Don’t Write the Memo Right Away : Give Some Thought Before Adding to Firm’s ‘Junk Mail’

Here’s scenario A: You’re the manager of the widget division of XYZ Co. You’ve just come out of a meeting with the vice president with several policy changes that you want to transmit to the employees you supervise. What do you do? Why, the obvious thing: You take up pen and yellow pad to write a memo.

As you begin to inscribe your ideas, who are you thinking about? Not what, but who? I ask this question because I assume that what most people are doing when they write is taking down half of an imaginary conversation. (That’s most certainly what I’m doing right now.) You begin, not with what you want to say, but with the person to whom you will say it. Isn’t it obvious that, in normal circumstances, if you don’t have anybody to write to , you won’t write in the first place?

So, it is reasonable to ask who you are thinking about as you begin to write your memo. And the odds are very good that the person you are thinking about is the vice president you just finished talking with. How could it be otherwise? His comments are what caused you to sit down to write in the first place. His ideas are what you want to write about. Perhaps even more important, he will probably decide whether you get your next raise or promotion. He may even be the one who hired you. Thus, for you personally, he is both the beginning and the end of the writing process: He is the person you most want to influence by what you write. Thus, you write because of him; you write for him; though you probably aren’t aware of it, you almost unavoidably write to him.

Watch the Faces Change

If you could be a fly on the wall when your finished memo reaches its final destination, the employees to whom it is addressed, you would see and hear something like this: You would first see on the faces of the men and women who pick up the memo that slight initial anticipation, that reflexive small leap of hope that grabs us when we encounter something new and as yet unknown, and which, in that first moment, makes us open to almost anything that holds promise. Then, as the eyes quickly scan the opening lines of the memo, you would see the faces change.

The change is hard to describe, but it is the same sort of thing you would see if you could watch these people reach into the mail box and pull out a letter, only to discover that it is addressed to “occupant.� A small hope dies; disappointment takes its place.

You might be surprised, if you were to watch their eyes, to discover that most of these men and women never make it to the bottom of your memo. Some just set it aside; the cautious file it; most throw it away. And you will hear a few, perhaps some of those who have been with the company the longest, say things under their breath, violent and angry things that may shock you.

Much that is written in large organizations--governmental and nonprofit as well as business--is written on the model of scenario A. And because of that many, perhaps most, of the memos, reports, speeches, company newspapers, and other internal communications used by large organizations might be fairly classified as organizational “junk mail.� The person who is supposed to read it reacts the same way you do when you see a letter addressed to “occupant�: “They’re not talking to me .� And, of course, it’s true.

The Other Way to Do It

Here’s scenario B: You sit down after your meeting with the vice president and, as before, the first person you think of is the vice president himself. But as you pick up your pen to write your memo you are thinking about what the vice president said.

You realize that the whole point of his comments was to increase the production of widgets. And then it strikes you: The vice president doesn’t make widgets! If his ideas, or your memo, are going to do any good at all, they will have to be understood and accepted by the people who do make widgets.

So you put down your pen. You leave your desk. You go out into the office or down onto the shop floor and plant yourself next to the water cooler or the coffee machine. You stop the first person who approaches and present the issue of your memo to her as a question and ask her what she thinks.

If you ask 10 people and pay attention to what they say, it’s very possible that you may decide that you shouldn’t write a memo at all--at least not now. But if you do return to your office and write your memo, one thing is sure: It will be very different from the memo you would have written to the vice president and addressed to your staff. One difference is that there will be half a chance that somebody might actually read it.