The town hall slide I deleted 10 minutes before going live

I was set to present our Q3 numbers in the San Jose office and had a slide forecasting revenue that my boss had signed off on, but the CFO walked by and said 'that projection is dead, scrap it' and I had to rebuild the whole narrative on the fly. Turned out the old slide would've been straight up wrong, now I always double check with finance before I finalize anything. Anyone else get sandbagged by last minute exec edits?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthew_reed506d ago

That's a brutal spot to be in, but honestly it sounds like you handled it the right way. Good for you for catching it before it went out, that kind of last minute chaos is exactly why I always build in a buffer for finance reviews now.

harper_smith6d ago

That "last minute chaos" bit really hit home for me, @matthew_reed50. I had a similar thing happen last quarter where a supplier double billed us and I only caught it because I was checking line by line at 10 PM the night before the report was due. Took forever to untangle, and my finance guy was already in bed so I had to leave angry voicemails for the next morning. Now I do the same thing as you, I try to have everything done like a week early just so I have room for the dumb stuff that always pops up. It's crazy how one tiny mistake can snowball into a whole mess if you don't catch it in time.