Persuasive Message – "Miserable Meetings"

The following e-mail message suffers from many writing faults, including poor tone and poorpersuasive strategy. It originated with a manager and is addressed to his boss.

Your Task. First, list at least seven of Clint's writing weaknesses.

Then revise the messagebelow implementing an effective persuasive strategy. Include ideas and examples inconducting and participating in productive meetings.

To: Charlotte Cohen

From: Clint Johnson

Subject: Miserable Meetings

Cc:

Attached:

Good morning!I wonder if you know how bad meetings are around here. We seem to have endlessmeetings that drag on and on forever. I myself attended five meetings within the building butalso was forced to participate in three more conference call meetings. And that was just lastweek! Nearly every one of those meetings was poorly run. Some should never have beencalled because they merely announced information after a decision had already been made.Some could easily have been handled in an e-mail. Sometimes I think our meetings arereally opportunities to socialize under the guise of "work." Our meetings are huge timesuckers.I'm going to level with you and tell it like it is. Something needs to be done about the lostproductivity and sagging employee morale around here. No one likes to waste valuable timeattending poorly run or unnecessary meetings. Apparently, our managers have not beentrained in how to conduct meetings, although I realize that all of them are professional andhave business training.

What we need is a meeting policy or something like that. We need some guidelines ortraining about how to conduct meetings. Has anyone thought of that? I can think of manyways to improve meetings. Could we please talk about this?

Clint Johnson

Project Manager