Pro tip: My 47th draft finally got the CEO to stop editing everything

I hit a weird milestone last month with our quarterly earnings release. I sent the CEO 46 different drafts over three days and he kept sending back tracked changes on every single one. Then draft 47 landed with zero edits. Turns out I finally figured out his pet peeve: he hates the word 'optimize' in any context. Once I swapped it for 'improve' and cut the sentence length to under 15 words per line, he just approved it. The insane part is he never told me that rule, I just noticed the pattern from watching his edits. Has anyone else found a weird quirk like this that unlocked approval from a higher-up?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher_craig6d ago

Yeah the secret decoder ring thing is exactly what it felt like, I used to think people were just being picky but now I get it.

carr.xena7d ago

Whoa 46 drafts in 3 days? That is wild to me. I don't know how you kept your sanity staring at that many versions of the same earnings release. But the part that really got me is the word 'optimize.' That is such a tiny thing to get hung up on and he never even told you about it. I would have gone crazy trying to figure out why he kept rejecting stuff. Its like he had this secret decoder ring for what he liked and you had to crack it by yourself. Honestly its impressive you picked up on the sentence length thing too, most people would have given up way before draft 47.