I am sitting here at almost 11pm on a Tuesday night at the age of 72 wondering who I am supposed to talk to about the fact that I’ve put in five unexpected hours of expert witness work tonight rather than writing a cute story for you all to read tomorrow morning. I got a surprise email yesterday from my Australian client asking for a Zoom call tomorrow night to review my in-process report. That in and of itself was a bit unexpected since we agreed last week that I had a month to produce the report and then I promised to deliver a first draft in two weeks…and, in keeping with my tendency to want to be early to everything in life, I’ve put in the hours to almost finish the first draft over last weekend…well in advance of even my premature early delivery promise. The Zoom request caused me to knuckle down and finish that rough draft and put some added touches to it earlier today. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Australia asking me to make some significant adjustments to the financial model that underlies the report…and could I try to make those changes during the day tomorrow so that I can discuss them on tomorrow’s Zoom call.
Truth be told, I have always enjoyed being a go-to guy that can be relied upon to come through for people. In many ways, its that which propelled my career over fifty years and earned me more than one promotion along the way. I like coming through in a pinch for people and this felt a lot like a request for me to come through for my Australian friends. Given that I had spent the day with my report, it was pretty easy for me to understand immediately what needed to be done to accommodate their request for tomorrow. I reassured them that I would be able to handle it, and then went about making sure I had clarity on every nuance about their requests (of which there were three). Truth be told, I could probably stay up for a few hours tonight and get it all done, but there is no need. I have a team the operates from Sicily (of all places) and they are superb analysts. They have built a model exactly to my specifications and I have presented enough of it to the clients that I know they are impressed by it. I am pretty fluent in Excel, so I could easily go into the model and make the changes being requested, but I know from years of financial modeling that it is always a bad idea to jump into someone else’s model and tinker with it. Besides making a mistake that might embarrass us with our client, I might also screw up the model and make more work for the team than necessary.
The good news is that the time zones are working for me. I got the call from Australia in their Wednesday midday and my evening. Palermo would be waking up in a short while which meant that the team there could make the changes if I hated them out carefully in an email for them. I did just that. It would allow them to do the rework of the model while I sleep tonight, leaving me the day tomorrow to input those changes into a revised version of my report, which I could then prepare in a form that I could use for the Zoom call and show the client that we had turned around their request in 20 hours without breaking a sweat. Within three minutes of my sending my email, I got a reply from Palermo that my senior analyst was already on the case making the edits to the model, which will allow them to provide me revised Exhibits for my report…and probably (though I did not ask them to do this), actually revise and edit my report (a copy of which I sent them and sits on our share drive), so that I will only have to tweak the revisions tomorrow before the Zoom call. It’s a beautiful thing when the machine works the way its supposed to and the time zones work for you rather than against you.
I ran global businesses for most of my 50 years on Wall Street and I have experienced this sort of global harmony of workflow many times. I just thought that was all behind me and that now I only had to worry about getting to my stretch session on time. But that is one of the hidden reasons why I love doing my expert witness work. Yes, it keeps me in the game and keeps me current on the finance markets and the global economy. Yes, its nice to still be earning money doing what I know best. Yes, its nice to have people look up to you for your experience and wisdom and actually pay you for your opinions. But there is something about the symphony of globalized business dealings that also feels really good to still have a hand in.
Tomorrow I will get up in the morning (I will try not to get into it in the middle of the night if I can restrain myself) and I am betting that I will have everything I need and then some in my inbox for me to review and finalize for my meeting later in the day (not until 6pm). I have the time to frost the cake and even put sprinkles on top before the Zoom. We will please an already appreciative client and that always feels good. I do not know if this case will lead to a trip to Australia for me…it certainly might if it doesn’t settle early. The stakes are big enough to suspect it won’t settle at all and will go the distance. If that happens, I’ve already told Kim that an Australian trip (tacked on) will be in the cards for us. It’s a fun feeling to be globalizing all over again in this stage of my life.