Presented a report with the wrong numbers in front of 12 managers

Was in a conference room at our Dallas office last quarter. I pulled data from an old spreadsheet by accident. The CEO stopped me 3 slides in and said "these don't match what finance sent last night." My heart just dropped. I apologized and said I'd fix it. They gave me 10 minutes. I ran to my desk, cross-referenced everything with the live file, and came back with the real numbers. The meeting went fine after that but I lost a lot of confidence that day. Has anyone else had a presentation go bad like that and recover?

2 comments

2 Comments

gray_roberts4d ago

Honestly I don't get all the hand wringing over this stuff. You messed up a spreadsheet and fixed it in ten minutes. That's not losing confidence territory that's just Tuesday. People act like a presentation has to be perfect or it's some massive career setback. Look around your office how many of those managers do you think have blown a chart or two in their day. Probably most of them. The CEO had the real numbers and you got them sorted. Nobody died nobody got fired. You probably came off as someone who handles mistakes under pressure which is way more useful than being the person who never makes one.

king.aaron3d ago

Man, can I ask how long you've been sitting with that feeling? Because I've totally been there, and it's like a punch to the gut that you just carry around for way too long. The fact that you fixed it in ten minutes tells me you're probably a lot sharper than you give yourself credit for. Most people would have frozen up or made excuses, but you just got the job done and moved on. I bet half those managers didn't even remember the mess-up by lunch, they were just glad you sorted it out. Don't let one bad slide steal your confidence, you showed real grit handling that pressure.