University dean who really means business

Apr 21 2008 by Andrew Hebden, The Journal

Universities and businesses have not always enjoyed the best of relations, but that is changing according to Alastair Thomson, new dean of the business school at the University of Teesside. Andrew Hebden went to meet him

ALASTAIR Thomson doesn’t fit the caricature of a university dean; he doesn’t wear a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and there’s no dusty books piled high on the shelves in his office, where the musty smell of academia is conspicuous by its absence.

None of which is surprising when you have a quick glance at Thomson’s CV. The Glaswegian – a giant of a man at 6ft 5ins – has been out of what you might term the “traditional” business world for just a few months after a career which has taken him from the offices of a top London accountants to the challenge of running a firm in the highly-competitive world of commercial printing. He made his name as managing director of a hugely successful call centre business, owned by a FTSE100 giant, which grew rapidly, winning countless awards.

Thomson knows a thing or two about business, and his most recent role saw him advising a host of corporate giants on issues such as customer service. Now he’s offering those insights to students at Teesside as the university looks to build on its impressive reputation as an institution tuned into the requirements of the business community.

He’s arrived at his new desk in Middlesbrough at a good time. The university has just landed £5.13m from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (or HEFCE as it is now known to Thomson as he becomes initiated into the weird world of public sector acronyms) to help it become even more “business facing”. The award could be worth as much as £13m to the institution with additional cash to help fund places for 3,000 extra students and more than £3m coming from employers which will benefit from the new training opportunities.

The size of the investment indicates just why universities are keen to tune into the requirements of the business world. And increasingly there’s a willingness from the other side too, with business organisations such as the EEF and CBI calling for better collaboration between industry and Higher Education to help tackle the region’s skills shortage and keep talented people in the North East. Teesside already runs a successful degree in leadership management with the North East Chamber of Commerce and hopes to deliver more of these types of programmes in the future.

Convincing businesses that universities are serious about developing better links remains a tough nut to crack, however, as Thomson, who has held a series of roles with the Institute of Directors in the region, acknowledges.

“I don’t doubt that it will take some time to get that message across but I have the obvious advantage that I have come from a business background and I know what the end product has to look like,” he said. “I can talk to business people in their own language – academic institutions do have a language of their own and it is mostly impenetrable to those on the outside.

“I understand what goes on in the university and its structures and processes but I also have a very solid – and very recent – business background. It’s not from 20 years ago but from three or four months ago.”

The son of a doctor and a nurse, Thomson grew up in Glasgow during a difficult time for the local economy which was hit hard by the closure of the shipyards and the mines. It was a depressing landscape which fascinated him, prompting him to ask questions about why some cities could suffer such deprivation, while others thrived.

“Business interested me from early on,” he recalls. “When I was 14 I asked for a subscription to The Economist as a Christmas present; most 14-year-old boys would probably have other publications that they would like a subscription for.”

Under strict instructions from his parents to make sure he got qualified in a “proper profession”, Thomson studied Law at Strathclyde University in Glasgow before taking Norman Tebbit’s advice and “getting on his bike” to seek employment far from home in London. He landed at accountancy giant Thomson McClintock, since subsumed into the KPMG empire, where he enjoyed a good few years in the City before moving north in 1988.

Although he was group financial controller at Intermarketing Group, such was the nature of life at a small printers, he would be expected to turn his hand to any aspect of the business. Indeed, it was his hard-nosed commercial instincts when dealing with suppliers that earned him his next move, to one of the companies he had previously negotiated with.

“The pitch to me was: ‘For the last couple of years you have been a complete bastard to us, now we would like you to come and do the same to our suppliers,” he recalls.

After turning around the fortunes of Bradford printing firm Watmoughs and eventually rising to the post of managing director, he moved on to a Leeds advertising firm before landing a key role with Kelda, the FTSE100-listed owner of Yorkshire Water.

Thomson was brought on board in 1999 to head up a new project which would see the water firm’s customer services operation hived-off from the main business and compete for contracts to supply customer services functions to other firms. When the new business – known as Loop -– went live in 2000, he was appointed managing director.

It was a huge success. Within three years, the company had doubled in size from 400 employees and new contracts were won to provide customer services for a range of clients including the National Blood Service, the Welsh Tourist Board, B&Q and EDF Energy. And at the heart of its success was keeping the staff happy – the company was featured in The Times’s prestigious 100 Best Places to Work listing for three successive years.

“If we were to deliver a great experience to our customers, we had to deliver a great experience to those who worked for us,” says Thomson. “You can’t hit people over the head with a stick and then expect them to be nice to your customers.

