Our five (pretty simple) studio values

As an agency, we’ve worked hard to really hone our studio processes, understand our team members on a personal level, and better communicate in a way that breeds empathy, transparency and inclusivity. If the pandemic confirmed anything for us at Tundra, it was that we really do have our priorities in the right order. And that we, as a collective group, share the same underlying values in how we operate.

As a digital studio, we are only ever as good as the people who deliver our work—with passion and pixel precision. Our people are at the heart of everything we do; every decision we make.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve made a conscious effort to turn our focus and attention to how we hire talented people, how we nurture their individual growth, and how we create opportunities that keep them motivated. As we made some drastic changes to our processes off the back of these learnings, we worked with our teams to define the future strategy and direction of our studio. During these discussions, we developed a new set of studio values that we truly believe better represent the people at Tundra, and better guide how we like to conduct ourselves as a group.

We are an agency full of unique, talented individuals; we promote being different, and doing things differently. Our values ensure we produce the best, most effective and exciting work for our clients, while enabling us to selectively take on new projects and challenges that really inspire us.

We don’t have a one size fits all approach, because we know that no two problems, no two clients, and no two humans are the same. In everything we do, whether it’s planning a project approach or hiring new team members, we choose the right structure, approach and solution for the right project or problem to solve. We can scale, remain lean, stick to rigid processes or go with the flow. We have absolute trust in each other as a team, and this enables us to try new things, pivot when needed, and always act with purpose.

Everyone is different. And that’s what truly makes us great. We don’t hide who we are; from each other or our clients. We work best when we can be ourselves, and we encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work, every day. We know each other’s children, swap pet stories, and check in on each other’s mental health—especially during those never-ending lockdowns of the pandemic.

Everyone on the team comes from a different background, with different experiences and different opinions. We see this as an absolute strength to our diversity of thought, and have worked hard to create a psychologically safe studio for all. In fact, on a studio retreat we ran a few of years ago, we took personality tests to uncover just how different we all were, discussed how we all think and work differently, and later came up with studio-wide changes that embraced these differences.

We’re not afraid to question the brief, ourselves, or each other. We are all adults who are passionate about what we do and motivated to succeed together. And with this motivation comes the overwhelming desire to do good, think deeper, and create better.

We like to get to the root of a problem, understand how things really work and why they are the way they are. We’re committed to producing the best possible outcomes, by backing ourselves, each other, and our collective talents. We challenge ourselves to make sure that everything we do is adding real, tangible value to our clients and their users—ensuring all the while that, as a studio, we are genuinely enjoying the work we’re doing and the products we’re creating or promoting.

We don’t get hung up on problems, blockers ,or issues. We thrive on digesting them and focussing on the possible solutions available. Every problem poses an opportunity to better ourselves, our work, and our thinking.

We bring positivity, optimism, and reality to our problem solving, knowing there is always a great outcome and that we will work together to find it.

We expect a lot from each other. With great flexibility and focus on the team, comes great responsibility and collective accountability across everything we do. Every client, every project, every output is the collective responsibility of the whole team, not an individual. There are no passengers here, and every person is expected to have an opinion, a voice and add value. Because, at the end of the day, we’re all adults, and we’re all here for the same reasons; to work with great people on creating better solutions to interesting problems.

Our values underpin everything we do at Tundra, and they’re the reason our team love coming to work every day. If our philosophy resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our open roles, or get in touch with our team to chat about upcoming opportunities.