The Dreaded Corporate Memo

My friend Liz Kelly runs a communications consulting business in San Francisco called Brilliant Ink.  Liz and her team do a great job helping organizations communicate more effectively.  She sent out a message from her Twitter account recently that asked:

Yes Liz, they still issue corporate memos.  

The link in her “Tweet” is to an article  that discusses all the reasons that memos are the poster-child for rampant corporate bureaucracy.  It offers some good suggestions for making them better.

I’m sensitive to this issue because I’m a long-time “offender” - I have had to write lots of them in my career.  It’s really a no-win situation.  Employees complain that management does not communicate often enough - yet most of them hate the company-wide meetings, conference calls, and dreaded corporate memos that organizations need to use to get out a timely and consistent message.  

I think most authors have good intentions – they just can’t stop from being long-winded or  sounding condescending.  I always argue against sending out the memos that proclaim something that seems to be common sense  -  like what “business casual” means.  I lose the argument when summer rolls around and employees show up to the office in flip-flops, cut-offs, and tank tops.  Maybe companies need to adopt new technology and send out podcasts to make the message more personal.  Perhaps they could adopt a “Twitter approach”: all corporate memos need to be 140 characters or less.  

We’ll probably always be stuck with corporate memos, so here’s my advice:  if you have to write the memos, use common sense, follow the advice in the article, or call someone like Liz Kelly to help you write them.  If you have to read the memos, don’t be too harsh on the corporate weenie that wrote it – it might be someone like me.