Dynamic Duos: Hardie Grant Media’s Nick Hardie-Grant and Kate Thompson
In this week's Dynamic Duos, Hardie Grant Media's group managing director, Nick Hardie-Grant, and strategy and innovation director, Kate Thompson, tell Mumbrella about their six years working alongside one-another, and the complementary working styles that have evolved between them.
Nick Hardie-Grant:
I joined Hardie Grant in 2017, one year after Kate had been hired from Clemenger to head up Hardie Grant Media’s strategy team. We were both brought into newly created roles with the aim of transforming the business and quickly bonded over recent agency experience and a shared perspective on where we needed to go.
Six years later and I think we’ve achieved a lot of what we set out to do. What started as a 40-odd person content and publishing agency is now a diverse marketing network of 120 people in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and London in content, PR, digital marketing, and video production.
Kate’s been my right-hand person along the way, evolving to take on everything from client strategy work to agency positioning, helping launch agencies and e-comm start-ups, hack days, acquisitions, and a key role in our group’s direction – she wears a lot of hats!
In terms of our relationship, I think it’s quite complementary. Kate’s got the most amazing strategic mind, extremely process driven, can think at a level beyond anyone I’ve ever worked with. And not to say I’m the opposite, but I think I can help balance that with a client focus, business thinking, and some directness. Six years of sitting next to each other I think we’ve got a good handle on each other’s strengths and combine nicely.
Kate Thompson:
Nick and I first met when he joined Hardie Grant as chief digital officer in 2017. He came in ready to implement some quick wins and swiftly digitised a lot of processes, introduced new technologies and influenced positive change across the group. I’d not long joined the business, but with my corporate experience I remember that I was still learning to adopt more agile solutions – suffice to say I asked a lot of questions and didn’t always make his job easy!
Before too long, Nick was heading up the Hardie Grant Media division of the Hardie Grant group and I was reporting into him. Admittedly, I did expect him to make me jump through a few hoops just to get even but he did anything but. And, after five years – maybe closer to six – he’s ended up as my longest serving manager.
I think we work well together because we’ve always had a similar vision of where Hardie Grant Media could go, we’re both keen to drive sustainable growth and innovation, and I think our skills complement each other incredibly well. But the real breakthrough (at least for me) happened when I learnt to speak fluent Nick. I now have this sort of superpower where I can walk away from a conversation and conjure up something in a few slides that neatly captures what was in Nick’s head and is often almost ready to put in front of a client or stakeholder. Trust me when I say that very few people can do that!
Overall, we have all the tenets of what makes a great leadership partnership. I think like any professional relationship, the way we work is ultimately built on mutual respect and trust. Having worked together for quite some time we know what makes each other tick – what we bring to the table, how to get the best out from each other, and appreciate each other’s working style (I’m a deep overthinker and he’s very quick and decisive – ha!).
Nick on Kate:
Most memorable moment with Kate: Heading to Cleveland for Content Marketing World in 2018. Sharing a lot of American coffees with a Melbourne coffee snob was a highlight.
Best word to describe Kate: Thorough – which is also probably triggering for her as she’s learnt that’s my way of saying “we should try and simplify this a bit…”.
Kate’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: This one borders endearing and annoying, but marketing jargon. I think we’ve finally toned her down somewhat but that’s what years in big marketing teams will do to you.
Kate on Nick:
Most memorable moment with Nick: We travelled to Cleveland for the Content Marketing World conference in 2018 and while we learnt a lot – my best memory attending my first ever baseball game together!
Best word to describe Nick: Ambitious. Nick has so much energy for new business ideas (and new business).
Nick’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour the colleague has: He can sometimes think he’s a designer 😊
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