The goal of the case studies is to improve your ability to think about a complex scenario, and write a short and concise analysis of this situation ?? no more than 1 page,

Teach i n g Case Reso u r ces f r o m t h e Ev an s Sch o o l o f Pu b l i c Af f a i r s

T h e

E l e c t r o n i c H a l l w a y ®

Box 353060 · University of Washington · Seatt le WA 98195-3060 www.hallway.org

This teaching resource was written by J. Patrick Dobel, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington; Richard Elmore, Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and Laurie Werner, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington. The Electronic Hallway is administered by the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. This material may not be altered or copied without written permission from The Electronic Hallway. For permission, email [email protected], or phone (206) 616-8777. Electronic Hallway members are granted copy permission for educational purposes per the Member’s Agreement (www.hallway.org).

Copyright 2003 The Electronic Hallway

MEMO WRITING

This note introduces memo writing to students training for careers in public service.

It focuses on memos rather than research papers or essays, because memos pervade the

daily life of any public servant.

A memo is a relatively short, written document. Memos address specific people or

groups for the purpose of recording an agreement, transmitting information, making a

case, or enabling action. Brevity is essential; most decision makers have little time and

must assimilate memo contents quickly. Long memos don’t get read.

Think of a memo as a precision tool. Tools may be beautiful things in themselves, but we

measure their value by how well they perform a task. In practical terms, every aspect of a

memo – its prose style, organization, appearance on the page and content – should have a

direct relationship to its purpose. Long flowery introductions, technical jargon, casual

chit-chat, and showy vocabulary all distract from a memo's essential purpose: to inform

or to enable action.

This note deals with four topics: identifying your audience or principal; getting yourself

engaged in writing; using language; and organizing the final product. Added to these are

notes on e-mail communications.

Know Your Audience or Principal

Specific people read memos. The more vaguely defined the target audience, the more

difficult for the writer to decide what to say. Knowing your audience is of primary

importance in memo writing. Ask yourself three questions about your audience: who are

they, what do they need to know, and how should you present it to them?

• Who is the audience of your memo? Memos are directed at decision makers.

Usually you write a memo for an individual or group to help them make a

decision. To influence decision makers, you must give considerable thought to

who they are. You have a duty to provide them with timely, accurate, and

comprehensive analysis.

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• What do they need to know? To meet the obligations of memo writing, you

should ask: what type of information do they need to make a good decision?

§ Start writing your memo by considering the position of your readers and

their responsibilities, constraints, and pressures. You should keep in mind

how much knowledge they already have and tailor your information to their

level of expertise.

§ Decide how much and what type of information they need to make a good

decision. Keep four things in mind when considering this:

1. Your audience relies on you for accurate and relevant information. This

reliance places strong obligations upon you to choose information well

and present decision makers with all sides of the issues. Unless you are

designated as an advocate or identify yourself as such, you must strive for

an unbiased presentation of the information. Individuals are often tempted

to push their own agendas without regard to the requirements of a good

decision by the principal. This is legitimate when so acknowledged in the

memo. All memos however, should do justice to complex issues and to

your principals. They are making the decision, not you.

2. Provide the bad news as well as the good. You should alert your

principals to the dangers, problems, and implications of decisions, as well

as to the advantages. Although memos drive people toward decisions,

you may have the unhappy but vital duty of telling readers they need more

information to make a good decision. Often memos can only be

summaries of arguments and reports, like the tip of an iceberg. The author

should have supporting arguments and information to provide to the

principals when needed or requested.

3. Before making a recommendation, make sure you have laid out honest

and realistic alternatives. Don't fall into what Henry Kissinger called the

"war, surrender, my way" memo. It violates your responsibility to your

principal, and a thoughtful reader will dismiss your analysis.

4. In recommending a course of action, clearly lay out the reasons.

Anticipate questions, address them honestly, and compare your

recommendation to other options. It is your job to anticipate needs and

support the decision maker.

• How should you present the information to them? Present all information with

economy and clarity. Effectively writing a memo is a task that requires a special

emphasis on clear formatting and accessible writing. Serve the reader’s need to

access information quickly with judicious use of headings and bullets.

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How to Get Engaged in Serious Writing

Writing is difficult, frustrating work. As a craft, it entails a set of specific, learnable skills,

and results in a tangible product. The harder you work, and the more determined you are

to master the skills, the better you will become. Like any craft, writing requires practice.

