Based on your reading key concepts and the Learning Activity

Based on your reading, key concepts, and the Learning Activity from Unit 1 along with the Evan Thomas video, you will apply what you reviewed to critique a bad business memo.

Read the example of the short memo below and respond to the following checklist items:

Checklist:

Who is the sender?Who is the receiver?What is the intent?How might you clarify this memo?Is it persuasive in getting the recipient to act? Why or why not?

Memo:

You will need to send a confirmation as to what the outside limits are in line with the budget parameters delineated in the meeting last week. Send it on to production afterwards. This is priority so please expedite.

THIS IS ALL THE INFORMATION FOR THE ASSIGMENT.

Solution

When it comes to writing a memorandum, commonly known as a memo, it needs to have a head (heading, header). This is the part of the memo that discusses who it is to, from, date, and subject information. As you can see from the above memo, it does not discuss any of this information. It needs to have addressed who the memo is to, who it’s from, the date it was written, and the subject. It should like the following setup:

To:

Cc: (optional if needed to send to other employees)

From:

Date:

Subject:

From reading the above memo I can tell one employee was sending it to another employee about a budget meeting that happened last week. It is to send confirmation as to what the outside limits are in line with the budget parameters to production. It is also priority so the need to expedite this information. I would say the above memo is not persuasive in getting the recipient to act. The reason for this is because it is not professional and does not have a date of when it needs to be completed by. The post important part is that it’s missing who needs to complete the budget parameters and send it to production. This will create a delay because the person that was required to do it, will not know they need to. It does say that it’s a priority and they need to expedite, but if it was given a date they would have acted quickly. It also does not give a way to send the results to production. It should have listed an email address as to where to send it. I would clarify this memo as below:

Russell Lands Associates

Memo

To: Amber Wells

From: Robin Ray

Date: 09/01/2018

Subject: Budget parameters requested

Please send the task requested, which was discussed in the meeting on December 12th. Please expedite the information discussed on what the outside limits are in line with the budget parameters by December 23^rd. Please send a copy of the results to production at Smithc@russelllands This is a priority.

Thank You,

Robin Ray

Reference

Flood, Timothy (2008). MBA fundamentals business writing. New York, NY: Kaplan Publishing