Ever had your routine completely discombobulated? Imagine what would happen if all of a sudden someone dumped a 13,500 gallon swimming pool into your place of employment with absolutely no warning. Imagine it was over a holiday weekend when the building was unoccupied, and the water was allowed to sit for hours. Well, that isn’t just a “ferinstance.” It really happened where I work. Our sprinkler system malfunctioned over the July 4th weekend, and went unchecked long enough for the equivalent of a backyard, in-ground swimming pool poured into the third floor and worked its way down to the first floor. Total pandemonium … massive destruction … major disruption.
All the preparation in the world can never prepare you for the shock of the real thing. You’ll never know if you’re truly ready until it happens and all those preparations and plans come off the shelves and into real life. Imagine your office drenched from ceiling to floor with a steady flow of water dripping through the ceiling. What do you have out that would be ruined? What would be safe? Where would you move until repairs were completed? Would you be able to continue working? These and more questions we faced as many employees cut short their holiday celebrations to begin to work on the devastation. Adrenaline kicked into high gear, and people began to show the stuff they were made of and took charge. Much praise goes out to those who were first responders, particularly since this is the worst disaster ever to strike our organization in its 50 year history. Even hurricanes had spared this office, even though four of them had our area in their sites in 2004.
As we began the recovery efforts, I began to notice an amazing transformation. People were talking to each other, helping each other, joking with each other. Departments have merged with others, taking every spare desk, closet, lobby, or alcove as makeshift office space. We’re seeing faces we haven’t seen in years. And we were interacting, sharing, helping, breaking down our self-made silos and building relationships. Has it been hard – of course it has. Any time there is major change, we are challenged to our limits to adapt and roll with the changes, particularly changes over which we have no control. People have the opportunity to step up to the plate and show what they’re really capable of doing, above and beyond their normal job duties. We’ve developed a new sense of community that we might not have ever experienced otherwise.
Would I recommend a disaster to bring folks together? Absolutely not! But, if we look for the positive impact of disruptive change, maybe we might be more prone to shake things up a bit every so often. It’s nice to be secure, but sometimes we can become too secure and entrenched. I see the outcome of this upheaval as a positive one for my organization. Yes it is inconvenient, annoying, and frustrating sometimes as we get accustomed to the swelled population or our remaining buildings. But the positive results of drawing us together towards a common purpose might never have been realized without this event that rocked us to our core.
