Numbers

Like probably many other workplaces that are trying to boost employee morale in this lack-of-significant-pay-raise, layoff-centric economic environment, my division recently had an office putt-putt tournament. The course featured 12 holes spread across 2 floors with plenty of cardboard ramps, PVC piping and popcorn bunkers. My favorite--built by a department that's had high turnover over the last 18 months--was a haunted house-themed hole displaying pictures of ghosts of employees past.

(BTW- I was signed up against my will to sponsor a hole, and since we all know I won't be getting my union card for Carpenters Local 126 anytime soon, my design was last minute with a minimalist theme. It ending up being one of the most entertaining, starting in the hallway and involving striking the ball then running to open the door into the copy room where the pin was located.)

We were placed in teams of 4, and mine consisted of the division head, a tech guy, a marketing person and me. So who gets tasked with keeping score? Of course, me, the numbers guy.

Since there are prizes for best team score as well as individual score, I find myself getting bogged down with math that could've easily waited until the end. But hey, I'm the numbers guy, remember? I couldn't help myself. So after each hole not only am I marking down each team member's strokes for the current hole, but each individual's and the team's running totals.

Play moves pretty slowly, so before each hole we're bunched up with other teams, waiting for them to finish. So not only am I performing the aforementioned unnecessary arithmetic, but I'm swapping numbers with the other teams' scorekeepers to see how our total stacks up, plus to scope out the best individual scores.

Well, as we get a couple holes away from finishing the strenuous 12-hole gauntlet, it becomes evident that my score is not anywhere near the leader board. In fact, my score isn't anywhere near 3rd place on my team. That's right. I end up being dead last on my team of 4 (I don't even bother to see how I rank against the field).

But you may have noticed that I mentioned earlier about the slow pace of play. You see, while I'm doing math and comparing scores to other groups, the rest of my team was actually watching other players navigate the tricky holes. By the time they took their respective turns, they had seen 5 or 6 others finish the hole. Thus, they each knew the holes' quirks, while I'm sight reading my way through the chaos.

There's the obvious lesson that we all need to be reminded of from time to time (especially for someone in corporate finance): score keeping and stack ranking is useful up to a point, but don't allow yourself to become so focused on the numbers that your actual performance begins to suffer.