Friday, July 25, 2008
The webb bureau Doberman was awarded the best workplace in Sweden 2007. This makes us extra proud, since the managing director Lisa Lindström graduated from Hyper Island eight years ago. I went to Doberman to talk to Lisa about what makes their web bureau such a great work place.
- Many reasons! First of all, we own the company together, which is important to us. Our goal values are quality, profitability and wellbeing. We believe that to be the best webb bureau we need to feel good as well, Lisa says.
How do you achieve that?
- We work with the idea that ”anything is possible”. We try to be very open. Everyone who works here knows everything about everything. We try to give eachother feedback all the time, both spontaniously and at specifik meetings. Feedback is love, as long as it is in the purpose of improving something. Also, everyone who wants to, can take the UGL course at Hyper Island, to get to know them selves better and to get tools to create the group that we want to be a part of.
What else do you do?
- We have development days three times a year where we sit down and discuss the future. Everybody participates in this. ”Everybody” is an important word here at Doberman, as we want everybody to feel that they can have their say.
Can you give me an example?
- We decided that we wanted a really cool office building and made mood boards, to find out what kind of place we wanted it to be. Then we moved everything ourselves and put the new office together by our selves as well. This way we all got involved and we all feel that this office is exactly the office that we wanted.
- Another thing is our philosophy: "to work to live”, and not "to live to work”, because we believe that this is a better way and it makes us last longer. We try to make sure that the work you do suit your motivation and knowledge so that you feel happy about what you are doing here. It is also important to feel that it is more than okey to have children and we try our best to make this work place a good one for parents. We also encourage people to come up with new ideas. Someone came up with the idea that we should do sports together, so now we have Doberman sports. Another thing is to evaluate our work and to learn from our mistakes and share that knowledge with our co-workers.
What did you study at Hyper Island?
- Digital Media. I focused on project leading and made my internship in Ney York.
What were you like as a student?
- An angry one I think. I used to make my own projects at Hyper Island as I didn’t always like the ones they gave me. Today I am very grateful for the learning experience I got there, but back then I thought it was unstructured. Now I can see why, and how that helped me become who I am today.
What did you learn at Hyper Island that you find useful now?
- That what and how is just as important when you want to achive a good result. We priortize the process just as much as what we are producing. I also learned to be curious, and the knowledge of knowing how to learn things. And I learned that openness is important to be more efficient. And that feedback results in less conflicts.