It's Not What You Do It's How You Do It

This week, I’ll share a story about a boss that taught me how to do something differently.

About 15 years ago, I landed my dream job as a marketing manager - the thing I actually went to school for. The company culture was sunny, the people were fun, and it felt like the work I did mattered.

My boss was great for a million reasons. We developed a well-boundaried personal relationship, and I was hers. I wanted to do whatever I could to make this woman, and our marketing department, the best.

She entrusted me with the baby that had been her responsibility for years - to create the annual revenue budget forecast. Easy, I thought. I didn’t understand why she thought it was such a big project after we met to talk about it.

I went back to my desk, opened the semi-populated worksheet, and came up with a plan. I would take the actual financial results from previous years, calculate average year over year percentages, apply those to the current budget, and voila!

When I gave this masterpiece of calculation beauty to my boss, she called me into her office, and asked me how the heck I came up with the numbers.

“Just click on the cell” I proudly said, with a smirk I couldn’t hold back about how great this (and I) was “you’ll see the formula I used to come up with the number”.

She clicked. “What does this have to do with anything?” She asked.

"Well over the past 3 years, x product has generated y revenue, and a expense has been increasing at a rate of b percent" I explained.

She looked at me, confused.

She wanted word descriptions for the numbers. She sent me to find out what was actually going to be happening in the upcoming year.

How was that even possible?

TORTURE! The time it would take. The pain of having to go into that excruciating level of detail. (She probably explained this in our first meeting, but I didn't hear it. I already knew how I was going to do it.)

I scheduled meetings with everyone I could think of that would know what was going on in each line item in that budget, and was surprised they actually wanted to help me. They wanted to take the time and talk about the details to come up with the best number we could.

I felt so good about this budget, and knew that even if the numbers were wrong, it would be okay.

Every month the following year, our department waited for the actual financials to come out, to compare the actuals to our budget. Some months were almost the same as forecast and some months were way off. And when they were, we knew why.

Anyway, I loved this job so much that I burnt myself out on it in a little over 2 years!