Dynaset got a new CEO at the beginning of 2023 when Anni Karppinen started leading Dynaset. Anni has worked at Dynaset since 2008 but didn’t think she would make a career there.
- As a fun fact, I originally started my career at Dynaset by assembling welding generators. Just like Reijo, although I didn’t assemble those in my garage. After that, I think the year was 2008 when I started an internship as a sales secretary. This vacancy took me to China, as I had been studying sales in Asian markets. When the internship ended, I continued working in the same position through the summer. I thought, ‘ I work through summer and then find a real job.’ So it wasn’t my intention to create a career here. I thought that this was too “engineering” for me.
As a sales secretary, she did many things, from exhibition planning to quotes. The learning curve was steep, and many things were learned via trial and error.
- I wasn’t in any way technically oriented when I started here. Back then, I visited Timo Nieminen’s, our current Technical Director’s, office quite often asking questions about technology, Anni Karppinen said and laughed.
As the career at Dynaset wasn’t the first nor easiest choice, what made Anni stay here?
- Our team and customers were the primary motivators that made me stay at Dynaset. They have given me many exciting challenges to overcome and opportunities to try and learn new things.
She is a perfect example of how motivation and courage make anyone a master in the long run. Anni’s position was constantly developing; for instance, Anni became responsible for Dynaset events, which she really loved. As time went by, Anni’s calendar also started to fill with different sales tasks, including customer visits.
- At this point, things just happened. Event planning, customer visits, and all sorts of team-leading tasks started filling my schedule. Event planning was natural to me, but acting as a technical salesperson in Finnish expos wasn’t a piece of cake for a woman because the industry was male-dominated. Thankfully, foreign expos and customers were a different story what came to the appreciation of my know-how. Gladly things have changed a lot since then in Finland for women as well. Overall, you might say that when I saw something that needed to be done, I did it. After a few years, I became our Sales Manager. In that position, I worked for nine years, and in 2018, I also became an Executive Vice President, from which position I left for maternity leave at the beginning of 2022.
How Anni became the Sales Manager was extraordinary: the sales team proposed her to be their team leader. The year was 2012. Before that, Anni had implied her interest in the job.
- I applied for the Sales Manager position at Dynaset before becoming one. The only problem was that the application didn’t even lead to an interview, Anni said and laughed.
New Perspective to Familiar Business – Everything is Built on Trust
So Anni already has long experience from Dynaset. From the educational side, she has an MBA in international sales. Most importantly, she is a mother of a one-year-old daughter, which brings spice to the leading family business. How have things gone so far?
- I was surprised by how much the change in position changed my daily tasks and attitudes toward me – even though most of these recurring tasks had been in my schedule before the new job. I’m grateful for how well our team has supported the change and me. The support has been essential to combine motherhood and management positions. In my current position, I get to be involved in many interesting things, which cut through all of our operations at Dynaset, and all aim to satisfy customers.
Anni Karppinen believes trust, clear goals, and vision will help the team grow.
- We have excellent values and a fantastic team and want to be developing in the long run. Each Dynaset team member is essential and valuable to us, and I provide sparring and support to each team member as much as needed ensuring our journey toward our vision. We must maintain our working culture and team spirit as the company grows. I firmly believe the best workplace is built together. Or is there someone who wants to work in a bad workplace? We have a team filled with talent in each department, our company just needs to provide all the needed resources.
At DYNASET Factory, one phrase underlines Dynaset’s trustworthy work culture. The phrase is “It is easy to say things from behind Anni’s shoulders.”