Short Memo Quotes

Good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself. The great master of follow-up was Alfred Sloan, the most effective business executive I have ever known. Sloan, who headed General Motors from the 1920s until the 1950s, spent most of his six working days a week in meetings—three days a week in formal committee meetings with a set membership, the other three days in ad hoc meetings with individual GM executives or with a small group of executives. At the beginning of a formal meeting, Sloan announced the meeting’s purpose. He then listened. He never took notes and he rarely spoke except to clarify a confusing point. At the end he summed up, thanked the participants, and left. Then he immediately wrote a short memo addressed to one attendee of the meeting. In that note, he summarized the discussion and its conclusions and spelled out any work assignment decided upon in the meeting (including a decision to hold another meeting on the subject or to study an issue). He specified the deadline and the executive who was to be accountable for the assignment. He sent a copy of the memo to everyone who’d been present at the meeting. It was through these memos—each a small masterpiece—that Sloan made himself into an outstandingly effective executive.

Following their line of vision, he found the distraction. The damn tennis team, running the perimeter of the football field in some half-assed formation, following their fearless leader. They weren’t looking at the field, weren’t yelling or causing a scene. Just concentrating on keeping up with Chris. Having been a teenage boy himself, the draw was obvious. Teenage girls. Short shorts. No brainer. At thirty-four, he was past that. Except his eyes didn’t seem to get the “I’m Too Old For This” memo. They were tracking Chris like a hawk tracks a field mouse.

Sifting through thousands of petitions a year in order to select the dozens that will be granted is a daunting task for a nine-member court. In the mid-1970s, with the number of petitions growing rapidly, the justices found a way to lighten the load by organizing their energetic young law clerks into a “cert pool.” Under this arrangement, each petition is reviewed by a single law clerk on behalf all the justices who subscribe to the pool. This clerk writes a memo that summarizes the lower court decision and the arguments for and against review, concluding with a recommendation. The recommendation is only that. Most justices in the pool (all but one or two in recent years) assign one of their own four law clerks to review the pool recommendations from the individual justice’s own perspective.

In short, Mossadegh’s being in power was not a threat to the US interest of preventing Soviet expansion. The CIA acknowledges the Soviets’ “paucity of military preparations and the probable unwillingness of the USSR to intervene militarily on its [Tudeh’s] behalf.”27 And finally, the CIA, in another memo on April 17, acknowledges “Moscow’s recent overtures of conciliation toward the West.”28 In the end, the CIA’s assessment was correct, with the Soviet Union not making any moves in the eleventh hour of the coup to save the Mossadegh government.29 Thus, the CIA was quite aware that there was no internal or external Communist threat to Iran. Indeed, the CIA recognized that, to the extent Mossadegh was dealing with Russia at all, he was being forced to by the very circumstances in which the United States and Britain were putting him. Thus, in an August 6, 1953, internal embassy memo, Iranian Minister of National Economy A.A. Akhavi is quoted as saying that “there is no desire to have any relations with the neighbor to the north, including commercial relations, but that Iran was being forced to deal with Russia by reason of the fact that the United States and most of the free world would not buy its products.”30

Anyone who says confidently what love can and cannot do is a fool. Anyone who sells love short is blind as a bat. Anyone who doesn’t get that love is why we are here is missing the crucial memo.

so he can be reached by the Justice Department or White House in seconds, any time of day or night. But nobody called. Not the attorney general. Not the deputy attorney general. Nobody. I actually had seen the attorney general the day before. Days earlier, I had met alone with the newly confirmed deputy attorney general at his request so he could ask my advice on how to do his job—which I held from 2003 to 2005. In late October, shortly before the election, the now-DAG had been serving as the United States Attorney in Baltimore, and he invited me to speak to his entire staff about leadership and why I made the decisions I did in July about the Clinton email case. He praised me then as an inspirational leader. Now, he not only didn’t call me, he had authored a memo to justify my firing, describing my conduct during 2016 as awful and unacceptable. That made absolutely no sense to me in light of our recent contacts.

