Eng 421 blog

Our book mentions four guidelines to keep in mind as you strive to be more creative: Work at it, Pay attention to change, Be passionate about your task, & Hear naysayers, but don't always listen to them.  The author then goes on to list and describe five invention techniques that should help increase creativity.  The five techniques are logical mapping, brainstorming, freewriting, outlining/boxing, and using the journalist's questions. 

While each of these five techniques for increasing creativity are considered different, they are in fact quite similar.  They each consist of sitting down and writing out ideas, just in different formats.  I agree that writing down ideas is a good way to attack a problem but I would have liked to see the author come up with more varying types of creative inspiration.  

I typed in, "How to be creative", in my search bar and immediately got multiple lists of different ways to increase creativity.  After reading through six different lists, I chose five ideas that I believe can help people become more creative.  Those five ideas are: Sign up for a class, Get up and move, Read more, Nurture creative dissent, and Take inspired risks. 

To me, these are five unique ways to get inspired.  They are not one way repackaged five times.  I like each of them for the different way that they go about giving me an individual frame of reference.

Hello Coach.  My name is Bill Kerr and I am the CEO of Advanced Coaching Experts.  We at Advanced Coaching Experts work with both coaches and players to give them the best opportunity to succeed.  I was at your game two days ago and could not help but notice that things did not go so well for your team.  I believe that I can help your team be more successful. Not only can we help them be more successful on the field, but we can help them do better in the classroom as well.  We have a proven track record of helping many teams become the best in their sport.   I would love the opportunity to sit down with you and continue this conversation to show you exactly how, together, we can get the most out of your team.  Let me know how far you want to go and we will help get you there.

Introduction & Credibility

I believe that my pitch starts off well because I immediately tell the listener who I am.  I proceed to tell him the company that I am with and what our company does.

Story

I then tell the listener about being at their game and witnessing how it did not go so well.  To me this lets the listener know that:

One – I have an interest in him and his team.

Two – I have knowledge of his situation.

Three – That I have the ability to be of help.

Idea / Reasons

Next, I tell the listener what it is that I can do for them and the team.  I do this by telling the listener that I can help them be more successful.  After all, who doesn’t want to be more successful?

Why me / Benefit

For this assignment, I chose to use a memo written from Jim Morris to employees of ILM, Skywalker Sound, and LDL.  Jim Morris was the president of Lucas Digital during the filming of The Phantom Menace.  I will discuss the content, organization, style, and design used, to explain why I believe that this is an effective memo. 

Mr. Morris opens the memo with a little background information which lets the reader understand why they are receiving the memo and the enclosed bonus.  I feel that this is important because it tells the reader right away why they are receiving the memo.  If the recipient just received a check with no information then the recipient would be left wondering why they were receiving a check that they were not expecting.  

Mr. Morris then tells the reader that the bonus is enclosed.  This is also helpful because the employee is not left to wonder when they should be receiving the bonus.  If there happened to be a mistake and the bonus was not in there, the recipient would know right away that the bonus was missing.

The next paragraph explains how the dollar amounts were calculated and the requirement needed to receive the bonus.  Again, this is good, open communication, which helps the reader understand the process.  

Lastly, Mr. Morris makes the memo personal by expressing his appreciation and commending everyone for doing a great job.

I believe that the organization of the memo is effective because it explains who, what, when, how, and why the bonuses were distributed.  

The style and design make the memo easy to read.  It is block style and it is easy to scan and pick up information quickly.

There are two changes that I would make to this memo.  The first change would be to add some sort of letterhead to the top which would make it look more official.  The second change that I would make is to take the sentence, " So, enclosed you will... bonus!", and move it down below the next paragraph.  To me, it seems to be a better location for that sentence.

Overall, I believe that this is an effective, well written memo.  Below is a link to the memo that I found.