I was sitting in a relatively high-level customer meeting, waiting patiently as the sales manager introduced me - the product line executive and featured speaker. My offhand gesture looked just like I was giving him the finger.īack in the day we used to give presentations with plastic transparencies on overhead projectors. That afternoon, at our quarterly company-wide communication meeting, I got up on stage to do my presentation, gestured to the CEO who'd just introduced me, and half the auditorium burst into laughter. After a trip to the emergency room, my hand was bandaged and the finger was in a splint. One day at work I ran out for a sandwich, stopped at the gas station, and somehow slammed the car door on my middle finger. The only thing worse than the way I felt was seeing the horror in everyone's eyes when they heard me. Well, I've got the worst voice you've ever heard and somehow, over the years, I've managed to avoid having to get up and sing, until my counterpart from a key Japanese customer just about dragged me up on stage to do a duet. It's like playing a round of golf or having dinner to celebrate a business deal, except after hours. If you do business in Asia, you know that karaoke is a really big deal. In short, the message was more or less "muzzle that guy." The next day I got an angry email from my Microsoft liaison that included a forwarded email from Bill Gates. I once let my guard down with a reporter and said something I shouldn't have said about one of my company's most important partners, Microsoft. My CEO was presenting, my customer was snoozing, and I couldn't believe this was happening. He wasn't just dozing he was out like a light and his VP did nothing but motion for us to continue. While my boss was presenting, the other CEO fell sound asleep. The participants were me, my CEO and our Japanese counterparts. It was a meeting between two very big companies in Japan.
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