51. Do you have a really hard time tolerating frustration? 52. Are you restless without “action” in your life? 53. Do you have a hard time reading a book all the way through? 54. Do you regularly break rules or minor laws rather than put up with the frustration of obeying them? 55. Are you beset by irrational worries? 56. Do you frequently make letter or number reversals? 57. Have you been the driver and at fault in more than four car accidents? 58. Do you handle money erratically? 59. Are you a gung-ho, go-for-it sort of person? 60. Do you find that structure and routine are both rare in your life and soothing when you find them? 61. Have you been divorced more than once? 62. Do you struggle to maintain self-esteem? 63. Do you have poor hand-eye coordination? 64. As a kid, were you a bit of a klutz at sports? 65. Have you changed jobs a lot? 66. Are you a maverick? 67. Are memos virtually impossible for you to read or write? 68. Do you find it almost impossible to keep an updated address book, phone book, or Rolodex? 69. Are you the life of the party one day and hangdog the next? 70. Given an unexpected chunk of free time, do you often find that you don’t use it well or get depressed during it? 71. Are you more creative or imaginative than most people? 72. Is paying attention or staying tuned in a chronic problem for you? 73. Do you work best in short spurts? 74. Do you let the bank balance your checkbook? 75. Are you usually eager to try something new?

THE EVENING before WrestleMania, Vince sent a memo around that instructed his entire crew to convene first thing in the morning at the arena. There were predictable grumblings, with the performers unhappy that their night of pre-show decadence would have to be cut short because of the early wake-up call. The unofficial rule amongst many of the boys was that when it came to doing pay-per-view, having a hangover was a prerequisite because it made you sulky and focussed. Of course, the risk was that someone would go too far and be in no condition to perform come show time, but Vince's meeting made sure there would be little chance of that. Sure enough, everyone was accounted for on that dreary Sunday morning, tired, but for the most part sober.               The boys sat with sunglasses covering their heavy eyes, sipping black coffee from the local Starbucks while wondering what was so urgent that Vince had dragged them out of bed at the crack of dawn. Those who had known McMahon for a while had a good inkling; the meeting wasn't about anything at all. It was simply a front to keep everyone in check and make sure there were no major problems caused by someone having a little too much fun the night before the biggest show of the year. "I betcha Vince doesn't even show," whispered Paul Bearer to no one in particular, and sure enough, he didn't. Instead J.J. Dillon wandered into the room, and told the amassed throng that Vince wasn't coming, but he just wanted to tell them all to have a good show. It was classic McMahon; keeping his troops in check and running things from afar under his authoritarian rule.   THE

Originators, however, do not merely master functionalities and use them once and finally in their great creation. What always precedes invention is a lengthy period of accumulating functionalities and of experimenting with them on small problems as five-finger exercises. Often in this period of working with functionalities you can see hints of what originators will use. Five years before his revelation, Charles Townes had argued in a memo that microwave radio "has now been extended to such short wavelengths that it overlaps a region rich in molecular resonances, where quantum mechanical theory and spectroscopic techniques can provide aids to radio engineering." Molecular resonance was exactly what he would use to invent the maser.

As Roger Stone revealed in his book Nixon’s Secrets, Hillary was fired from the 1974 House Impeachment Committee shortly after she took, and failed, the DC bar examination. Hillary authored memos demanding Nixon yield his tapes (a little irony there?) and that the president was not entitled to a lawyer in the impeachment proceeding. Asked why she was fired, Majority Staff Director Jerry Zeifman said, “Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Giving her a second, I stood up and walked into my room, threw a pair of sweatpants over my shorts, and shrugged into a sweatshirt. God, how was she shivering? I was already sweating with this on. But if I couldn’t comfort her in the way I wanted to, I was going to do it in the only other way I knew how. I’d just be there for her. When I walked back through the living room, her sobs had quieted, but she was still in a ball. Heading into the kitchen, I grabbed two bottled waters, a spoon, and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she always made sure I had in the freezer. I put everything on the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and searched the DVR until I found Bridesmaids. I didn’t give a shit about the two hundred dollars or breakfasts I would owe her for this. Sitting down next to her this time, I picked up the water and ice cream, balanced them on my legs, and turned the volume up. When the movie started, she brought her red face up and glanced at the TV with a furrowed brow before looking over at me. Her eyebrows shot straight up when she saw me. “What are you wearing?” Her voice was hoarse from crying and I handed her the bottle of water. “Well, you came over in sweats. I figured I missed the memo or something and had to get in on the party.” She looked at the TV and back to me, and a small smile cracked when she took the ice cream and spoon from me. I’d pushed her enough today. I hated knowing what I knew and vowed to one day find out who this guy was. Hopefully now that she knew she could talk to me, she’d open up more when she was ready. But anything more today would be too much. So I settled into the couch and pretended to watch the movie instead of her every move. After a while, she handed me back the half-empty container and leaned against my shoulder. My arm automatically went around her and I pulled her close to my side. “Thank you, Kash,” she whispered a couple minutes later. “Anything for you, Rach. I’m here whenever you need to talk.” Pressing my lips to her forehead, I kept them there as I said, “And I will always protect you.” We were still sitting there watching the movie when Mason came back from his run. He nodded at us, and when he came back out of his room after a shower, he was dressed in sweats as well. He grabbed the melting ice cream and tried to squeeze himself onto the couch on the other side of Rachel. She laughed and curled closer into my side. “You guys are the best.” “You think we’re going to let you veg on the couch alone?” Mason said, scoffing. “Sweetheart, you obviously don’t know us that well. I mean, it’s gonna be a hundred degrees today. How else would I spend the day than in sweats?” Rachel kicked at his leg and he squeezed her knee. After a few minutes of watching the movie, Mason caught my gaze over Rachel’s head. He quickly looked down at her and raised an eyebrow, the question clear in his eyes. I nodded once and the color drained from his face. He swallowed hard and grabbed one of Rachel’s hands. She laughed lightly at something from the movie and his eyes came back to mine. They were determined, and he looked like he was struggling at relaxing his now-murderous expression. I knew exactly how he felt. He didn’t have to say anything to me. We’d worked together long enough to know that we’d both just agreed to find the bastard. And make him pay.

