Dear Mr. Unsolicited Advice:I'm an executive in a large corporation, and I issue memos by the bushel, but I'm told that nobody reads them! How can I justify my big salary if people don't read my memos? Can you tell me how to add spice to my business correspondence without actually changing the subject matter or writing style of my pearls of wisdom?
Sincerely, Executing in Emporia
Dear Executing,
I have just the thing for you. Assuming you, like 99% of the folks out there, use Microsoft Word for your memo writing, be sure and turn on the Track Changes feature on all you documents (there's probably some way to set it to be turned on by default, but I will leave that as an exercise for the student). This will let you keep track of what edits you make to your policies and memoranda and client letters and the like, which is especially useful for particularly thorny or politically sensitive subjects that you want to collaborate on with other executives, or send around for comments.
How, do you ask, will this make people read your writing more diligently? Simple: just don't choose Accept Changes before you electronically send out the memos. That way, not only will people see what you intended to send out (the dull, boring, politically polished bits), but they'll see all the stuff and names and ideas that got deleted, scrubbed, rephrased, and otherwise made more palatable in the final product, simply by changing their view to "Final with Markup."
In the video game industry, these sorts of "hidden features" are called Easter Eggs, and they always provoke lots of interest amongst players in finding them. By putting these "Easter Eggs" into your Word documents, you can provide hours of entertainment to your employees, who will then pore over your every word to see what you said compared what you originally intended to say before someone pointed out you really can't say that in a publicly distributed memo!
Hope this helps!
Sincerely, Mr. Unsolicited Advice
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