Will Your Team Bring You Home?

Times are tough and many are struggling with disappearing 401k portfolios, shrinking wages, or even outright unemployment. Times are tough – no doubt, and even I am not immune to it. While today may have been another hit I’ve got to take on the chin, everyone seems see signs of a recovery in their future.

Is this hopeless optimism or simply an subconscious wisdom that things will return to an upright position?

Last year, I wrote an article about surviving in tough times entitled “4 Keys to Success You Need to Survive.” Things like Honesty, Vision, Will, and Communication are all key to survival in tough times, but I saw something this past week that simply amazed me.

This past week, our company, like many others, have been dealing with the tougher economic conditions, underscoring that no one is immune to bad times. Sharp Corporation, our parent corporation, announced losses for the first time in more than five decades. According to AOL Money & Finance:

Sharp expects to post a net loss of 130 billion yen ($1.3 billion), worse than the 100 billion yen loss it had projected in February. … Sharp has said it will cut 1,500 contract workers in Japan by the end of March, and its directors will forgo bonus pay in June and accept pay cuts of up to 50 percent. It had closed some panel production lines for mobile phones in response to the slowdown, which worsened last year.

Rippling throughout the organization, pay decreases found their way to our doorstep an ocean away and in a very ungracious manner.

However, today our branch president stood before us, looking us in the eye and delivered the news with an honesty and candor denoting his trust in our team to handle the news in stride. And we did.

While it was somber news, what I saw amazed me; it started small and built to a crescendo:

A service technician spoke of how his neighbor did not have a job and he was thankful to still be employed. A billing coordinator was thankful to have a pay decrease rather than loose a member of the team. A service manager looked at his team and thanked them for being their when the chips were down. An entire sales team asked how much it would take them in sales to offset their teammates losses in new sales.

You don’t see this everyday. You can’t buy loyalty like this. Not since the United States Marine Corps have I seen loyalty to a team such as this. Staring adversity and hard times in the face, this team asked what more they could do for the teammate standing next to them rather than scurry away and sulk.

We used to have a saying in the Marine Corps, “It’s not the Corps that takes care of Marines, it’s that Marine standing shoulder to shoulder with you that will bring you home.” When the chips are down and you are looking at troubled times do you have a team that will bring you home?

Ken Stewart’s website, ChangeForge, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology in an information-centric world. Ken is also the founder of Seeking the Son. He is always interested in connecting; To discover the many ways you may connect with him, visit him at DandyID.