Giving her a second, I stood up and walked into my room, threw a pair of sweatpants over my shorts, and shrugged into a sweatshirt. God, how was she shivering? I was already sweating with this on. But if I couldn’t comfort her in the way I wanted to, I was going to do it in the only other way I knew how. I’d just be there for her. When I walked back through the living room, her sobs had quieted, but she was still in a ball. Heading into the kitchen, I grabbed two bottled waters, a spoon, and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she always made sure I had in the freezer. I put everything on the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and searched the DVR until I found Bridesmaids. I didn’t give a shit about the two hundred dollars or breakfasts I would owe her for this. Sitting down next to her this time, I picked up the water and ice cream, balanced them on my legs, and turned the volume up. When the movie started, she brought her red face up and glanced at the TV with a furrowed brow before looking over at me. Her eyebrows shot straight up when she saw me. “What are you wearing?” Her voice was hoarse from crying and I handed her the bottle of water. “Well, you came over in sweats. I figured I missed the memo or something and had to get in on the party.” She looked at the TV and back to me, and a small smile cracked when she took the ice cream and spoon from me. I’d pushed her enough today. I hated knowing what I knew and vowed to one day find out who this guy was. Hopefully now that she knew she could talk to me, she’d open up more when she was ready. But anything more today would be too much. So I settled into the couch and pretended to watch the movie instead of her every move. After a while, she handed me back the half-empty container and leaned against my shoulder. My arm automatically went around her and I pulled her close to my side. “Thank you, Kash,” she whispered a couple minutes later. “Anything for you, Rach. I’m here whenever you need to talk.” Pressing my lips to her forehead, I kept them there as I said, “And I will always protect you.” We

Kennedy’s influence was cut short by the assassination, but he weighed in with a memo to LBJ. The problem, Kennedy explained on January 16, was that “most federal programs are directed at only a single aspect of the problem. They are sometimes competitive and frequently aimed at only a temporary solution or provide for only a minimum level of subsistence. These programs are always planned for the poor—not with the poor.” Kennedy’s solution was a new cabinet-level committee to coordinate comprehensive, local programs that “[involve] the cooperation of the poor” Kennedy listed six cities where local “coordinating mechanisms” were strong enough that pilot programs might be operational by fall. “In my judgment,” he added prophetically, “the anti-poverty program could actually retard the solution of these problems, unless we use the basic approach outlined above.” If there was such a thing as a “classical” vision of community action, Kennedy’s memo was its epitaph. On February 1, while Kennedy was in East Asia, Johnson appointed Sargent Shriver to head the war on poverty. It was an important signal that the president would be running the program his way, not Bobby’s. It was also a canny personal slap at RFK—who, according to Ted Sorensen, had “seriously consider[ed] heading” the antipoverty effort. Viewed in this light, Johnson’s choice of Shriver was particularly shrewd. Not only was Shriver hardworking and dynamic—a great salesman—but he was a Kennedy in-law, married to Bobby’s sister Eunice. In Kennedy family photos Shriver stood barrel-chested and beaming, a member of the inner circle, every bit as vigorous, handsome, Catholic, and aristocratic as the rest. By placing Shriver at the helm of the war on poverty, Johnson demonstrated his fealty to the dead president. But LBJ and Bobby both understood that Shriver was very much his own man. After the assassination Shriver signaled his independence from the Kennedys by slipping the new president a note card delineating “What Bobby Thinks.” In 1964, Shriver’s status as a quasi-Kennedy made him Bobby’s rival for the vice presidency, but even before then their relationship was hardly fraternal. Within the Kennedy family Shriver was gently mocked. His liberalism on civil rights earned him the monikers “Boy Scout,” “house Communist,” and “too-liberal in-law.” Bobby’s unease was returned in kind. “Believe me,” RFK’s Senate aide Adam Walinsky observed, “Sarge was no close pal brother-in-law and he wasn’t giving Robert Kennedy any extra breaks.” If Shriver’s loyalty was divided, it was split between Johnson and himself, not Johnson and Kennedy.

