Don’t you love the sight of a beautiful sunrise? I do, but not when I have stayed up the entire night working until the sun comes up. The only thing that can ease the pain of an early morning like that is knowing you have the support of a team behind you going through the same thing.
We All Make Mistakes
Do you ever have one of those days where you notice an issue and your stomach just drops? Well, we had one of those this past summer here at CSA. It was a Friday afternoon when we learned that files we had posted to a client were being overwritten by a new batch being posted. It was not a good feeling knowing that we had made a mistake, but we knew we needed to do everything in our power to correct the issue. We had to re-review and re-upload all of the files.
While we only needed one or two people trained on this task during the regular schedule of the project, we soon realized that one or two people just wasn’t going to cut it due to the necessary review and upload of the massive quantity of files. By the time our entire project team worked until after midnight on a Friday and all day Saturday, we quickly realized we were not going to meet our deadline without help. We needed to train people immediately on the process.
We Support
Saturday evening we sent out a full SOS email to the entire CSA staff to see if anyone was willing to help us over the weekend, thinking maybe one or two people would reply. To our shock, the replies kept flooding in with people from all departments offering their help. I have never worked at a company where so many people were willing to be trained and spend hours helping out their teammates on a weekend—especially a beautiful summer weekend! We led a training session on Sunday morning and had about half of our CSA staff supporting us the rest of the day. This includes all of our executive team (two of whom were on vacation at the time!) who stayed up with us each night checking in, asking where they could provide help, reviewing files, and just providing overall encouragement.
As Sunday was wrapping up, we finally started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We knew what we had left to do, but couldn’t keep that many people helping us late into the night. So, we sent off our support team and left the core team to finish up the job. That is how seven of us from all over the country saw the sun come up together.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
I’m pleased to say that we met our deadline of 8:00 am Monday morning (just barely!) and we were really happy with the outcome. But that didn’t mean the work was done. We had so much more work to do on the project and would continue to need support from our team for the next few months. An email went out asking if anyone would be willing to support our project team in the upcoming months and, just like before, I was overwhelmed with the responses. Anytime we needed help with reviews, corrections, or uploads, all I had to do was send out a quick chat to my coworkers and the task would be taken care of immediately. They even found ways to do things more efficiently to help the process as the project went on!
I would like to think our project team could have done everything without any help, but I know in my heart that without the support of everyone at CSA, we would not have made our deadline. The support I felt from everyone (freelancers to the executive team) was immense and something I won’t soon forget.
CSA’s Values
Even though ‘working weekends’ (and the help needed on them) are few and far between, our value of We Support is not. We define this core value as this: We know that we are strongest together. Our ability to collaborate is one of our greatest strengths. We provide a solid foundation for our team members to solve problems, embrace change, and grow.
Not a day goes by in which someone isn’t reaching out, offering their time to help others. From a content lead helping the Alignment department create templates, to editors helping the Project Management team create trackers and schedules, and the Marketing team downloading and uploading files, we are a company who truly supports one another day in and day out.
