Today we had a three-hour meeting. The opening ramble was actually the CFO as guest speaker.
It is... extremely unsettling to watch the CFO of a 30,000-employee corporation have a minor meltdown in front of an entire division.
High Lowlights included:
"But... uhhhhh... that's not my job. That'syourjob!" *extremely nervous laughter.
Several variations on "But I don't really know anything about that."
"So... how do you guys think we're doing on a scale of one to ten?" Deafening silence. "So uh, never mind 1-10, let's just say, um, 5-8, yeah... yeah. And uh, just pick the one or the other, 5 or 8."
"We're ah... we're doing quite... well, not badly, but uhhhh certainly not as good as we were. And ah, I guess we don't quite know what to do."
Many variations on "I guess we don't really have anything that we're better at than the competition anymore. It's uhhh, it's gotten tougher."
It was quite possibly the least inspiring corporate speech I've heard in a long time, if ever. The company's in decent shape, it's just been a bit learderless since the ole' iron-fisted founder died. But if you listened to this guy, you'd think we were going to be bankrupt tomorrow.
There's nothing wrong with being honest about reduced prospects, but this guy's delivery was TERRIBLE. He avoided involvement (your problem, not mine) had no plan, was nervous, and just generally sounded hopeless and clueless.
It was just incredibly awkward.