
History man
While Geoff is aware of the need for ICAS not to be in thrall to its long history, he’s adamant the embedded values it represents are crucial.
“When you’re instituted by a Royal Charter, that can be a dead weight around your shoulders,” he says. “But for ICAS, having that societal impact embedded in our charter, having that very clear purpose-driven mandate of societal good, which is built on trust, ethics and community, speaks louder now than I think it’s ever done in the 172-year history of ICAS.
“People are struggling to make sense of the speed, the scale and the dramatic consequences that are happening around them. They are looking at professional bodies that produce people who have that curiosity and critical thinking in their DNA; who are trusted to make ethical decisions to make our companies, societies and our world better.”
The business of show – unveiling the Mercedes-Benz C350 at the New York International Auto Show in 2007
The business of show – unveiling the Mercedes-Benz C350 at the New York International Auto Show in 2007
Ultimately, it all comes back to storytelling. “You can’t broadcast to people,” says Geoff. “It’s in the stories that our members share, their case studies, and how CAs represent our industry right now. And through that you build the pathway to future members coming in. You build the attraction, [where someone thinks] ‘I want to be like that person, I want to be a part of that community.’
“The next chapter for ICAS is showing up and having a voice in spaces that aren’t exclusively in the accountancy world. We’ll never take our eye off audit or the assurance space – that is all fundamental to who we are. And the goal always remains the same, to develop, support and grow our community of better, stronger business leaders.”
Sign up to ICAS’ Communicating with Impact
The power of storytelling
Geoff Day’s career has taken him to government, the Royal Family, and one of the UK’s most progressive universities before joining ICAS. Here the Executive Director of Engagement tells Ryan Herman how a classroom reading of Paddington taught him the need for great communication and shares his vision for ICAS
Earlier this summer, ICAS hosted an event on the future of chartered accountancy as part of the Edinburgh Finance Festival. The panel were unanimous that ‘storytelling’ was key to attracting the next generation to consider the profession as a fulfilling career.
Sitting on the panel that day was ICAS CEO Gail Boag – and one of Gail’s key decisions since becoming CEO in January has been the appointment of Geoff Day as Executive Director of Engagement. Geoff started out on Radio Forth before moving into increasingly senior roles across government, the Royal Family, DaimlerChrysler, Mercedes-Benz and Edinburgh Napier University, among others. By any measurement, that’s quite a CV. The one constant throughout his career has been the importance and power of storytelling, which goes right back to being a schoolboy.
Geoff was born in North Berwick, where his schooling began. “Scottish primary schools in those days were very much sit in rigid rows and ‘speak when you’re spoken to’ environment,” he recalls.
“Then when I was nine or 10, I went to a new school in Dartmouth [in south-west England] where – I’ll never forget this – the teacher put us all in a circle on the floor, and handed out books. It was Michael Bond’s Paddington, and we all read sections of it with each other.
Inspirational: the bear from darkest Peru
Inspirational: the bear from darkest Peru
“It was such an immersive, shared communication exercise. That sparked my imagination for the power of a good story well told. I was never the same again after that experience.”
Geoff earned a degree in business and economics at Edinburgh Napier University, a qualification that might easily have taken him into finance. “But the power of the story was more compelling to me than the power of numbers at that point in my life,” he says. Instead, he took what would now be called an ‘unpaid internship’ at Radio Forth, where he would go on to become a reporter and presenter on the station’s 6pm drivetime slot.
At the same time his newsroom experience brought him into regular contact with the UK government’s Scottish Office and its Head of Communications, Fred Corbett, who offered him a job in the comms team.
This was before devolution, so Geoff worked with three secretaries of state for Scotland – Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang and Michael Forsyth. He then went on secondment to work for the palace press office, looking after the Royal Family whenever they came to Scotland, completing his poacher-to-gamekeeper transformation.
Royal appointment
Then came another pivotal moment following a sit-down conversation with Sir Martin Gilliat, a former colonel who became the Queen Mother’s Private Secretary, which shaped Geoff’s thinking about how you create experiences and moments that matter.
He picks up the tale: “He said, ‘So how are things?’ I said, ‘Very good, Sir Martin.’ “Excellent!” he said. ‘Now here’s the thing, young man. You see, when you started this job, you couldn’t believe your day was spent going out with members of the Royal Family. Today, it’s the Queen Mother. How amazing! What a rare privilege! What a once-in-a-lifetime gift that is for most people! But for you now, young man, that’s just your job, and this is an everyday occurrence.
“‘But the one thing you must never forget: for the people you meet every day, for them it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And your job, young man, is to make it as special and as memorable for them as you possibly can.’
Geoff at this year's CA Rising Stars event
Geoff at this year's CA Rising Stars event
“Suddenly that made it feel significant. I realised that I’m just the vehicle of delivery, because only very rarely did the public get to speak to a member of the Royal Family. But I’m going to be around them, hustling and bustling, and I might be their only point of interaction with someone that’s in that orbit. I represented a touchpoint with one of the world's most important ‘brands’ and I was responsible for their experience on the day and ultimately the story they would then go on to share for years. It was at that point I started to think that it isn’t ‘showbusiness’, but, like everything in life, it is a business about how you show up. As Queen Elizabeth II famously remarked, ‘We need to be seen to be believed.’