In my two memos to Bojia I explained that there is no set formula for writing a column, no class you attend, and that everyone does it differently to some degree. But there were some general guidelines I could offer. When you are a reporter, your focus is on digging up facts to explain the visible and the complex and to unearth and expose the impenetrable and the hidden—wherever that takes you. You are there to inform, without fear or favor. Straight news often has enormous influence, but it’s always in direct proportion to how much it informs, exposes, and explains. Opinion writing is different. When you are a columnist, or a blogger in Bojia’s case, your purpose is to influence or provoke a reaction and not just to inform—to argue for a certain perspective so compellingly that you persuade your readers to think or feel differently or more strongly or afresh about an issue. That is why, I explained to Bojia, as a columnist, “I am either in the heating business or the lighting business.” Every column or blog has to either turn on a lightbulb in your reader’s head—illuminate an issue in a way that will inspire them to look at it anew—or stoke an emotion in your reader’s heart that prompts them to feel or act more intensely or differently about an issue. The ideal column does both. But how do you go about generating heat or light? Where do opinions come from? I am sure every opinion writer would offer a different answer. My short one is that a column idea can spring from anywhere: a newspaper headline that strikes you as odd, a simple gesture by a stranger, the moving speech of a leader, the naïve question of a child, the cruelty of a school shooter, the wrenching tale of a refugee.

The constant needle and edge in their working relationship is matched by a cloak of secrecy the warring offices throw around their rival operations. Diana had to use all her guile to tease out information from her husband’s office before she flew to Pakistan on her first major solo overseas tour last year. She was due to stopover in Oman where Prince Charles was trying to woo the Sultan to win funding for an architectural college. Curious by nature, Diana wanted to know more but realized that a direct approach to Prince Charles or his senior advisers would receive a dusty response. Instead she penned a short memo to the Prince’s private secretary, Commander Richard Aylard and asking innocently if there was anything in the way of briefing notes she needed for the short stopover in Oman. The result was that, as she was travelling on official Foreign Office business, the Prince was forced to reveal his hand. In this milieu of sullen suspicion, secrecy is a necessary and constant companion. Caution is her watchword. There are plenty of eyes and ears as well as police video cameras to catch the sound of a voice raised in anger or the sight of an unfamiliar visitor. Tongues wag and stories circulate with electrifying efficiency. It is why, when she was learning about her bulimic condition, she hid books on the subject from prying eyes. She dare not bring home tapes from her astrology readings nor read the satirical magazine Private Eye with its wickedly accurate portrayal of her husband in case it attracts unfavourable comment. The telephone is her lifeline, spending hours chatting to friends: “Sorry about the noise, I was trying to get my tiara on,” she told one disconcerted friend.

The problem with many to-do lists is that when we write down a series of short-term objectives, we are, in effect, allowing our brains to seize on the sense of satisfaction that each task will deliver. We are encouraging our need for closure and our tendency to freeze on a goal without asking if it’s the right aim. The result is that we spend hours answering unimportant emails instead of writing a big, thoughtful memo—because it feels so satisfying to clean out our in-box.

According to a memo that Keller himself wrote to the Brown Institutional Review Board on January 30, 1995, this patient (number 70) ingested eighty-two Tylenol pills in an apparent overdose attempt on January 19. Patient 70 was admitted to a hospital and terminated from the study shortly afterward, according to Keller’s memo to Brown IRB. Yet this teenage girl was not included in the group reported to have experienced serious adverse events while in the study. Instead, in another memo that Keller had written to the Brown IRB in 1995, she was described as having been terminated from the study for being “noncompliant.” In an even more mysterious turn, patient 70 was described in GlaxoSmithKline’s final report of the study as being a twelve-year-old boy. This boy was enrolled in the clinical trial a month after the teenage girl identified in Keller’s memos as patient 70 overdosed on Tylenol and withdrew from the study. The boy with the same patient number was removed from the study on March 22, 1995, after developing tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) while taking the tricyclic antidepressant known as imipramine, according to the company’s final report. There was no mention in the company’s posted final report or the 2001 journal paper that the original patient 70 was a young girl who had ingested eighty-two Tylenol pills in a clear bid to kill herself.

