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Video - Adam Westcott

Undergrad student testimonial

Video of an interview with Adam Westcott at the 2011 Student of the year awards. He won the award for 'Sally Aisbitt Award for Certificate in Accounting Student of the Year'.

(Edited transcript of the interview)

Having left university I followed a career in the City doing consulting and banking and thoroughly enjoyed what was was very, numbers orientated. But part of the reason for doing The Open University side was looking to try and do something a bit more tangible. Whereas with both consulting and banking you’re in the middle between people who’ve got the money (the investors) and the product. You want to be where the power or the responsibility comes much more. That’s been something that I’ve been looking to try and move into and finally I’ve managed to get through to that.
 
But as for who I am; I’d like to continue learning. I like being intrepid, slightly adventurous, enjoying life as it comes and never take anything for granted.

Tell us about some of your adventures

I was living in Kazakhstan for two years. Someone rang up and said would you like to come and work in Kazakhstan. So I went out there and spent two wonderful years. It was around the time that the crisis hit so in some respects it couldn’t have been better because while London and the rest of the world were suffering, Kazakhstan was living in its own little bubble. 
 
We spent a lot of time on the work side learning a whole new culture, a whole new attitude to business but also there’s an education role as well. We were talking to a lot of Kazakhs who own businesses; they were very keen to work and understand how to do things, but they had a slightly different approach. 
 
Cash was king but you’d borrow from the bank; you wouldn’t raise money through equity. So it was a very different way of talking to people and educating them on how Westerners will want to do it and debating with them which was right and which was wrong.

Why accountancy?

Because if you’re looking to run a business you need to understand how it moves, how it works, what underpins it: how it changes and also to analyse the trends. And if you’re looking at the balance sheet or the P&L, it’s all very well knowing that this how much stock you’ve got left or these are your costs, but breaking it down and understanding the nuts and bolts and saying, actually about the cost means that I spent this much on that item, this much on that; it also means you can see where you can improve on a business. And again, to my mind, it’s understanding the fundamentals. 
 
I’m never necessarily going to be the innovator, the great idea person, but in terms of running it and making it as efficient as possible, I think that it  helps and it’s a great sound basis where you can then move forward on any particular business.

Why The Open University Business School?

There is a flexibility to it – in terms of the distance learning this was incredibly attractive. The outside accreditation, I mean, I did the Certificate of Accounting – both CIMA and ACA both recognise it and that’s incredibly useful. 
 
There’s a professional recognition within the industry. 
 
And also I guess, the scope and the breadth because although it drilled down into a lot of the concepts and gave me all the bits and pieces I wanted, there was a much broader management orientated side to it as well, which is probably what will stand me far greater stead and a broader variety of exposure to ideas and concepts and techniques which I wouldn’t have got if I’d just done a straightforward accounting, bookkeeping role.

How did it go?

Well, really well.
 
I’m happy to say and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
 
You have to keep on top of it and you definitely have to… it brings back the desire to learn so you’re out there and going through the work and realising there is an awful lot to do both on the volume side but also on the technical exposure side of things you never thought about before.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was pushed. I enjoyed the interaction with the tutor as well. So if you did have a problem then you were taught to work through it; they almost said, 'go and get it wrong and then go back and see why you got it wrong then talk through'. 
 
So you make the mistakes and you learn from your mistakes and it’s a very proactive type of learning and puts the onus and responsibility onto me as a student and I think that’s the best way to learn.

They call it distance learning. Is it really at a distance?

I don’t know if you know but I spent the first two months of the course studying in the back of a Land Rover while I was driving back from Kazakhstan. 
 
On my birthday I spent it in Tehran with a ginger ale and a balance sheet problem to sort out. So yes it is distance in the geographical side and that’s the beauty of it in terms of the flexibility. 
 
In terms of exposure to your tutors and other students then I think the Internet has really narrowed that and made it so that you could be just down the road in Milton Keynes or you could be in Iran. You can get to people by any medium you want and the tutors have been incredibly responsive, incredibly friendly in terms of how they respond, how quick they are to respond and how they guide you. 
 
So distance learning is probably a misnomer to some extent on that side.

How have you applied it to your daily work?

I’ve come from the banking side and a lot of that is analysing companies, it’s valuing them, so really understanding more about how they all work and especially on their working capital, the nitty-gritty and understanding how a company has put things together – very important. So it’s helped on that inner skill set and outside. 
 
More importantly part of the reason for doing it was to change career and I’ve just been offered two roles using it as a finance director so I will be applying it day to day in brand new roles and have achieved what I want from it, so very much so – 100%.

Would you recommend it to others?

Yes. Definitely. I think people need to know what they want though. It’s not for everyone because people need to understand what course they’re going to do and why they’re doing it. So you have to be selective on the course. But assuming that the criteria and the topics, the syllabus is as we expected then by all means because it pushes you as a student – you have to want to do it – but it encourages you to learn, encourages you to make contact and meet others; so definitely. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Adam Weston receiving his Business School Award from the Dean, Professor James Fleck'.

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