Communicating in Crisis (Memo Assignment)

Purpose of assignment:

The ability for a leader to cascade communication down their organization, according to the information requirements of the varying stakeholder groups, is a skill that is extremely valuable in business today. It is even more important when the communication is in the context of a real-time crisis.

Assignment detail:

For this assignment, you will be the CEO of Omega Cooperation, a global designer, developer, importer and distributor of various brand-name consumer products. You will have to utilize critical strategic thinking skills, as well as business-writing techniques learned in this class, to manage a creeping crisis scenario with one of the products in the portfolio. Youll need think through the various stakeholder groups that must be communicated to, to effectively manage the crisis. You will prepare two memos for the two most-immediate stakeholder groups of your choice, to explain the action that the organization has taken to address the crisis. You will also need to explain how the crisis will be continued to be managed moving forward. Stakeholder group options: 1) all employees; 2) HR executive leaders; 3) public relations executive leaders; 4) finance executive leaders; 5) board of directors.

You will write a memo to each group that you select. Each memo should be no more than one (1) page and utilize the techniques and best-practices that you have learned from your textbooks reading assignments, and your in-class assignments and discussions. Your format must be appropriate, and your messages to each group must be well-selected and well-written.

Additionally, you will write a one (1)-page summary to explain the reasoning behind your strategy and how you approached this assignment. Why did you select the two groups you did? What messages did you intent to communicate, and why? What other groups might have also been important to communicate with, and why?

You should combine the memos and the summary into one document, with the summary as your first page. This assignment must be uploaded as one single PDF document onto Camino by the deadline listed in the syllabus.

Grading:

This assignment will NOT BE graded on a right or wrong approach the situation, but rather your critical thinking ability, and business writing skill. You need to justify your logic around why you chose those groups that you did. You will also be graded on your critical thinking to understand the two groups information requirements, and the ability of each memos to satisfy your communication objectives with each group.