FACE TO FACE : Jan Dawson – On an even keel

It seems appropriate that Jan Dawson’s office building opens to the sparkling blue of Waitemata Harbour across spiky hedge of dancing yacht masts.
In the time she has spare from her role as chair of KPMG New Zealand and CEO of its Auckland office, that is where her attention often turns – to her other life as skipper and co-owner of an MRX match racer and newly appointed position as president of Yachting NZ.
Earlier this year, 53-year-old Dawson and her crew came first in the Zenza Women’s National Keelboat Championships and there’s little doubt she likes challenge – both professionally and outside work.
“The old saying about me is that I’m not competitive – but I don’t like coming second. I do like winning. I like winning in business and in sport,” says Dawson.
And one of the attractions of MRX keelboat racing is that the races are run without any handicapping system.
“I like playing sport where you win by crossing the line first – you don’t win on points or on judge’s call. That would drive me crazy.”
Skippering boat, she says, is not unlike running business.
“You’re part of team and you all have to work together. And some people in the team will be better than others but it’s the team as whole that is going to win. I can’t make the boat come first unless everyone is doing what they need to do.
“You have to accept that people will make mistakes and it doesn’t help to scream and yell about that even if you might feel like it – it’s all about getting the best out of the whole team.”
She reckons mistakes are good self-improvement tool whether for sailing or for business management.
“Making mistakes is very much part of improving your performance but not making them twice – you learn from them rapidly. I think you have to be willing to take risks and to accept feedback as to how things might have been done better.
“While I think I could probably be better at that, I do listen when people tell me how things might have been done differently. I take that stuff on board.”
Running team of professionals has its challenges because the relationships are not quite as delineated as they are in traditional company structure, says Dawson.
“The separation of what is ownership and what is management isn’t quite as clear. In the corporate management scenario, you’re the boss and you have employees that you work with while the shareholders are off over there and the directors are outside the organisation. In this organisation, the shareholders are here every day, the directors are here every day and the employees are here every day – and they all have ideas on how the place should be run.
“So really, you’re traversing this minefield of everyone’s views without being so consensus driven that you can’t make decision. You do learn who best to consult with on various issues but in the end, the decision does come back to me.”
Which is pretty much how it is for any skipper.
Dawson’s love of yachting was born on the Waitemata. Unlike most Aucklanders, she says dryly, she was actually born here, initially living in what was then the backwater of Blockhouse Bay. She taught herself to sail in her brother’s P-class off Manly Beach when the family moved to the North Shore.
The match-racing bug came later. But the ability to take advantage of fair winds is perhaps also evident in career she started with no clear picture as to where it might take her.
“While I wouldn’t counsel people to do this, I’d never really set career goals – in five years, I’d be here and in another five I’d have achieved this. It was more case of really liking what I was doing, being an accountant, then chartered accountant. And as long as the role was challenging, I’d stay.
“But when I came back from Canada (in 1986), I was lot more focused relative to my peers in New Zealand – I came back with more defined ideas of what I wanted to do. That’s one of the benefits of going overseas and why I’d encourage young people to do it.”
She first left New Zealand in the 1970s, married and with some years of accountancy work already under her belt.
“I’d left school from the sixth form to go to university which seemed like good idea at the time. It would probably have been better if I’d stayed on because my first year [university] results were not too spectacular. I did play lot of basketball.”
Because she didn’t pass enough papers to hang on to her fees bursary, Dawson spent the next two years alternating lectures with job at Barfoot & Thompson doing accounting work. The advantage was gaining practical work experience alongside the academic course. By the time she went back full time in her final year, Dawson had met her husband, Peter, who was studying at Massey University.
“I spent lot of time driving to Palmy in Mini 850 with no radio and because Peter had lectures I also spent lot of time studying there in the library. So I ended up graduating at the top of the class which was surprise to me and everyone else I think. I guess it shows you what bit of application can do.”
She spent year working in Palmerston North doing farm accounting and business advisory work while Peter finished his degree then the couple moved back to Auckland where she discovered an interest in the tax and legal side of accounting during an eight-month stint with Price Waterhouse before heading off overseas.
In London she got job with small West End firm that acted as an investment bank for Arab oil money as well as having number of show business clients on its books. It proved interesting.
“I did audit work for the first time there, which was bit of shock to the system, but I learned to adapt.”
After four years in the United Kingdom, the couple were not quite ready to come home. Auckland seemed too big leap.
“I think people can get bit of shock coming back here after being in big city which is probably why many don’t – or they go to places like Sydney that are bit bigger, more cosmopolitan. Anyway, we looked at Canada. I liked Toronto but my husband was keen on Vancouver and it proved great choice. We made lot of good friends there.”
It’s also where she got introduced to keelers.
“That was fantastic. Vancouver is bit more like New Zealand and was good stepping stone back – it also really influenced in big way what I did from then on.”
Canada was to prove watershed in many ways. It was where she first joined KPMG. It was also the start of parenthood and the realisation that family and career need not be mutually exclusive.
“I was working there as manager when one of the partners had what I think was her third baby. She might have taken few days out of the office but she was back within week and it all seemed absolutely normal. Then when I got pregnant the partners were very supportive. They just wanted to know how much time I wanted off. Nannies were easy to come by and you get tax deduction for their cost in Canada.
“So it was all very easy and there was no pressure about continuing to work. It was fate, I guess, that I happened to be there when Cam came along. I think if it had happened in New Zealand I might not have gone back to work because there would have been more pressure from family and friends not to and it would have been harder to get nanny.”
When she did return to New Zealand, things had moved on.
“I was senior audit manager at KPMG by then. I think they thought I was very bolshy manager but that was the north American training perhaps. Within couple of years I was invited to become partner and I said ‘Okay, I’m pregnant’. To give the guys here credit, they didn’t blink. They just asked ‘when is it due and when are you back?’ and I thought ‘that’s progress’.”
While she’d pretty much gone with the flow career-wise till then, one of the partners in Canada had encouraged her to take more deliberate approach to getting what she wanted from her life and career.
“I had more focus about what I was doing. We’d been away from New Zealand then for six years, the banking sector here had just op