Meet Annika Männikkö
“It has been quite a ride but it has suited me well!”
Meet Annika Männikkö, Hiab’s Director of Strategy & PMO who’s responsible for Hiab Services strategy including running a program management office to make sure that the company achieves its strategic targets. Annika started in her current position a few months ago - however, this is not her first position in the company. Her career at Hiab started already 8 years ago and during this time she has worked in 7 different positions including taking one year off on maternity leave:
“It has been quite a ride but it has suited me well! I have worked in almost all thinkable areas in our global Services organisation ranging from operative customer facing positions to pure strategic ones”
Before joining Hiab Annika was studying Economics and Business Administration at Åbo Akademi University and worked in a small consulting & research company for 4 years. There she got acquainted with companies similar to Hiab/Cargotec and got intrigued by this type of business and industry. What specifically interested Annika in Hiab was its different possibilities:
”I believe that we have a tremendous amount of opportunities within the after sales business of Hiab, not only growing the core business but also truly new opportunities along with digitalized solutions and connectivity. Tapping those opportunities gets me excited and motivated. As a person I am very much driven by learning and being part of creating something new, so I believe that this company and position is a good fit for me.”
When asking Annika what is best about Hiab and her work she underlines the opportunities to learn and develop, in addition to the people she gets to work with and the variety of her tasks. She really enjoys workshops and meetings whether these are with customers, suppliers or internal where she can create something new or solve problems. This is when she gets to interact with others and learn at the same time. As Annika has spent the majority of her career at Hiab she feels like all of her professional skills have developed during this time - communication skills being one of the most important ones to succeed in her work:
“To me the most crucial skills are communication and cooperation skills. It’s about the fact that you do not need to possess all the necessary skills and knowledge yourself, such as technical ones in my case, but you need to be able to work and interact well with the people who have those. You need to convince people that they want to work and share their knowledge with you.”
A lot has happened during the past 8 years and Annika has collected many memorable moments in the company, but some of the times have been more special than others: “One memorable period was when I moved to Malmö, Sweden to work at our head office in 2014-2015. This period could be described as a game changer both from career and personal life perspective: I even got married there in Copenhagen City Hall!”