Corporate Communications Mishap

Speaker 1 0:00

Now , in terms of fuck-ups , there's one I can tell you about which really did happen to me . This is back in the day , this is a previous life , when I was wearing a corporate hat with a fancy title Vice President of Corporate Communications and this was to do with the publication of financial results for a public listed company who was my employer at the time . And in those days I'm sure many listeners will remember that and indeed people might be doing this today still the same way , I don't know . But back in those days you had good software that you could set up your email distribution , uh , the disclosure to the stock exchange , etc . The regulatory stuff you had to do , and then also publish your website content , site content and all that . So , um , this was , uh , that um that I was involved with with a colleague . Uh , the evening before the announcement was due to be made , we were finalizing the , the distribution and stuff like that . So , um , uh , the website I remember it well we're using a tool called front page . I don't know whether you have recollection of that . I remember that that was back in the day . Yeah , I

Publishing Financial Results Too Early

Speaker 1 1:06

do remember FrontPage . That was one of the biggest tools that was used for publishing website content . So prior to blogs , they didn't exist then . So you know nothing like you can do now .

Speaker 1 1:18

It was a good product and it let you schedule stuff . You think well , yeah , you stuff , like you know . You think well , yeah , you can do that today . But that was kind of novel and it didn't require a techie person to do it as well . So , uh , it was great and uh , we had the , we had all the stuff done , pressed the button to schedule it . Wonderful , off we went and I suddenly thought , omg um did a kind of thought , wait a minute and discovered that what we had done I say we because it was probably her , but I , you know , with of us doing this . So it's a . We See , friends were under the bus already . We'd hit the publish button by mistake rather than the schedule button . Oh , public , yeah , and these were financial results for a public holistic company that were due to go out at a certain time the next day . So they went out like 12 hours early , which is actually illegal , isn't it ? If it happens on purpose , come to that , it depends , yeah , so luckily there was an unpublished feature . Uh , wasn't called that , but we unpublished it and then scheduled it correctly and it went out the next morning at the same

Handling the Crisis Correctly

Speaker 1 2:15

time .

Speaker 1 2:17

Lessons learned , right , um , and I , I , it's , it's , it's comes up in my mind so often . It's almost like if that had , if the potential consequences of that act had happened , that career terminating for me without any question at all . But what you have to do in a situation like that , because that I'm certain many listening will think , oh yeah , therefore , but by the grace of God , god go . I kind of thing has happened to some people before . Um , you've got to uh address the issue immediately . So one of the first thing I did , other than tell my boss , um , was to report it to the stock exchange , uh , because that is your publicly listed company , their shares and so forth . And they were quick to respond positively , saying you know , thank you , you've told us it wasn't deliberate and fine , you fixed it , but next time don't do it again . But don't panic is the thing , and we didn't .

Speaker 1 3:19

But the consequences of that , what time was that in the day ? Did you have to have a stiff drink just right after that ? Yeah , I was about . If I recall it was like 11.30 or so . It was late At night .

Speaker 1 3:32

At night , yeah , and it wasn't a fun moment , I must admit , did you sleep ? No , not

Learning About Attention to Detail

Speaker 1 3:43

really . I wouldn't have thought so . No , not really . I wouldn't have thought so . No , not really .

Speaker 1 3:46

But what it taught me mostly , which is one of the things I've always paid attention to since attention to detail . You must pay attention to the detail on something you absolutely could not get away with . Something like , oh , we hit the wrong button by mistake on the software . No , I bet there's about 10 people out there having anxiety over pressing the wrong button on exit on some sort of software somewhere . We've all done it . It's giving me anxiety just hearing that story and I and I think the , uh , the , the , the risks of it happening again are even greater .

Speaker 1 4:17

Now you've got many different ways of publishing content , like mobile phones and things like this . Uh , even worse when you've got multiple people remotely accessing the same documents and things to edit them . I hear horror stories about that every day almost . Um , wrong versions and things like this . But that example I've mentioned , I've not actually , I don't believe I've actually told that anyone publicly

Modern Publishing Risks

Speaker 1 4:38

. So , yeah , here's breaking news on this podcast exclusive . But it was a while . It was , it was it was a while . It's amazing how many fuck up exclusives . We get on this show where people go . I've never talked about that .