Assignment:
List 3 things that are wrong with the Memo
Worst-Ever Internal Memo
All of the negative examples in this chapter are drawn from real communications, adapted to protect the guilty, but here is a verbatim memo to Microsoft employees from the vice president of a major company unit. It went viral on the Internet. The purpose was to announce the layoff of 12,500 employees:
Hello there, Microsoft's strategy is focused on productivity and our desire to help people "do more." As the Microsoft Devices Group, our role is to light up this strategy for people. We are the team creating the hardware that showcases the finest of Microsoft's digital work and digital life experiences, and we will be the confluence of the best of Microsoft's applications, operating systems and cloud services.
To align with Microsoft's strategy, we plan to focus our efforts.
Seven l-o-n-g paragraphs follow about the company's plans for product development and marketing strategies. Around paragraph 9 comes this statement:
We plan to right-size our manufacturing operations to align to the new strategy and take advantage of integration opportunities.
And finally, in paragraph 11:
We plan that this would result in an estimated reduction of 12,500 factory direct and professional employees over the next year. These decisions are difficult for the team, and we plan to support departing team members' with severance benefits.
Three more paragraphs ramble on about where the company will focus with hints about which segments are affected. Here's the close:
Collectively, the clarity, focus and alignment across the company, and the opportunity to deliver the results of that work into the hands of people, will allow us to increase our success in the future.