“Our pitch to clients was: if you want your customers to be treated better than you can treat them, then come to us.”

Great place to work? Immediately I have images of Thomson dressed up in a wacky costume or being pelted with wet sponges during a charity fun day in the car park.

“Lots of people who do this kind of thing think that all you have to do is be wacky and get people dressed up as chickens. We did a bit of that, but the difficult thing is doing it day in, day out. They (the staff) have got to trust that it is the ethos of the businesses. It has to work on a more fundamental level. Dressing up has to be the exception rather than the rule.”

From 2004 until joining Teesside late last year, Thomson ran his successful consultancy from his North Yorkshire home, offering business advice to blue-chip companies around the country on issues such as customer service. But there is clearly a sense of regret that he did not get the chance to build Loop to its full potential.

“We got to the point where, as a business we were a size the group felt comfortable with,” he recalls. “We were owned by a water utility but we were getting towards 1,000 staff and they were concerned it was getting like a customer service business owning a water utility rather than the other way round.

“I think it is a shame because there was a fantastic business there. But I am not the sort of person who wants to run a business that was simply ticking over though; in terms of getting my juices going, that’s not what I do. I was there to grow the business and if they didn’t want it to grow then I would go and do something else.”

Thomson declines the offer to go into detail about Loop’s fortunes since his departure, but a brief look at the firm’s website reveals it has since lost virtually all of the clients it built up during his time at the helm.

There’s also a lot of photos of staff wearing wacky costumes – something he might have to get used to again with all these students around.

Thomson is delighted to have landed a job on his doorstep, especially after his time spent travelling the country running his own business. He is also extremely passionate about the North East and the Tees Valley in particular which he predicts is capable of replicating the kind of renaissance enjoyed by his home city which is, today, he acknowledges, a radically different place from where he grew up.

He believes Teesside University has a key part to play in transforming the area’s fortunes by helping local people and local businesses and by ploughing £100m into developing its campus in the heart of Middlesbrough.

Thomson acknowledges it’s a quite different challenge from the type he has taken on before, although he draws some parallels.

“We are a people business,” he says. “We employ people and people are our end product.

“I want the people who come here to look back at their time at Teesside as being very pivotal in their career. It is a very privileged position to be in when you can help people to make that transition.”

CV

Born: Glasgow, 1961

Education: Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow 1967 – 1978; Strathclyde University 1978-1981

Career: 1981-1983 trainee accountant – Thomson McLintock & Co, London

1983-1988: Various financial roles

1988-1990: Group financial controller, Intermarketing Group, Leeds

1990-1998: Finance director, then managing director, Watmoughs Group

1999: Interim managing director, Outside the Box plc, Leeds

1999-2004: managing director, Loop Customer Management, Bradford

2004-2007: managing director, Mint Services Ltd, consulting business

2007- present: Dean, Teesside Business School

The questionnaire

What car do you drive?

A Volvo – but then, I am a qualified accountant!

What's your favourite restaurant?

Chapters in Stokesley, North Yorkshire.

Who or what makes you laugh?

Peter Sellers in the Inspector Clouseau films

What's your favourite book?

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

What's your favourite film?

As Good As It Gets with Jack Nicholson

What was the last album you bought?

The Greatest Hits of Lynyrd Skynyrd

What's your ideal job, other than your current one?

"Through the night" radio DJ – not for the fame and fortune, but for the ability to plow through a decent record library and play all sorts of different things that interest me – after all very few other people will be listening!

If you had a talking parrot, what's the first thing you'd teach it to say?

"I can get it cheaper elsewhere!"

What's your greatest fear?

Heights – ironic since I'm 6ft 5in tall!

What's the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

"No business ever shrunk their way to greatness"

Worst business advice?

"Focus on the bottom line – the customers will never notice"

What's your poison?

Chocolate

What newspaper do you read, other than The Journal?

My home town newspaper the Glasgow Herald on the web

How much was your first pay packet and what was it for?

I was paid £2,900 for my first year as a trainee accountant in London in 1981, or about £55 per week before tax.

How do you keep fit?

Running between meetings when I'm late (so I'm pretty fit!)

What's your most irritating habit?

I want everything done fast

What's your biggest extravagance?

A close call between chocolate and CDs

Which historical or fictional character do you most identify with/admire?

Keith Moon, drummer with The Who, the man who made the sound for which they became famous. And who knew how to throw a good party. I'm a little stingier with the drink myself!

Which famous people would you most like to dine with?

Rudy Giuliani (ex mayor of New York), George Martin (Beatles producer), Jimi Hendrix and Sir John Harvey Jones of Troubleshooter fame.

How would you like to be remembered?

As someone who delivered results.