Effective Professional Writing: Preparing for the Memo Assignment

11.201 Gateway (Fall 2007) Effective Professional Writing: Preparing for November 2nd and the Memo Assignment If planning is knowledge in action, communication is arguably the core currency. Our alumni frequently rank oral and written communication skills as among the most professionally valuable skills they learned in school—or wish they had worked harder to acquire early in their careers. Contrary to popular belief, these skills are often not acquired well on the job. Many organizations practice—and as such “teach”—substandard writing, for example: writing that is minimally adequate but not truly effective. Meanwhile, the strongest writers in the organization are often too busy to stop and lead workshops, let alone assign memo writing exercises and provide feedback. School is the place to master the fundamentals, gain practice, and make mistakes, i.e. where the risks and costs of mistakes for your career are trivial rather than in the world of work, where the costs can be significant. Our posted slides, guidelines, video, and the November 2nd in-section workshop all focus on the demands of professional writing generally and on the memo, as an invaluable form, specifically. You may review the 2-hour video before or after November 2nd section, as you wish, but allow about 6090 minutes to do the reading portion, explained below, in advance of section. What is a memo? Memos are relatively brief professional documents, generally written to decision-makers—whether public, private, or nongovernmental. “Brief” typically means 250 to 1500 words, but many effective memos are on the short end of that range. Effective memos are designed to help those decision-makers think more clearly and/or act rather than approach a topic more generally or offer mere opinion. You will prepare two kinds of memos in 11.201: a decision or “action” memo (focused on the material taught by Profs. Kim and Rajagopal); and an informational memo (for the Observation Exercise, your final assignment). On the course website, the materials include a slide show, brief items about memo writing, plus sample memos. Some of the "how to" content of this material may be familiar to you from work experience. If so, consider this a quick refresher to ensure that we all begin with similar assumptions about what's expected. If you have done little or no professional memo writing until now, give this material close attention. Page 1 of 3 How to prepare Read the material posted on the MIT Server, and come to your November 2nd discussion section prepared to discuss the following: 1. Using the criteria outlined in the guides to memo writing, rank the sample memos in terms of their overall effectiveness and readability. Try to focus on style and organization of argument rather than substance. Which one is the most effective and which the least? Why? 2. Pick one of the less effective policy memos, plus the sample student memo about a Gateway case, and outline some concrete improvements. 3. Preview your task: Even though we haven’t covered all of the case material at issue in your decision memo assignment, read the assignment instructions. They include a decisionmaker, a context, and a task. Beyond the easy-to-use slides, the reading material is in several parts: A. Guidelines on memo writing: • • • • Winston Churchill on brevity (World War II memo) Guidelines for writing informational memos Checklist for writing action (decision) memos More advice on organization: Bob Behn on how to direct the reader’s attention B. Sample policy memos, U.S. government: • • • • Neustadt to President-elect John F. Kennedy on reorganization powers (1960); Lynn to Secretary Morton on Central Utah water project (1973); President Carter to the Director of NSF on tropical forests (1979); Kleiman to White House domestic policy staff on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) taking over the Drug Enforcement Agency (1993) C. Sample Gateway student memo (modified from actual submissions) • To the Mayor of Boston, on what defines “success” in public housing redevelopment. Beyond the guidance here … On concise written English, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is an excellent addition to your professional bookshelf. It’s now available free online in addition to the classic hardcopy book-form. The book’s central message: Page 2 of 3 Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his/her sentences short, or that s/he avoid all detail … but that every word tell (emphasis added). By contrast, much ineffective writing in the professions is labeled “bureaucratese” or “plannerese”—writing laden with cumbersome ideas, sentence constructions, and jargon. Strive to avoid that. Page 3 of 3