The cultural fit of any organization is often paramount to company success. When it comes to growth, new hires and talent management, ensuring that employees understand the culture of the organization, can make or break a company. And in a creative and collaborative effort, this is even more critical. 

Of course, diversity is equally important, and when co-workers are collaborating with one another on a day-to-day basis the diversity of a workforce can be clear for all to see. In fact, for HR managers, different personality types interacting with one another in a collaborative sense can often be incomparable to the rewards it can produce. Just take a look at DreamWorks Animation. 

Based in California, the animation studio – behind such commercial successes as both the Shrek and Madagascar series of films – is currently ranked as sixth on Fortune‘s list of 100 Best Places To Work. The studio thrives on a culture of creativity and innovation, but in the same breath, also understands that these don’t mean a thing without a strong technical, sales and marketing backbone. It is this diversity – and the understanding of all these components working together – that makes for DreamWorks to be such a huge success.

And since the release of DreamWorks’ first feature 12 years ago, the studio has brought a smorgasbord of characters to life – all of them as diverse as the company’s workforce.

 

DreamWorks is a powerful vehicle, riding on the wave of the next generation of animated movies. Its 1998 release, Antz, was the first computer-animated movie to show digital water, for instance – a trick that was later perfected in the underwater adventure Shark Tale in 2004. 

The same direction

Of course, the real “trick” at DreamWorks is the studio’s ability to take such a dynamic, collaborative workforce and steer them all in the same direction, creating sustainable and solid business results.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 11th) you can watch Adam Burns, editor-in-chief of Meet The Boss TV, speaking to Dan Satterthwaite, DreamWorks Animation’s Head of Human Resources, about just how you create, motivate and move an inspired culture.

 

(Click to Enlarge – Dreamworks Character FlowChart)