“It’s important for the values to be clear and practical and that they embody doing things. I am very pleased with the way the values have rolled out and entered everyday life: they are plain to see, people mention them, everyone remembers them and their importance deepens all the time.”

The five-strong team that Risto heads made promises together for the new values last spring. “We opened the values as hands-on deeds, meaning what each value signifies in our team’s way of working. In the course of the year, we’ve returned to the promises and we’ve looked at how they’ve been implemented in practice,” Risto reports.

So what are the value propositions of Risto’s team?

Stay curious

"We decided to break the mould. This means that we expose our thoughts and ideas boldly, both within the team and with others, complete outsiders. We actively seek new perspectives and we’re open to criticism. We ask for opinions and we spar over ideas at an early stage. We make things as concrete as possible, we order experimental layouts, we visualise ideas, model packages and advertisements, we make collages and draw ideas on paper – and then, of course, we talk about them. Everyone sees ideas in their own way, and that’s why it’s important to illustrate them. This way we can bring out their best sides and combine them."

Strive for excellence

"We invite feedback. We want there to be a low threshold to giving and getting feedback in our team. Feedback is part of the working day and daily discussion, the aim of which is to make things better. As a supervisor, I feel that getting feedback is the most important way to upgrade my own actions. Since the beginning of 2013 I’ve kept a feedback journal in which I record all the feedback I’ve received and given. It also makes it easy to see where progress has been made."

Grow together

"We admit that we need help. You definitely don’t need to get through on your own. When you can’t make headway, it’s important to say it out loud to a friend. The other person doesn’t need to have a ready-made solution because often just thinking things over aloud and a few good questions will help to solve a problem. Also, the final result is usually better when two people think through an issue over again. All that this takes is for us to have a spare moment when someone asks for it."