When you sit down to write your memo, two steps will help engage you in writing:

developing a system for writing, and getting help when necessary.

• Because writing is difficult, you need an explicit system for getting started and

finished. Most memo writing is done under pressure. Under these conditions

people can get stalled, confused, and side-tracked by psychological stress. Having

a deliberate system gives you the self-discipline to plunge ahead in the face of this

stress. In the absence of a system, you will find that you spend large amounts of

time trying to figure out what you're doing. It doesn't matter particularly what

system you use, so long as you have one and use it. Some people start with an

outline and produce progressively finer drafts until they have a finished product.

Some people “dump” everything they know about a given subject and then start

culling and sorting, until they produce a coherent piece. Others begin with a few

simple statements or assertions and then frame an argument around them.

Experiment with a variety of methods, until you find one that suits your

temperament.

• If you are having genuine difficulty and find that you don't know what to do, get

help. Writing workshops are plentiful. Get together with a group of students for

the express purpose of talking about writing problems. Get suggestions from your

professors. Don't retreat from the problem. You will need to write well in every

job you have.

Using the Language

Remember that your written work presents you to others. Your use of language will

shape their assessment of you. Sloppy phrasing, bad grammar, and incorrect spelling, for

example, demonstrate unreflective thought. Respecting yourself, your ideas, and your

principal should motivate you to master this essential means of communication. Your

writing should strive for five important qualities: simplicity, straightforward sentence

structure, clarity, clear action and responsibility, and correctness.

Simplicity is the mark of good writing. Complex sentence structure and organization is a

sure sign of confusion or hidden agendas. A well-written memo will be so simple and

straightforward in language and structure that it will leap off the page. Don’t, however,

make the mistake of equating simplicity with ease of production. The harder you work,

the simpler the prose gets: the more you shirk, the muddier it will be. Consider the

following example:

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Whether it is true or not, and there are strong indications that it is not, the

allegation by the County of substandard performance against the

contractor is premature and certainly serves no useful purpose.

This author tried to write in a “conversational” tone. Conversational language tends to be

more complicated, elliptical, and indeterminate than good written prose. Written prose

has to be edited to be good. Novice writers often respond to tough editing by

complaining, “You've taken all the creative words out of my writing. Now it looks like

something anybody could have written.” In fact, tough editing does exactly the opposite.

It makes your writing very distinctive. Remember, the message carries the mark of your

individual creativity.

Straightforward sentence structure is essential to clear communication. First, get the

basic elements of the sentence straight: subject, verb, and object. Who is the actor?

What action is the actor performing? On what or whom is the actor acting? What is the

writer's purpose in describing the relationship between actor and action?

The county has accused the contractor of poor performance. This

accusation is premature and possibly untrue.

County, accuse, contractor – these are the elements. By stressing them, we cut the

number of words roughly in half, from 37 to 16. We specified the nature of the action

(accuse); we exchanged bureaucratic fuzz-words (allegation, substandard) for simple

ones (accuse, poor); and we allowed the writer to express some uncertainty about the

conclusions (possibly). The reader now captures the spirit of the writer’s message much

more readily. These are the simplest writing techniques. Strip sentences to their

elements, and make those elements drive your sentences. Subject first, then verb, then

object. Apply the techniques to this example:

With respect to problems of interim financing, and in consideration of the

fact that short-term interest rates are prohibitive, the decision was made by

the Finance Committee that the project should not be pursued beyond

stage three of the design process until appropriate long-term financing can

be secured through established capital market sources.1

Clarity in word choice marks good writing. Clarity means three things: (a) choosing the

right word; (b) preferring simple words or combinations over complex ones; and (c)

avoiding unnecessary technical jargon.

• Choosing the right word is more difficult than it appears. When you begin

writing something, certain stock phrases and terms roll out of your head onto the

paper. These phrases and terms are cues to what you want to say, but often they

1 The Finance Committee considered interest rates for short-term loans too high. It therefore decided not to

pursue the design process beyond stage three until lenders agree to long-term financing. (31 words v. 55)

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do not convey what you actually mean. To communicate clearly, sort through

alternative ways of saying what you mean. Get something on paper. Then, use

your vocabulary, the dictionary, or a thesaurus, and deliberately substitute simpler

words for complicated and ambiguous ones. Give special attention to verbs, and

use the active voice.

