Week 4 at Bose

This week, I had the opportunity to go to a talk for the interns and co-ops by the Vice President of the consumer electronics division at Bose, John Gordon. Hearing him speak was both inspiring, and surprising. Instead of preparing a whole presentation about his life and his achievements, he gave us a brief background of his education and previous work experience, and the rest of the session (45 minutes) was designated for questions. He was energetic, friendly, personable; all the things you tend not to hear regarding the top executive of a major company. This interaction just reinforced what I have already seen at Bose. From the top to the bottom, everyone cares about people more than they do about revenues and getting to the top.

Another great example comes from within my small marketing team. There are about eight people, including me, that regularly meet. Before about a month ago, this team was only five people. There is one coworker of mine, Sandy, that started a week before me. She has a lot of experience in marketing and specifically with the type of product we are currently working on. Although she introduced herself as the newbie, I would have never guessed it by the way she participates and shares ideas in the weekly meetings. Not only does she feel comfortable enough to speak up about new ideas, but she shares concerns and constructive criticisms. This is very well-received by the team and they encourage us to continue to speak up. Everything we do is a team effort; making decisions, creating projects, etc.

Another thing I love about my team and the way the work is structured is that someone will bring up an idea and someone else will be passionate about it, and that’s how a project is born. At Bose, they are always reinforcing the idea that you should be doing work that you are passionate about. With this strategy, people can (usually) decide the projects they want to dive into and do their best work on it, because they care about the outcome and the issue at hand. When something needs to get done, my coworkers will say, “does anyone want to take this on?” And usually someone speaks up. It is great that the team can trust anybody to take on the tasks at hand.

Working at Bose has been different than I expected but I have been pleasantly surprised. I was naïve and thought such a large and successful company would be more rigid and intimidating. I have found the opposite to be true here. They thrive through creativity and innovation and they encourage passion and respect.