Continuous learning helps to exceed goals, boost motivation and create value for customers

We supply safer solutions for companies in over 50 countries, and our clients provide service for critical industries in all six continents. At TT Gaskets, we get energized by challenging ourselves and developing better and safer solutions together with our clients.

Our sealing solutions are used on land, at sea and in the air – gaskets are needed everywhere. Experience from different fields has given us insight, which we have refined through experimentation and collaborative projects with our clients. Over the years, we have become a specialized provider of demanding industrial solutions.

As gasket professionals, our motivation stems from being able to build a safer and sustainable industrial world for the next generations while delighting our customers . Another source of inspiration is our very own Smart Lab where we conduct continuous testing, develop new products, and innovate brand new gasketing solutions.

We aim to apply insight from different industries and distill it into an array of interesting product development ideas. We also gain ideas through co-creation projects with research institutes and start-ups in Finland and abroad. To sum it up, we follow the follow the guidance of iconic French microbiologist Louis Pasteur: ”La chance ne sourit qu’aux esprits bien préparés”, chance favors the prepared mind.

Collaborative gasket design

Our strong culture of embracing challenges with vigor comes from our founder Jussi Arpiainen. As a trusted partner of the Finnish defense forces, he was the go-to man for solving problems and inventing something that did not yet exist. After Jussi, my father Matti Arpiainen understood the power of broad teamwork in problem solving and elevated our design department to a whole new level as CEO. During my time as CEO, the same principles have been refined into our Design Board, a flexible and varied work group that complements TT Gaskets’ design department.

With weekly meetings, the Design Board includes representatives from all departments. This steering group approach to design has brought speed, fresh thinking and better tracking to our product development. The Design Board has also made motivating different organizational levels possible. This way we can find the best and safest sealing solutions either in-house or together with our clients.

Organizations need to keep learning

We have always believed that a learning organization needs non-stop internal and external stimuli in order to give life to new ideas and challenge our thinking. This translates to comprehensive and regular training of our staff. Lately, our managers have been given food for thought at the TTG Academy, and I have honed my own leadership methods at the High Performance Leadership training program organized by Insead and the Family Business Network (FBN-I).

According to Gallup, continuous learning together with transparent communication keep companies moving and help organizations on their journey towards the future. Personally, I would also add finding your own model for foresight and future work to the list. Luckily, future-proofing and foresight work are taken seriously in Finland with several related projects underway. I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of the Tampere Chamber of Commerce’s future work group that focuses on sharing knowledge and expertise. Private and public organizations can benefit and learn from each other in e.g. collaborations between businesses, universities and urban areas.

We at TT Gaskets strongly believe in leadership through information, and have begun a three-year program for developing a more intelligent gasket factory. Our pace of investments will only accelerate towards the end of the year and beyond. Stay tuned!

Embracing challenges as a part of company culture

At TT Gaskets, reinventing ourselves and embracing challenges is inherited from previous generations, integrated in our corporate culture and harnessed as a source of motivation in our daily work. A learning organization must have the courage to question their own boundaries and grow beyond them. Often, we do not end up where we intended to, but found something even better in the process. We take joy in learning something unexpected that can benefit us as well as our customers.

We wish to thank all our clients and the excellent culture of collaborating, exploring, learning and succeeding together in the Pirkanmaa region. Happy new year to all our stakeholders around the world! Together we can envision a safer industrial future for current and coming generations. I hope we can meet this year either virtually or face-to-face at trade fairs and seminars in Finland and around the world.

Aleksi Arpiainen

More posts you might be interested in:
We all have a right to good leadership
What if gaskets could talk? – With an innovation culture, we create new customer value and an even more positive employer experience

Aleksi Arpiainen is the CEO of TT Gaskets in the third generation. According to him, the success of a family business is fueled by continuous development and innovation. In the blog, Aleksi sheds light on his thoughts on where the world of gaskets is going.