The limits of leaked memos (Apple & Microsoft)
August 15th, 2008
Another post at Harvard business is up - here’s an excerpt:
There is a difference between talk and action, and memos are 90% talk. We all know this. If a CEO at a 20,000+ person company wants to take action, he will, and most of those actions will surface through the executive chain. The corporate-wide memo is the most diffuse and overrated tool in an executive’s playbook, but since it’s the only play that most of the world sees, we naturally over-represent its significance. In every paragraph ask “Is this talk or action?” and you’ll see more clearly what the memo actually means, if anything at all.
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Really interesting article, Scott. I like it. This is what I try to tell the corporate information security neurotics… For me ‘context’ is also very important. If a memo leaks out, the reader needs context to understand it. Context that most people not working the company the memo came from, don’t have.