Planning

The first step in preparing a memo is to define your purpose and your relationship to the addressee or addressees. Keep in mind that although your memo may be directed to an individual or a small group, it may be circulated to a larger audience than you originally envisioned, from your boss’s boss to all the employees in your organization.

In her Guide to Managerial Communication, Mary Munter describes a useful strategic starting point for deciding on the purpose of your memo.² Your purpose may be to tell, to sell, to consult, or to join in.You must understand your purpose before you set down a single word:

• Tell when you are in complete command of the necessary authority and information. For example, you’re asking a subordinate to carry out a routine task or you’re reporting standard information, such as monthly sales figures, to the boss.
• Sell when you’re in command of the information, but your audience retains the ultimate decision-making power. For example, you’re asking other members of the team to buy into your idea.
• Consult when you’re trying to build consensus toward a given course of action. For example, you’re adding your opinion to a multiparty proposal to top management.
• Join in when your point of view is one among many. For example, you’re serving as a representative to an interdepartmental strategy session and providing background to other participants.

Successful communication of your thoughts stands or falls on taking the proper approach to your audience. Having analyzed your situation, you’re ready to write.

Format

Companies generally have a standard memo format. Take a look at those that come your way if you have any questions about what’s right at your place of business. In general, memos take this format:

One thing to take note of here is the subject line. A good writer uses this line to capture the reader’s attention and to describe the memo’s general contents. In the example, the word new is likely to catch people’s attention; people are generally alert to the changes that new implies.The words memo format indicate the contents. Recipients appreciate knowing the contents of a memo right up front. They can then decide if they should read it right away, read it on the train home that night, file it, or fling it.To appreciate the importance of the subject line, consider alternatives to the one just given:

The subject line should clearly indicate the purpose and content of your memo. None of these do the job as well as “New AcmeCorp memo format.”

Execution

Nothing puts your competence and credibility on the line more than a written document. Say something stupid or inappropriate over the phone or one-on-one, and only one person will hear it. A record of your gaff is highly unlikely. A written document is much different. Several people may see the piece, which may become part of the record. If the document is disorganized, unclear, full of unsupported arguments, and riddled with errors, readers will think of you as disorganized, a weak thinker, superficial, and misinformed. For these reasons, never send out a memo under your name until it has been edited to your satisfaction. Edit your initial draft to achieve clear structure, accuracy, clarity of thought and expression, brevity, and vigor. In this way, you can be assured that your memo will accomplish what you set out to do.

CLEAR STRUCTURE The purpose of your memo should be clear by the end of the first sentence, for example, “This memo outlines our goals for the following year and identifies how we intend to achieve them.”The rest of the first paragraph should clearly outline the upcoming argument or information. The body of the memo should build on this paragraph by providing the information as succinctly as possible or by organizing the facts that build to your conclusion. The memo should end with specific steps that will lead to the achievement of your goal. If your memo runs on for a full page or more, use headings, bullets, numbered lists, or a combination of these to break up the text and make it more easily skimmed.

ACCURACY When you write to an audience, you are implicitly seeking trust. If even one member of your audience recognizes a factual error, you’re in trouble. Inaccuracy in business typically takes these forms: insufficient data, misinterpretation of the data, ignorance of key factors, unconscious bias, and exaggeration. Guard against all these threats to accuracy, to preserve and enhance your credibility.

CLARITY OF THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION Misunderstandings, ambiguity, and confusion cost money and create frustration. Clarity of communication is the antidote. Clear business writing requires clarity of thinking and expression on your part, particularly when you are giving instructions or explaining new policies. To achieve clarity of written expression, you must first achieve clarity of thought. For this reason, you must get your thoughts organized first. Then, once you’ve set them down on paper, shift your attention to clarity of expression. Your writing will be clear when you edit for content and style, as described in chapter 4.

BREVITY Good memos accomplish much in a few words. Whether your communication is going to the CEO, a junior executive, or hourly employees, brevity is a cardinal virtue. Everyone’s time is valuable. Brevity does not mean writing exclusively in short sentences or omitting necessary detail. It means making every word count.

VIGOR Vigorous memos are vivid and memorable. They stand out from the clutter of information and messages that busy people must contend with each day.You can make your memos more vigorous through the use of active voice, nonbureaucratic terms, and short, right-to-the-point sentences. Consider the following two sentences:

The corporate-speak example says almost nothing and is bound to be ignored. The vigorous statement will be read and remembered. It takes a third of the space, sticks in the mind, and conveys much more useful information.

Testing

If you’ve written a particularly important memo, consider testing it against a representative audience member or two before sending it, especially if it’s likely to be widely circulated. Contact these test subjects after the memo has been received, to ask a few important questions:

• Is the memo clear?
• Is more information or explanation required?
• Does it have the right tone? Will anyone take offense?

Testing is particularly important when a memo conveys bad news and when organizational diplomacy is essential. If you don’t have anyone to act as your sounding board, set your memo aside for a day. When you revisit it, read it from the perspective of your audience, answering each of the three preceding questions. Make modifications as needed.

Every aspect of a successful memo—its language, accuracy, appropriateness, impact, and result—will affect your success and reputation as a manager. An obvious but important corollary is this: Keep an accurate file of your memos so that you can check long-term results. Refer to your memos when necessary, and build a record of your good work.

Format

Business letters in the United States generally adhere to the format shown in figure 5-1. Most parts of a business letter are self-explanatory, but a few bear further discussion.

A greeting is your personal salutation to the reader. If you have a first-name relationship with the reader, use a familiar greeting, such as “Dear Richard.”To do otherwise would seem strange to the recipient. In all other cases, a formal greeting is mandatory: “Dear Mr. Wilson.”

