The Oscar Error: A Lesson for All of Us

Whether you watched the Oscars or not, by now everyone has heard about the big mistake. The last and most important Oscar for best picture was awarded in error to the wrong film. By the time the error was caught and corrected, two producers of the non-winning film had already given their acceptance speeches, and a third producer was in the middle of his speech.

Most are calling this the biggest mistake in the history of the Oscars.

At first, the blame seemed to go to the presenters for not correctly reading the contents of the winning envelope. After further investigation, it became clear that the blame goes to the managing partner of the accounting firm that secretly tallies the results of all voting and keeps the winners a guarded secret until they hand the sealed envelopes to the presenters.

As we came to find out, the managing partner of the firm was distracted taking pictures with some movie stars and posting them on social media. In his distraction, he mistakenly gave the wrong envelope to the presenters.

What’s the lesson for us?

It seems to me that, in today’s world, we are all distracted by social media. Many people spend a great deal of time taking pictures, posting and scrolling through social media feeds.

Here are two key lessons:

1. Focus on your job. If your job is growing sales, then stay focused on your job, especially during business hours. I suspect that some people give social media way too much of their time and attention. We all have taken classes on social media. We have all heard it’s good for our business. It can be. However, spending too much time focused on social media can distract us from the important tasks of growing sales.

2. Don’t waste time on social media. Let’s face it, social media is fun and an easy way to distract us from our jobs. Whether we are creating our own posts or reading other people's posts, it’s fun. Much of the day-to-day requirements of business development are not that much fun. Social media is not a requirement of business development, so don’t kid yourself when you are at your desk and tell yourself that you have to be on social media rather than focusing on the harder work of business development. It’s very tempting to spend a lot of time social media, which results in missing a lot of great opportunities and wasting too much time.

The bottom line is that there’s a time and place for everything. Rarely has anyone ever won a huge order simply because of a great social media post. But too much focus on social media can cost you a lot of business.