James Neophytou is an Executive Partner at IBM and just so happens to be a former UOB student and Redbrick Alumni. Now married for 22 years with two children, James is reminiscing his time at the University, the cultural works that got him through and have continued to influence his life and philosophy. James has begun to catalogue and reminisce his University life on his blog and is here to talk to Redbrick about the lessons he has learned and perhaos a little bit of life experience to impart on us. During these rather uncertain times, a little ‘life reflection’ could be a rather useful thing.

“I work within the consulting arm, IBM Global Business Services, and help Energy clients to improve their engineering operations using Artificial Intelligence. This is things like Predictive Maintenance, using pattern recognition in equipment mentoring and integrating their supply chains. I’ve been at IBM for 23 years. It’s a great company.

I graduated from the University in 1988 with a 2:1 in BCom (Accounting), and am grateful for that wonderful foundation. I liked the Company Law and the Economics modules of the degree.

I started my professional career as an accountant and after I qualified, move into consulting At PricewaterhouseCoopers. I’ve loved it – and have worked in Africa, the USA, Kuwait, Vietnam and many other places. Travel has certainly given me a broad canvas and appreciation of how people in developing economies live and work. Cape Town is an especially awesome place.”  – Neophytou

You used to write for Redbrick in the late eighties while at the University? Could you tell us the sorts of things you liked to write about?

Ha yes. I wrote film reviews for Redbrick. We used to go to the movies every week. I think we could get in for £1.50 if we flashed our Student Cards.  We saw loads: Platoon, Fatal Attraction, The Fly, Room with a View, Wall Street – are just some that spring to mind.

Was there much of a social scene?

Birmingham wasn’t as cosmopolitan and gentrified as it is now.  We liked Selly Oak for the local bars and student social scene. We also went to a few central night clubs and curry houses.

Campus was also decent for Friday nights at Founders Bar.  Saw some bands in my time: The Housemartins, Cyndi Lauper, Mud.  Names that may not mean much today, but they had some good tunes. Check them out on Spotify.

I do like the city centre now.  I sometimes come back for reunion dinners with a handful of my closest uni friends.  I took the kids to the Cadbury’s factory in Bourneville, a couple of times over the years. I loved it as much as they did.

You mention in your memoires that culture was a welcomed break from your degree? What were those plays, books, art?

Yes! Very much so! I would go hunting in the campus library to find plays in the drama section, to take out and read.  This was one of my escapes and mental holidays from the business of business. Some time off from Price Earnings ratios, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, monopolistic competition and the “fallacy of the mixed economy” (which was the name of a book that one of our professors wrote).

We were at the heart of the Margaret Thatcher’s era of economic revolution. And sometimes a contrarian and rebellious angle was needed. Libraries start revolutions. For me, in any case.

Two plays in particular that I remember well, and that I’ve gone back to over the years, are Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, and Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet. I’ve read them a few times. I’ve seen them both on film. I’ve seen Glengarry on the stage at the National Theatre.

In both, a once-great salesman is now at the lowest ebb of their skills, career and powers; is now so far declined that no-one takes them seriously and they find it hard to exist. They have lost their drive and spirit.

What struck you about these characters and do you read them as being the same now as you did back then?

I remember thinking three things at the time, as I read these great, classic plays, aged 19 or 20, in my student house in Selly Oak.

First, that ‘Sales’ must be a crummy, phoney and dispiriting job. Secondly, that I was glad I was going into a profession, Accountancy, that had prestige and stability, and that I wouldn’t have to worry about the unpleasantness of “selling”. And thirdly, that if I ever got to the stage of Willy Loman (in ‘Salesman’) or Shelly Levene (in ‘Glengarry’), that I’d know it was time to go, and find something else to do.

Well, I was young and innocent in the ways of the world. Both these characters were “old” to me. As an undergraduate, anyone over thirty must have seemed so.

I’m now 52.  The approximate age of “Shelly Levene, fifties”.  Now, over thirty years and a full career on from those early-adult-bookish-theatrical-excursions, I can reflect back on my thoughts.

In 1987: sales is a crummy business, and I wouldn’t have to do it.

Opinion now in 2020: No it’s not, and yes you do.

Even accountants have to sell eventually. I moved into consulting after nine years as an accountant, and once you begin to develop a set of skills and you gather experience, you start to take an interest in the business of business.  You see that to grow your firm, you have to convince clients that they should use you and your team and your firm’s services.

Sales is a respectable profession like any other. It may not have a prestigious chartered association to be a member of, but those who ply this trade, know that it takes every skill and imagination and nuance and instinct and empathy, that pretty much all other professions require: medicine, law, accountancy, teaching, marketing, information technology, journalism, building, plumbing.

Good salesmen, like another character in Glengarry, Ricky Roma, are subtle. They don’t sell in an obvious way. They convince the client that they need and want what he has to sell. And in consulting, you wouldn’t survive if you didn’t deliver tangible outcomes and lasting value to clients.

The other thing I learned is that clients buy people.  The ‘brand’ was infact the named people on the team. So, let’s not be sniffy about salesmen. They have a necessary job.

How was the cultural scene in Birmingham in the late eighties? Was there much Guild drama? Lots of theatre in town?

I only got into theatre and culture much later. When I could afford it !  It was mainly cinema, clubs and curries we were into at the time. But I read a lot, and loved the movies whilst at university. There was also a Film Club on campus that used the Muirhead Tower lecture theatre to project some classics. Geek is chic, as they say.

Of course, there was politics.  My friends and I weren’t that radical, but I remember we did go on the Anti Poll Tax march. Probably around 1986.  The Student Guild laid on some coaches to take us to London. I dabbled with the left-wing groups, but soon tired of them as I got into the serious business of work and career and family.

I have since been back to the City of Birmingham Symphony Hall to see Michael Nyman in concert.  I also like a couple of the Greek Orthodox Churches in Birmingham. I’ve been to the Dormition of the Mother of God in the city centre, and St Luke’s near Spaghetti Junction.  You can go two ways with religion as you get older. I’ve got closer to it, I must say. Community belonging is vital. And also, the language and messages are eternal and very, very relevant to how we live today.

And I’m learning Byzantine music on Saturdays now with a teacher. It’s choral chant tradition that dates back 1,600 years.  It’s challenging but uplifting.

If you could advise your 21-year-old self, what would your words of wisdom be?

If I could go back and give him – the younger James – a piece of advice, it would go something like this: –

“You know that thing that you think and feel, well, everyone else thinks and feels it too. I promise. You are not an imposter, you are not an outsider. Be bolder, worry less, and ask people more questions about themselves. People love to be asked questions about themselves. Your eventual confidence will come, when the time is right, and you don’t have 100% control over it”.  And also I’d say that you can control certain things and there are things you can’t.  But always “You are the CEO of you”, so career choices, friends, relationships, these are things that mean most, and you can manage these and make decisions.  A lot of it is impulse and instinct.

So, overthinking is sometimes as bad as not thinking.

James Neophytou is an Executive Partner at IBM. He works with Energy clients on applying Artificial Intelligence to engineering.  You can follow James on Twitter at @jamesneophytou or read more theatre-related content from his blog here.

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