Hi fellow Lions,

Today I wanted to chat a little bit about the sleight of hand that companies try to do with financial performance numbers.

Companies Financial Manipulation of Numbers

One of the things that I find fun and enjoyable is something that many people around the world wish they could do: work a job they enjoy!

I've been incredibly fortunate to find a passion in life through the years that allows me to do some of the various things that I enjoy both personally as well as professionally. Professionally, I've worked in two industries that are largely related and dependent on one another and in the last few years, I was able to combine those two interests into one which I thoroughly enjoy! Working on the side I'm at now is a little bit one step further away from where it started but it's still very much related and I get to use what I've learned every single day, which is great!

What I've found and noticed throughout the years though that annoys me every time I see it, is when companies try to spin their financial numbers to make something seem worse than it is, or more of an adverse event than a significant gain.

The company I work for is great, we've got an incredible culture, lots of brilliant and great people to work with, with some decent leadership at the various levels. There isn't a lot to complain about on that front at all!

We recently had a company meeting where, as usual, they go over the financial numbers and one thing that stuck out to me, is something I noticed a few years ago at my last company: they turn a positive situation into a negative one by the way they word it and it annoys the shit out of me! Lol

The company I work for makes a pretty good amount of money all things considered. I wouldn't call it a top whatever company throughout the world but it's pretty solid out there which is great. The numbers they pulled off were really good, and I was reading them as so but of course the bean-counters at the top were giving us a little bit of flack with how they presented it. Instead of saying "we did remarkable and made 100 million dollars this year, fantastic work everyone we couldn't do this without you!" they turned it into some shit like "we set a goal to make 110 million dollars this year and unfortunately we fell short and were at a loss on those numbers because 'x' was slower than we anticipated."

This is total sleight of hand in my opinion and the problem with the constant focus on growth, growth and infinite growth. There is only so much room that growth can happen before it destroys itself I think!

Granted the people at these top positions are in those positions and being paid the dollars that they are in order to help motivate people in one way or another to do more in order for the company to make more money. I get that, but what really annoyed me is that instead of taking a solid win and performance financially for the company in a time of pretty significant worldwide turmoil, they were focused on pushing the direction further and sort of casting the good performance aside.

My old company did this, except in a much more egregious manner. The company made billions a year, which is a pretty significant amount of money and profit considering the model it's supposed to fall under, and instead of saying they made billions in profit, which they absolutely did, they reported it as a 5% operating loss on projected revenue or something ridiculous. Talk about taking full advantage of the people who work for you and trying to siphon out more and more. That really put a sour taste in my mouth and I was sure to throw it around in team meetings when people were talking about the numbers. It may have made me the group douche or something but I didn't care, it was a complete lie and propagandizing the truth.

In any case, I am glad that it was toned down in the company I'm working for now but I was still a little annoyed to see it occur lol.

You?

What about you, does your company pull crap like that? Let me know!

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