Believing in Sama-Sama

We had our process’ monthly town hall last Thursday. The usual format is we give awards for perfect attendance peeps, top performers and teams, and then we would have the usual games or whatever theme contests there are. This being the first of the year 2013, our People Work Stream had us bring paper and crayons for the “Draw Mo Vision Mo” segment. The four teams had to come up with a new team name, slogan and logo which would embody their team’s vision for this year.

Team Vange/Pao drew a huge octopus with six tentacles representing the six members. The headset-wearing sea creature says, “This is it, Pus It” (a word play on Push It) and envisions working together well despite six different personalities mixing in, under the guidance of our newest performance-coach-turned-relief-AMO Pao, while Vange is on maternity leave.

Team Dman/Dorobo is now Daga-Daga-Gang who is aiming for “One Team, One Goal to Success” (I’m not sure if this is verbatim, please correct me if I’m wrong!). Their logo had, of course, a rat, surrounded by stars of equal sizes and a trophy, among others. Being a consistent Dream Team awardee and constant Hit Club suki, the team foresees a year of unity and hard work with no star mentality – plus more GC’s to fund their teambuilding activities.

Team Jown will now be known as Team Juno – J for Jown and Uno for number one. They drew a shield to represent protecting our company’s customers. Their vision is to be solid to be champions!

Our team chose a catchy phrase, “Think One, Team Van.” We drew a huge number 1 surrounded by traced outline of our hands. It depicted our goal to hold hands as a symbol of unison, to be closer as a team and to our manager; hence the name Team HK (Hawak Kamay) We believe to be united as a process harmony has to start within the team. Our aim is not only to be #1 in numbers –both individually and as a team – but to give out a performance worthy of a top rating in all that we do. At the end of the day, it’s not whether we get the actual 1 or not, but that we could proudly and honestly say that win or fail, we never lacked effort in trying; we did not hold back our best. Whatever personal struggles, distractions, emotional state or mood we are in, when we are at work, our heart, mind and focus should be at doing our job and doing it well.

Last year, our process mantra was BELIEVE. The year was fraught with surprises, changes and losses. There were a lot of uncertainties going around, so I guess faith in our management and each other was important. We shrunk from 8 teams, 8 managers and 2 MO’s to now just 4 teams, 4 AMO’s and 1 MO. But what we lost in people count, we made up for stronger and closer personal and professional relationships. This is a department where team names are actually just for reports and seating plans and admin purposes; we could literally be in any other team and be happy. Each rep can go on auto-pilot even with minimal or no supervision. Most, if not all, perform not because we were told we have to, but because we know we have to – and want to.

This year, it is SAMA-SAMA. And Jown’s opening remarks at the town hall quite sums up that we are off to a good start this year. Only a month into 2013 and already we’ve had several team building activities, girls’ movie night, spaghetti parties, boys’ basketball nights, to name a few. We stuck together and partied hard during the Rewind Party in WTC, and the process Facebook group is still a popular stress-reliever for a lot of us, nyaha!

Sama-Sama. It’s all about sticking together, because, hey, we are all we’ve got. It’s about working together despite and in spite of our differences, of not pulling each other down. I believe this is where sensitivity, honesty, trust, credibility, sense of humor and just plain hard work come in. Walang petiks, walang basag trip, walang iwanan. I mean, let’s be realistic; not all of us will reach retirement in this company, let alone in this department (Good grief I hope I don’t, despite being the most tenured here haha!). But whatever other opportunities we’re looking at outside, whatever dreams we’re trying to pursue as well, whatever other rackets and whatnot we have on the side, when we’re at work, let’s give it our 110%, all day, every day!