• Complex phrases that have mushy meanings often litter memos, because writers

get caught in a cycle of “bureaucratese.” Take the following example:

Current fiscal management techniques and control practices are

keyed to the fiscal-year budgeting processes of the government

cycle. They result in inefficient resource utilization because

administrators increase expenditures toward the end of annual

budget cycles in order to assure zero-balance results and reporting,

rather than maximum efficiency in resource utilization.

This example features many quasi-technical terms: “fiscal management

techniques,” “resource utilization,” and “budget cycles.” These are common in

bureaucracy but don't communicate much. In a more active, direct form the

example reads:

Administrators tend to spend more at the end of the fiscal year,

because they will lose the money they don’t spend. Typically, they

are not allowed to carry money forward into the following year.

This results in expenditures that often are not the best use of public

money.

We've left “fiscal year” in, because it is a technical term that has important

meaning. Beyond that, we stripped out all the quasi-technical terms and replaced

them with simpler words.

Certain complex and mushy words creep into the language of public servants and

become standard usage. Because bureaucrats use these words routinely, the

public begins to think that bureaucrats are evasive. They are probably not – just

insufficiently critical of their own language. Here is a list of some common

bureaucratic words and their standard English equivalents.

Bureaucratic English

facilitate help/assist

prioritize rank

indicate say/show

impact affect/effect

concept idea

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Another recent trend has been turning nouns into verbs. The trend started in

computer circles where people “interface” with each other and “multiport” data.

Today public officials “outsource” functions and “task” people to perform jobs.

Such jargon separates public officials from citizens and creates a mystifying and

unnecessary code to hide bureaucrats from accountability.

A similar common practice is turning nouns and verbs into adjectives and running

them together as strange compound words. These words often sound very

important, but mean almost nothing. The following words come directly from the

papers of students trying to sound like bureaucrats:

Nouns into Adjectives Verbs into Adjectives

program initiation diagnostic review

programmatic decision making circumvention practice

definitional terms allocation routine

problem areas elimination criteria

personnel involvement decisional alternative

For each of these compounds, someone took a noun (program, definition,

problem, etc.) or a verb (diagnose, circumvent, decide) and stuck it in front of a

noun, giving it the function of an adjective. You can make adverbs the same way:

programmatically initiated, diagnostically reviewed, etc. This clumping however,

creates unwieldy, often unintelligible, prose and leaves little regard for a word’s

root meaning or function.

The skill required to avoid this kind of clumping is simple. First, learn the

difference between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Second, don't use

compounds when a simple construction will suffice. Look at a number of

alternative ways of saying something, and choose the simplest way, rather than

jamming words together because they sound authoritative and bureaucratic.

Principals need lucidity, not jargon.

• Technical jargon becomes a barrier to clear communication. When someone

writes, “The purpose of our new thrust is to facilitate a more credible interface

between clients and service deliverers and to indicate to top management how

they ought to prioritize agency functions according to standard management

concepts,” you know he is not writing for real human beings. Fellow citizens will

have a difficult time trying to decipher the jargon. Automatically translate the

words into English. If it doesn't make sense in English, then you have an

important piece of information – the person doesn't know what he is saying. If it

does make sense, then there is a better way to say it.

As trustees of the common good, public officials have a special obligation to write

in language that acknowledges and includes all members of the community.

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A civic language should include the entire population. This requires that we avoid

language that limits the citizenry to certain groups and implicitly excludes the rest

of the population. In a more positive way, it obligates us to search for language

that respects and acknowledges all individuals.

Inclusive language, however, does not mean we must resort to awful English.

Only muddled good intentions create these bureaucratic monstrosities: s/he, or

his/her. In this case, inclusive language involves using plural pronouns, using both

pronouns connected by "or" (he or she) or alternating the pronouns by section or

example. The English language is evolving in the attempt to develop a more

inclusive public vocabulary. Public officials should take the lead in this effort

without reducing the language to trendy or bureaucratic neologisms.

Clearly assigning action and responsibility will characterize skilled writing. Bureaucrats

notoriously use language to obscure responsibility. They often think they are being clever

by saying things in a way that hides who is supposed to be doing what. The typical

means of obscuring responsibility are the passive voice and the editorial “we.”