“If you tell them, they hear; if you show them, they see. But it’s only if you involve people that they begin to understand and engage. That’s where real adoption and advocacy live. And that goes all the way back to that piece of advice that Sir Martin gave me.
“One of the amazing things about the CA qualification is that it gives you a standard, it gives you knowledge, but you can take it to other places”
“Now in my role at ICAS, when you join up all the areas, from business development through to member engagement, marketing, comms and events, it is all about creating better experiences for our members.
“It is that experiential part that sets us apart from any other professional body and gives us our unique selling point. You can train to be an accountant with other bodies, but what makes somebody choose ICAS is the experience, the support, the education, but also the regulation.
“Our size is our ‘superpower’, enabling us to be more personalised, practical and purposeful. We may be relatively small in terms of membership numbers, but those members are hugely influential and trusted with a powerful impact on business and society.
“Some people may see a conflict between educating and regulating, but I see it as a virtuous circle. That’s the community we serve, and we serve it for the full 360 degrees. And it makes for a richer, more robust and representative professional body.
Behind the wheel
After nearly 20 years in New York, 10 of which were spent as the US Director of Communications for Mercedes-Benz, Geoff returned to Scotland as Director of Marketing and External Relations at Edinburgh Napier University in 2018. The change of country didn’t alter his fundamental belief in the primacy of a good narrative.
“We’re all motivated by much the same things, and we all fear much the same things. It is said that there are only seven types of Hollywood movies because there are only seven human emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, and contempt). And I think that power of seven is absolutely true.
“At ICAS we can break down what we do very simply as ‘retain, gain and restore’. We retain our members, we gain more members, and we restore their advocacy for us”
“What I’ve learned, and what is relevant here to ICAS, same as when I was at Mercedes and at Napier, and has become a mantra, is ‘fewer, better things’.
“At ICAS we can break down what we do very simply as ‘retain, gain and restore’. We retain our members, we gain more members, and we restore their advocacy for us by polishing the ICAS ‘badge’.
With the late Scottish F1 legend Stirling Moss
With the late Scottish F1 legend Stirling Moss
“I also think relevance matters more than awareness, especially in this digital age where everyone is desperately seeking attention and clicks. Don’t chase clicks over usefulness. We should always be thinking, are we making this more useful for our members?”
By way of example, the day before we speak, Geoff attended a Bank of England business briefing for ICAS members in Aberdeen. “I walked into the room, and out of around 50 people, perhaps only two were over 35,” he says. “Attending counts towards your CPD so that is one motivation, but I spoke to a few of them afterwards and they want to attend events that are purposeful, that provide expert knowledge, the sort of inside intel that is going to help them.
“The generation that’s going into the marketplace now feels that their elders have done a terrible job (looking after the planet), but they’re here to fix it, and they are absolutely passionate about fixing it.
“They’re not interested in just turning up for networking events where you have canapés and a glass of wine. What they learned at this event is that for the foreseeable future volatility and uncertainty are the norm.
“The challenge with AI and technology, and the backdrop of the changing world in terms of climate, is that we’re not going back. This is not a cyclical event. We haven’t dealt with this level of permanence before."
He is relishing the challenge of delivering 'fewer, better things' for the members while also ensuring that ICAS and the CA qualification continues to attract new students every year against this backdrop of uncertainty.
“Growth will only come from two things: thinking about what our members need from ICAS now, whether it’s providing technical data so that they’ve got a single source of truth, all the way up to the thought leadership, and how their professional body is representing their views, and saying it in a way they find compelling.”
History man
While Geoff is aware of the need for ICAS not to be in thrall to its long history, he’s adamant the embedded values it represents are crucial.
“When you’re instituted by a Royal Charter, that can be a dead weight around your shoulders,” he says. “But for ICAS, having that societal impact embedded in our charter, having that very clear purpose-driven mandate of societal good, which is built on trust, ethics and community, speaks louder now than I think it’s ever done in the 172-year history of ICAS.
“People are struggling to make sense of the speed, the scale and the dramatic consequences that are happening around them. They are looking at professional bodies that produce people who have that curiosity and critical thinking in their DNA; who are trusted to make ethical decisions to make our companies, societies and our world better.”
The business of show – unveiling the Mercedes-Benz C350 at the New York International Auto Show in 2007
The business of show – unveiling the Mercedes-Benz C350 at the New York International Auto Show in 2007
Ultimately, it all comes back to storytelling. “You can’t broadcast to people,” says Geoff. “It’s in the stories that our members share, their case studies, and how CAs represent our industry right now. And through that you build the pathway to future members coming in. You build the attraction, [where someone thinks] ‘I want to be like that person, I want to be a part of that community.’
“The next chapter for ICAS is showing up and having a voice in spaces that aren’t exclusively in the accountancy world. We’ll never take our eye off audit or the assurance space – that is all fundamental to who we are. And the goal always remains the same, to develop, support and grow our community of better, stronger business leaders.”
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