Pluspunten
You have the ability to learn a lot with the comfort of knowing that making mistakes is expected and that sufficient resources are available to make improvements and have improved outcomes the next time. Senior leadership is very accommodating, encouraging, and non-judgmental. The CEO's vision is crystal clear and appears throughout the organization's visual and electronic communications. Employees are treated like adults and are expected to self-manage their projects, goals, expectations, and process improvements. The company's quarter and yearly goals are known and are visited regularly. Staff meetings are managed well from the top down and managers have a sense of urgency in reporting progress in their effort to achieve company goals. I intend to send up-and-coming engineers to Viking for an incredible learning experience.
Minpunten
For me, the company's business plan and quarterly metrics were perfectly aligned to achieve the company's goals. Like many organizations, not everyone adds "one plus one" the same way; some of the employees were more comfortable relying on business practices that were valid in the 80's and 90's but no longer support what I came to see as a "culture of growth." During my time at Viking, the company experienced some of the greatest profits seen in decades, the stock share price had not been higher in recent memory, and virtually all regular employees were routinely rewarded with repeated monetary awards. I truly saw this company on the verge of achieving some amazing and transformative progress in their fields of expertise. Even though all the numbers were "up," there were some in the company who could not (or would not) believe it would last--and it did. When profits rose, departmental accountability standards proved successful, and new performance feedback standards were enacted, some in the company chose to do things "the way they used to be done." Without 100% of the company's key leaders on the same page, divisions and differences of opinion tended to weaken what could have been a loyal, high-performing team experience.