Arran Boote, the Principled Principal

Arran Boote recently joined us, and I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce him personally to you all. As usual, I might be a bit long-winded.

Walking with giants

I have known Arran for over 20 years. He joined a small practice group of accountants I was a member of—an awesome group of people, including Marsden Robinson, Roger Cole Baker, Peter Bould, Don Bendall, and Tim Livingstone. Tim and I were the youngest. I have always found it an honour to walk with giants and hear their stories and experiences of their collective past. I was honoured to be invited to join them. They were the best of the best.

Here’s the irony of those guys: None of them ran small practices. Over time, I understood that we had a philosophy and mindset in common. How we translated it into action was different but principled, if you like, with common beliefs about right and wrong.

We had not met for a couple of years, and the bulk of the group was now in their 80s and 90s. But we got together again for what I dubbed the triple autumn lunch. The autumn of life, recessionary autumn and, of course, it was also autumn. Halfway through that lunch, Arran said to us all, I am leaving XX after 18 years. We were all stunned. Arran is the youngest in the group. What the hell? He was one of the firm’s co-founders, and it was now part of an 1100-head count Australian and Asian network.

Then, he quietly told me, ‘Here’s the lesson … your success was not getting ‘too big’. Hell, Tim’s firm is an 80-head count firm. It isn’t small. It has maintained its heart and soul and transitioned succession well, and I know GS will, too.’ What, of course, Arran meant when I caught up with him later was, don’t let the bullshit of scale kill your core of creativity and people-outcome focus.

Like the others in the small practice group, ‘people matter’ to him.

Arran has known Richard for a long time, too. When the old boys wound up the group, the younger guys formed their own. Arran transitioned into the younger group, and Richard joined it. Richard and Arran are both top-performing Tax guys. Bugger me, Yi Ping also knows him well too, as Arran operates extensively in Asia. Arran observed that GS and he are complementary, and our love of people and growing them is closely aligned. Quickly grasping the opportunity, I said, ‘Great, come on board. What do you want?’ He started on the 7th of August.

How do you describe a guy who is a partner-level resource and has been a partner in a Big Four firm? What do you call him when you would be happy to have him as a partner, and he says he will behave as one but doesn’t want equity? What do you call him if he tells you: ‘I am suffering bullshit burnout, I don’t want to be on your board either.’ When he says he wants to spend his time with clients and help you grow your clients and your people to be awesome, I ask him how long he wants to do this, i.e., tease out if he is in wind-down mode or not. Nah, he wants to go faster. So, I can’t call him a partner or a director, even though he is both. I will not call him a consultant because that is a euphemism for the slowing train to the hard stop.

He said, ‘call me Principal.’

What’s in a word or label anyway? Well, Arran had clearly thought about it. The meaning of Principal: ‘most important, consequential, or influential; chief; the principal ingredient.’ Well, yeah, he is a chief, he is influential, and he is not the most important or the principal ingredient, personally, but he shares our belief that people, selflessness, and customer centricity are the principal ingredients. Basically, the principal ingredient of a successful business and a happy life is principles.

It has been a pleasure to have been asked by the team to write this introduction.

Reach out and say hi to Arran, the Principled Principal.