TO: All Employees
FROM: Your President
RE: Change in Management Direction

All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co., Inc., are very proud of the progress we have made since 1843, when my great-great grandfather J. Horatio Pinckney founded this company with nothing more than a vision, a drive to succeed, and a large inheritance from his maiden aunt Euphemia. Since then we have risen to be the largest manufacturer of snack foods and munitions in the Capital District, and it would be false modesty to deny that our success is attributable to the wisdom and perspicacity of your management team. I had to look up perspicacity in Funk & Wagnall’s, but I think it’s the right word.

Nevertheless, times change, and the world moves on. Although if what my fourth-grade science teacher said is right, the world ends up right back where it started in a year, so perhaps “the world moves on” is not a persuasive argument. Regardless, you should know that your management team is constantly adapting and learning new things, because we read in a management magazine last April that management should be constantly adapting and learning new things, and we believe everything we read in management magazines.

From our extensive research in these magazines, and especially in the advertisements in the back, we determined that it was necessary for your management team to attend a week-long management seminar in Las Vegas. My memory of the events of that week is a little hazy, but one thing that stood out through the alcoholic haze is that the top-down management model is definitely a thing of the past. Instead, the up-to-date successful business demands a bottom-up approach.

Let me explain the difference between the two management models. In a top-down management model, upper management, meaning myself, determines what is to be done and issues suitable instructions to employees. In a bottom-up management model, on the other hand, employees gather for brainstorming sessions, form committees to meet on a regular schedule, make sure that every voice is heard and no employee is left behind, and take responsibility for results, and then upper management determines what is to be done and issues suitable instructions to employees. The difference, in other words, is in who takes the blame. I am sure I do not need to enumerate the advantages of the bottom-up approach, at least from the point of view of upper management.

The immediate intent of this memorandum, therefore, is to inform you that all employees will be required to attend a two-hour brainstorming session every Monday morning in your department. Since this will be two hours during which no productive work is accomplished, the two hours spent in the brainstorming session will be made up on Tuesday. The two hours of Monday makeup on Tuesday will be made up on Wednesday, and so on, and employees will be required to work two hours Saturday mornings going forward, or Sunday mornings if they are going backward. And when you are brainstorming, remember that your prospects for advancement will be greatly increased if your suggestions are made in line with the decisions your management team has already made. Think of it as a guessing game. Together, we can all make our implementation of the bottom-up management model a success.

Yours sincerely,
J. Rutherford Pinckney,
President