Preaching to the missing

I'm a modest, unassuming kind of guy. What can I say, I'm from the Midwest. It goes without saying this is not the best recipe for success in today's corporate world.

Today, though, I was to have a chance to shine. The department manager's all hands meeting this week was going to do a "deep dive" into a couple of recent project successes. One of these projects was mine.

So I put together a beautiful PowerPoint presentation (cloned from someone else's beautiful PowerPoint deck, of course - does anyone know how to create a PowerPoint document from scratch?). I practiced and was ready for today.

One problem. The department manager would not be there: she's at a Leadership Retreat all week. Her replacement: another manager, this one a short timer who will be gone in a couple weeks. Oh, and it turns out my manager couldn't be there - important three-hour meeting.

Ultimately, about 12 of the 25 people showed. One of my other teammates didn't come, and the other one had to step out to take a call and missed the last one-third of the presentation.

Perhaps the Laws of the Universe would come undone if I were to succeed at some semblance of self-promotion. Fortunately for us all, that day was not today.

But everyone, even those that didn't attend, could agree on one thing.

It was a beautiful PowerPoint.

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