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 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 If it happens on purpose, come to that, it depends, yeah, so luckily there was an unpublished feature. Uh, wasn't called that, but we unpublished it and then scheduled it correctly and it went out the next morning at the same time.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 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. 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.