Needle in the haystack
Hoo boy, today is going to be a long day. I’m in a *freak out* mode at work.
I’m still pretty new to this job and I’ve been asked to “throw together a slide deck” to present to the senior leadership.
“Throw together”….uh, sure.
I *think* this is a chance for my boss to get me in front of the big bosses. So that’s a good thing, yeah?
However…the content of this little ol’ presentation hasn’t been well defined. Actually, I think it’s a bit of a test, let’s give the new girl some vague thoughts, make her run a bunch of reports and see what she does with it.
Ugh.
This is a VERY numbers oriented company. My last job wasn’t; they were all about the “gut feel.” I am rather anxious to make a good impression, but rather nervous about all these data points. I mean I *can* do a numbers analysis…I’m just a bit out of practice (at my old job, I “had people” who did this for me, fer goodnesssakes!).
And the hell of it is…I am not sure exactly what I am looking for. I have 12,000 lines on an Excel spreadsheet that I could cut a thousand different ways.
So I’m soothsaying here. I’m trying to intuit what, exactly, my senior management wants to hear.
Oh hell, I’m sure I’ll get it wrong. I should just embrace that and move on.
Maybe once I’ve got some iffy content on there, I’ll choose instead to make the PowerPoint pretty, full of graphics and cool twirling transitions and flashing images.
What’s that ol’ marketing saying? “Sell the sizzle and not the steak.”
Meanwhile, I continue looking for that elusive needle in the haystack.
Ugh!
