Dynamic Duos: Involved Media’s Sarah Keith and Dan Hojnik
In this week's Dynamic Duos, Involved Media group managing director Sarah Keith and general manager Dan Hojnik talk meeting virtually in the midst of Melbourne lockdown, to building a collaborative professional relationship that plays to the best of each of their strengths - even across capital cities.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two members of the same organisation with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Sarah Keith:
My boss at the time, Cameron Swan, was having an email bromance with Dan and passed him on me as we were looking to hire a senior person in Melbourne. As I have huge respect for Cameron and his take on people, it was a no-brainer to talk to Dan. It was lockdown in Melbourne so Dan and I didn’t have a chance to meet in person until after we hired him, but I assumed that somebody who had just come back from London must surely know something about something!
I was looking for someone to join us and work closely with me, as I tend to function better in a partnership, with another person to bounce things off. Dan is almost the complete opposite of me: I come from a more sales and media platform background, where Dan is very much client and strategy. I’ve also been in the Australian market for the past 20 years and he had spent 10 years in the UK before he joined. And, as much as I don’t like to admit it, he’s younger than me, effectively a different generation. We both have a strategic approach but come at things from different angles.
I think having such mutually exclusive skillsets has become one of our core strengths as a team, and it meant we could shortcut a lot of the things that we needed to reshape the business based on our differing experience. We’re both really clear on what our individual strengths are, and we always give each other honest feedback.
We’d talk two to three times a day, but because I’m in Sydney and he’s in Melbourne, we only see each other face-to-face about once a month. Despite that we have developed a great relationship, one that is 100% built on mutual respect. Also, I’m a bit scared of him as he doesn’t think everything is as funny as I do and tends to take things more seriously than me. That being said, I really admire the way he thinks, as he can often sense check what I’m doing.
Dan Hojnik:
I first met Sarah virtually, after I’d moved back to Australia from the UK and was looking for job. We had a really great conversation. She wanted to know if we would get on and if I could do the job that needed doing, in terms of reframing and rebranding the agency. I also found out that they had never had a Head of Strategy and Planning before, so it immediately drew my attention. (Dan joined Involved as Head of Strategy and Planning in January 2021 and was appointed General Manager in June this year.)
That time was a wild ride for me. I had just moved back to my parents’ house in Melbourne after a two-week quarantine stint in Sydney hotels. I was just getting used to being back in Australia and I had never heard of her agency, but the appeal was that Sarah was open and honest about the need for change and the opportunity to create something different together.
Why are we still together? Well, she pays my bills and won’t leave me alone! We live in different cities, and we talk almost every day, so there’s a great level of trust between us spanning that distance.
Our relationship is built on trust and that’s what makes it work so well. For example, Sarah is always giving me ideas and then gives me the room to develop them into something bigger or, in some cases, different. We really collaborate well this way: building things by utilising our different strengths yet having a similar sense of humour that holds it all together.
Sarah on Dan:
Most memorable moment with Dan: I was in a client chemistry session without Dan, as he was off getting married. The client asked me a very specific question about a media planning section he’d written, and I answered it so badly that he’s never allowed to go and get married again.
Another time was when I made him take the train with me from Sydney to Newcastle for a client meeting. He was stuck on the train with me for over three hours, each way. He was not happy.
Describe Dan in one word: Unique. I’ve never met anyone like Dan. He will always surprise me with what he says or the way he thinks. It can be very easy to stereotype someone with a beard and tattoos, who loves coffee, and is from Melbourne, but there is absolutely nothing cliché about the way he thinks.
Dan’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: Dan’s most annoying trait is also his most endearing, and the reason we still have a relationship: he always delivers. Dan has the ability to think through something, no matter how bad, and he can make it good and make it powerful. He can rescue bad ideas.
Dan on Sarah:
Most memorable moment with Sarah:
We travelled to the UK together in May this year to speak about Involved at a global conference of Active International (Involved’s parent company). Sarah went out of her way to buy my pregnant wife a present because I didn’t have time.
Describe Sarah in one word: Kind. Sarah is constantly thinking of others before herself. It’s such a refreshing change to work so closely with someone who thinks this way and it makes me want to be a kinder person myself.
Sarah’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: Annoying: Giving me an unformed brief or idea to work with! Endearing: Giving me an unformed brief or idea to work with, because I know she trusts me to make it work.
Full-blown annoying: her short-term memory. Full-blown endearing: her kindness.
If you and a colleague would like to submit your story to Dynamic duos, please email kwelch@mumbrella.com.au.
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