I’ve been working with people in some capacity for 27 years, and I always have been and remain a firm believer in the concept of teamwork.  Recently in fact I experienced the power of teamwork firsthand here with our own PawnMaster team. The way they came together was nothing short of spectacular and something I’ve never witnessed before, and it’s really galvanized my belief and commitment to the teamwork concept. When you have a great team like we do, you think there’s nothing more they can do that will shock you but man I have to admit, I was wrong in this instance. Let me set the stage for you and share this real-life scenario, which will only reinforce why teamwork is vital to every business.

Picture this; it’s 5:00 pm on a Friday, our workweek ends in an hour, and many of us have dinner plans with our families. Our office receives a call from one of our customers who has some shops on our PawnMaster product and some shops on a competitors product. This customer needs to move over 20 of their locations using the other software provider to PawnMaster. Awesome, great news to end the week on! Here’s the catch; we need to do everything in our process, which normally takes two days for one location, for 20 locations in less than 66 hours. If you’ve ever had experience with changing software systems you know the difficulty of the task ahead, especially when converting the life blood of a company—its customer data.  “Impossible task,” you say. I say, “Not with this team.” Not when you live and breathe the TEAM CONCEPT.

When this call came in, I saw “The Power of Teamwork” take over. I never had to ask for volunteers, our team just stepped up and didn’t bat an eye towards the negative. Our Director of Development immediately took charge and strategized with several of our high level developers. An immediate strategy on a process/schedule to turn this insurmountable task into a reality was formulated. Starting at 6:00 pm Friday evening, we had 13 team members working in shifts around the clock for 66 straight hours to get these 20 locations up and running. The team lived here during that time, sleeping on couches and eating meals of delivery pizza and sandwiches. I definitely wouldn’t say that this job was easy to accomplish, but I can say that because we have a team that works together and is 100% committed to our clients, the job was done, and it was done correctly.

No matter what industry you are in, no matter if you are a large or small shop, having a team rowing in the same direction will always overcome any obstacles presented to you. I really have to hand it to our staff for coming together and showing what teamwork can accomplish when the chips are stacked against you. In the words of the late, great Vince Lombardi, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”