FIGURE 5-1

Women should be addressed Ms. unless they have asked to be addressed otherwise. If the recipient has a known title or rank, such as Dr. or Captain, then this title has priority over general titles such as Mr. or Ms.

Often, the exact recipient of a letter is unknown to its author. For example, you may be writing a complaint letter to a company or are submitting a résumé in response to a job advertisement. In those cases, you can use something like these:

Alternatively, you can eliminate the greeting entirely in favor of an Attention line, which directly follows the recipient’s address:

The body of the letter contains your message. Like all good writing, the body should be structured in a way that the message will be read and have the desired effect. In most cases, this means starting with a single sentence or brief paragraph that identifies your purpose for writing or that provides a reference or context for the message itself:

Once you’ve established the reason for your writing, or the context, you can get into the meat of your message. Give that message a logical structure. Be clear. Be brief. And check to be sure that you’ve included all the information the recipient will need in responding.

After you have delivered the message, write a closing statement that either wraps it up or indicates the response you expect from the reader:

The Goodwill Factor

Every letter represents an opportunity to create goodwill for your organization, even when you must report bad news to the recipient, as in these cases:

Reporting bad news could jeopardize an important relationship with the recipient. For example, an individual who has maintained checking and savings accounts with a bank for many years may not receive approval on a business start-up loan. The bank has a strong interest in keeping that person’s business, even though its lending policies are likely to disappoint this customer. The bank can deliver bad news and maintain goodwill if it follows certain practices.

First, you can express your regret in a sincere manner:

Another way you can maintain goodwill is by giving a reason for the bad news. A reasonable explanation can often neutralize negative feelings. Recognizing positive things about the recipient can do the same:

Finally, you should keep the door open. In some cases, your bad news may not be final:

Put Power in the Subject Line

Like the memo subject line, the e-mail subject line should be the lure that gets your reader interested and signals the memo’s contents. For this reason, your subject should meet at least one of the following goals:

• Contain your key message: “Sales meeting rescheduled to 2 P.M. on Friday”
• Include the desired action or response: “Your comments urgently needed by 4 P.M. today”
• Be specific but not too long: “How about lunch tomorrow?”
• Allow your reader to file and retrieve your message easily: “John’s report”

In contrast, a weak subject line gives little or no information—or too much to be read on one line. If the subject line is too general, vague, or left blank, the reader may skip or delete the message altogether. Remember: Busy people can receive fifty to one hundred e-mail messages per day. To ensure that yours is opened and read, it must stand out.

Use One Message per E-mail

Treat each e-mail as a coherent information packet—to ask a question, communicate your opinion, report news, and so forth.You will achieve coherence if each e-mail contains only one message. If you have more than one message for a recipient, create a separate e-mail for each, and give each a strong, appropriate subject line.

The one-message e-mail has two major advantages: First, the recipient(s) can digest and respond to a single message more easily. Second, if a recipient forwards your e-mail to another party, other messages—which may be highly inappropriate—won’t be dragged along, as in the following multimessage e-mail:

Can you imagine the consequences of this multimessage e-mail being forwarded to several people in the company? Surely the writer has no intention of sharing his personal view of Karl’s skills with Bill’s sales colleagues. Clicking the “Forward” button is so easy that gaffs like this are bound to happen when people overload their e-mails with more than one topic.

Use Attachments for Long Messages

One of the great benefits of e-mail is the ability to attach other files. In the bad old days, word processing files, spreadsheets, overhead projection pages, and other types of electronic files had to be printed and sent by mail or fax. Today, we can save time and money by simply attaching these files, which arrive in an instant. Best of all, recipients can make changes in these files and send them back with the same speed and convenience.

In addition to the documents just cited, attachments are most appropriate when you are sending long messages and reports. Long messages require lots of annoying on-screen scrolling by the recipient. Also, many special formatting features that we use in lengthy documents (e.g., boldface headings, bullets, footnotes) don’t work well in e-mail systems. For this reason, when you have a long message to transmit, send it as an attachment. Then use the e-mail message to inform the reader what the attachment is about and what the reader should do with it.

Four Elements of E-mail Policy

Despite its great convenience for businesses, e-mail may make a company vulnerable to lawsuits for harassment and libel. Although companies have every right to store and review e-mail messages created by employees on company equipment and on company time, fewer than 40 percent actually do review messages, according to a survey released by the American Management Association in early 2000. Managers are either unconcerned or reluctant to create an Orwellian atmosphere in which people feel they are being watched.

One way to deal with these issues is to create an e-mail policy that is both sensible and explained to all employees.⁴ Such a policy has four elements:

1. Enforce zero tolerance for harassment and discrimination. An increasing number of sexual and racial harassment lawsuits against companies feature damaging e-mails as evidence: persistent e-mail requests for dates, racy jokes, pornography downloaded from the Internet, and so forth. Make it clear that this type of activity will not be tolerated.
2. Explain how e-mail is stored. The informality of e-mail can lull users into a false sense of comfort. If you send or receive something questionable, just hit the delete button and no one will be the wiser, right? Wrong. Deleting merely sends a document into the recesses of your hard drive, where it will remain until the drive is purged. E-mail messages are also stored on the server in a form that makes them retrievable by computer forensic experts. Just knowing that their messages are stored will often prevent most people from abusing the company’s e-mail system.
3. Insist that confidential information be transmitted via another medium. This may seem like a no-brainer, but lawyers say it’s alarming how often employees use e-mail to discuss sensitive matters such as new pricing and their assessment of a senior executive’s performance. Make it clear that sensitive matters should be transmitted through more secure media: a confidential memorandum or a one-on-one conversation.
4. Observe copyright restrictions. It’s easy—too easy—to download copyright-protected software and other materials and then e-mail them to your associates.You can’t stop employees from receiving these from their friends, but you can insist that they delete them and not pass them along.