Question 1
In her article “How to Create a Culture Manifesto for Your Organization (and Why it’s a Good Idea)” Mollie West wants her readers to take away what she is saying and use it to better themselves and their companies. She lays out what she learned about the three organizations and their manifesto and then offers a way to help her readers create their own, using what she learned. She uses quotes from employees at all of the three organizations to emphasize the importance of what that company is doing and the effects that it has on both the company and its employees. I think that West went about it this way because she is showing the reader first hand what was successful and how. She is almost using imagery in a way to help the reader see how they created a manifesto and then why it is a good idea. I think this is effective for this audience because the audience is most likely employees and supervisors at other organizations who either need help creating a culture manifesto or who think it is not going to work and/or worth it. I think that what West says and the way she says it is effective and will show those employees and supervisors why they should implement this into their organizations.
Question 2
For my unit 3 project I plan to take what I learned from my unit 2 portfolio about discrimination against people who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community and use it to educate people about how they can make them feel safer and more comfortable. I plan to create a memo that can be given out to offices, schools, public places like restaurants and stores, and anywhere else that people are interacting with each other. I feel that this is the most productive way to give out the information because it is an easy way to spread it and can be created and designed in a way that will engage the readers. I also think that it will meet most if not all of the readers expectations of a memo and will still allow them to understand and maintain the information and the importance of it.
Hi Zoe,
I definitely agree that Mollie’s reason for writing this was to inform and teach people of these methods so they can apply it to their own lives and companies. I like that you made sure to refer to her usage of the quotes because I also think that the inclusion of the quotes was helpful because it backed up every point she made in her writing. For your research project, I really like your idea of creating a memo that can be handed out. I think that would have a higher change of being read by anyone in general since it doesn’t need to be long.
Zoe–a one-size-fits-all memo might be a challenge, as different demographic groups would have different needs and expectations. I would encourage you to tighten up your image of your audience, either by focusing on a particular demographic group or by focusing on a particular reading situation (i.e. a place/time/type of interaction). That would make it easier for you to target those readers and decide what to include and how to present it. Let me know if you’d like to talk this through a bit more.