• The classic device to hide responsibility is the passive voice, where the subject is

driven (by the agent). Passive construction diffuses your analysis and backs into

major points. Remember that the strength of the English language resides in verbs.

Use strong, active verbs. A good editor tries to eliminate as many copulatives

(there… is, are, was, were) and weak verbs as possible. Verbs carry action and

significance. Good verbs in the active voice eliminate the need for mindless space

fillers such as “in order to,” “with respect to,” or “in consideration of.”

The distinction between active and passive is something every public servant

should understand. In active construction, the subject clearly acts on a specific

person or thing. For example: boy takes apple. In passive construction, action is

taken on the subject (by an agent who may be left unidentified) – apple is taken

(by the boy).

Consider the following examples from student memos:

We recommend that specific operational details of the tools ad-

dressed in this report and any others to be used in implementation

of amended policies be clearly stated. (Very cagey. The “we re-

commend” makes it sound quite active, but the construction ob-

scures the responsibility for specifying details. Who specifies?)

If it is decided that some therapeutic programs within existing in-

stitutions are required, the personnel needed to run those programs

must be fully informed as to the nature of the programs and their

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roles in them. (This is a triumph in passive construction. Not only

does it fail to say who decides; it also fails to say who informs.)

Once you understand the difference between active and passive voice, you

understand exactly what questions to ask about ambiguities in responsibility and

action. Don't use passive construction to conceal action or responsibility, even

when you suspect that other people don't understand the difference. Someone

usually knows.

Another bureaucratic device for concealing responsibility is the editorial “we”:

We have always argued that rapid transit is the best long-run

solution to urban transportation problems, given finite energy

resources. In the short run, though, we are faced with the

immediate problem of how to accommodate the city to the

automobile.

Notice how the writer uses the first (editorial) “we” to communicate what she

thinks and then uses the second (generic, or perhaps civic) “we” to implicate you

in a point of view. You are supposed to miss the distinction and find yourself

seduced into agreement. If you understand the editorial “we,” however, you'll ask

yourself immediately who “we” is. Once you ask that question, the whole

charade collapses. The credibility of the memo and its author collapses as well.

To clearly assign action and responsibility, specify who is supposed to be doing

what; then structure the sentence to reflect that. Who or what (subject) does what

(verb) to whom or what (object)?

Correctness in grammar, spelling, and punctuation requires that you proofread your

work carefully. Remember not to rely solely on spell check, either. Many words can be

spelled in more than one way, preventing the spellcheck software from finding the error.

Examples are “principle” and “principal”, or “complement” and “compliment.” Each of

these is spelled correctly, and therefore spell check will not alert you if you have used the

incorrect one. For example, if you write the following sentence, spell check would

consider it to be correct:

“The principle of the school gave Julie a complement about her new dress.”

This sentence utilizes the incorrect form of the words, but spell check did not alert us as

we wrote them. Therefore it is necessary to proof your work thoroughly and not rely

solely on the spelling and grammar check of your software.

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Organization and Argument

A good memo – indeed, any good piece of writing – has a clear structure. It progresses as

a set of well-defined, logically connected statements that lead to a clear conclusion. This is

the “argument.” If you don't have an argument, you don't have a memo. In addition, a

good memo has a clear format that calls the reader's attention to important steps in the

argument. After the first reading, the reader should be able to return to key points without

re-reading the whole document. In other words:

Tell me what you're going to say (topic sentence or paragraph); say it

(body of memo); then tell me what you said (conclusion).

The three principal skills of organization and argument are: (1) putting the important

things up front, (2) making the transition from one step of the argument to another

clearly, and (3) using a clear format in your presentation.

• Putting the important things up front is a common technique in journalism. It's

called the “inverted pyramid” style of writing. Write the first paragraph, or “lead,”

as though your story could be chopped off at any point after it. This puts a

premium on specifying the problem, setting up the decision that follows from it,

and presenting the important evidence quickly and succinctly. It also means that a

reader can look at your memo and immediately know what you're doing.

• Making the transition from one step of the argument to the next clearly means

that you never pass from one subject to another without clearly identifying the

new subject. “Blocking” is a term commonly applied to this practice. Tightly

worded conclusions and clear headings alert the reader that you are changing

subjects and moving to the next phase of your argument. Each major subdivision

should have a new topic heading t