If you’ve paid any attention to the Olympics over the last couple of weeks, you likely saw many star athletes achieving incredible individual success. But there were also many events built around teamwork.
商业也可以非常相似. We can become so focused in working toward individual goals or just taking care of the tasks required in our particular role, we often don’t stop to think about our teammates whose jobs are different than ours.
这并不总是一件坏事. Sometimes our workplace “events” are completed as individuals while other times as a team, 就像在奥运会上一样. 然而, when we continually focus on ourselves and the task at hand, we miss out on the rewarding experience of working to achieve something great together. When you foster a caring people-centric culture like ours, 你建立了信任、同理心和联系. 你们彼此联系在一起，就像一家人一样. That connectivity becomes a great source of strength, especially in difficult times.
About three weeks ago, at our corporate offices in St. 路易, a few of our people noticed sparks flying from an electrical switch box in our parking garage, 位于外围十大菠菜app大楼的下面. The power in the building was immediately turned off for fear of fire or worse.
正如外围十大菠菜app最终发现的那样, water had backed up in a drain in our alley and eventually found its way to this very important part of our building’s power system.
“这是一个很大的威胁,威利·罗宾逊说,) one of our maintenance technicians and part of our Facilities Team.
外围十大菠菜app的大楼被疏散了，所有人都回家了. 然后, the race was on to unclog the drain and address immediate issues to get the building back open as soon as possible. Our Facilities and IT Teams scrambled to get everything figured out.
“We had team members in high heels running down the alley with extension cords,” Willie said. “I wish everyone could have seen how our two teams collaborated. 毫不费力. 没有人问问题.”
“You just kind of did whatever you could to get things back up,Craig Hergenroether说, 外围十大菠菜app的首席信息官.
Unfortunately, due to the immediate shutdown of our power supply, our IT servers were affected. Craig said that in his more than 40 years in the business, he hadn’t seen this set of conditions or a more serious disaster.
Fortunately, we have a disaster recovery plan and IT services based in other company locations. 暂时地, Craig and the IT Team were able to get most of our services back online quickly, so the large majority of our team members around the world didn’t even notice.
但是外围十大菠菜app在St的IT团队的工作才刚刚开始. 路易. 备份也受到关机的影响. Our servers basically needed to be recreated from scratch, 整个数据中心必须重建. 克雷格称之为“灾难中的灾难”.”
“For all intents and purposes, it was like the building was destroyed,” he said.
Our IT team worked, literally, around the clock for a solid week. Team members would leave when they were too tired to carry on, go home to sleep and come back to start all over again.
“I wanted to give out capes to all the superheroes,克雷格说.
And just as our IT Team rose to work past the emergency, our people in every other company department also rose to the occasion. Meals and snacks were provided by the other teams but Craig said that wasn’t the most important support they received.
“It was always, ‘How are you doing, not How is the system doing,’克雷格说. “It was always about our health and how the team was doing.”
Not everyone in the building had the expertise to rebuild a data center. But just as in a caring family, they did what they could to help out in their own way. At the very least, they showed they cared about their teammates.
“当你像这支球队一样累的时候, it wouldn’t take much to send someone over the edge,克雷格说.
But when your culture is that of a caring family, everyone pulls together in a crisis. As our Chief People Officer Rhonda Spencer, said, “Culture is who you are 在你最糟糕的一天s.”
“我看到人们真诚地关心彼此, 关于公司, and about helping… really just helping to do whatever is needed,朗达说. “We can have vision statements on the walls that talk about trust and responsible freedom, 但最后, 在你最糟糕的一天, culture is the Chief Technology Officer alongside the maintenance team lead working to help in any way they can.”
几周过去了，工作仍然没有完成. It’ll be months before everything is fully back to normal. But the experience has been and continues to be a good reminder.
“Out in that parking lot, we were one team,” Willie recalled. “这就是我所接受的外围十大菠菜app的文化.”
外围十大菠菜app公司不断发展壮大. 在圣. 路易, we have more than double the team members we had ten years ago. Barry-Wehmiller recently acquired its 84th company and we will continue to grow beyond our current heart count of 11,000人. But we always need to keep in mind that wherever we are around the globe – and sometimes even in the same town – we’re all one team, 一个家庭.
As Willie very eloquently said, “Rear wheel drive will only get you so far. 外围十大菠菜app需要所有的轮子才能到达目的地.”