They will preach what we want them to preach,” said Hitler’s memo. “If any priest acts differently, we will make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted.

When mortals go through a prosperous period, it seems to be human nature for expenses to balloon. We are going to be the exception. I have just informed the purchasing department that they should no longer purchase paper clips. All of us receive documents every day with paper clips on them. If we save these paper clips, not only will we have enough for our own use, but we will also, in a short time, be awash in the little critters. Periodically, we will collect excess paper clips and sell them (since the cost to us is zero, the Arbitrage Department tells me the return on capital will be above average). This action may seem a little petty, but anything we can do to make our people conscious of expenses is worthwhile.

So when Geveden became CEO, he wrote a short memo on his expectations for teamwork. "...I expect disagreement with my decisions at the time we're trying to make decisions, and that's a sign of organizational health," he told me. "After decisions are made, we want compliance and support...

Medieval Armed Combat as Universal Metaphor and All-Purpose Protocol Interface Schema (MACUMAPPIS). Since Medieval Armed Combat was the oxygen they breathed, even mentioning it seemed gratuitous, so this got shortened to UMAPPIS and then, since the “metaphor” thing made some of the businesspeople itchy, it became APPIS, which they liked enough to trademark. And since APPIS was one letter away from APIS, which was the Latin word for bee, they then went on to create and trademark some bee- and hive-related logo art. As Corvallis patiently told Richard, it was all a kind of high-tech in-joke. In that world, API stood for “application programming interface,” which meant the software control panels that tech geeks slapped onto their technologies in order to make it possible for other tech geeks to write programs that made use of them. All of which was one or two layers of abstraction beyond the point where Richard could give a shit. “All I am trying to say with this memo,” he told Corvallis, “is that anyone who feels like it ought to be able to grab hold of our game by the technological short hairs and make it solve problems for them.” And Corvallis assured him that this was precisely synonymous with having an API and that everything else was just marketing. The problems Richard had in mind were not game- or even entertainment-related ones. Corporation 9592 had already covered as many of those bases as their most imaginative people could think of, and then they had paid lawyers to pore over the stuff that they’d thought of and extrapolate whole abstract categories of things that might be thought of later. And wherever they went, they found that the competition had been there five years earlier and patented everything that was patentable and, in one sense or another, pissed on everything that wasn’t. Which explained a lot about Phase 3.

Amara and Silver Streak gallop toward the jump—Amara in a two-point position, hovering just above his back. She gathers her reins and leans into his neck, the thoroughbred gracefully lifts his legs in the air, and she sinks closer to him as they float . . . majestically . . . magically . . . effortlessly . . . through the air. Everyone in the stable stares, spellbound. I hold my breath. The world seems to slow down as I, too, lean forward and shift in my own saddle—soaring vicariously with them. Except I am now moving. And it is not vicarious. “Aaaaaahhhhhh!” Clyde takes off, bounding after Silver Streak. Apparently energized by a serious case of FOMO, Clyde decides he won’t be left behind at the boring ground poles. He strides closer and closer to the oxer as I jostle in my seat, barely clinging to the reins as one of my clumsy feet slips out of its stirrup. I slide off-kilter, slithering down the saddle leather. Suddenly the arena is zipping past me sideways as Clyde’s medium-pizza hooves gallop away. Galumph-galumph-galumph! “Whoa!” I yell, tightening my abs and attempting to grip the reins from my diagonal, half-upside-down position. And just as he’s beginning to stretch his neck into a gigantic leap, snatching us both into the Air o’ Doom, Clyde—for once—listens to me. Swooosh! He slams on the brakes, stopping short and veering left. My body, still screaming along at full speed, misses the memo, flipping above the saddle and then—wheeeeeeeee!—straight over the top rail of the oxer. And into the dirt. Thud. . . . My first jump!

I landed a job as a clerk-typist at a huge engineering and construction firm in the city, in the nuclear quality-assurance department, where I labored under a tsunami wave of triplicate forms and memos. It was very upsetting. It was also so boring that it made my eyes feel ringed with dark circles, like Lurch. I finally figured out that most of this paperwork could be tossed without there being any real … well … fallout, and this freed me up to write short stories instead.

But it is not only the messages going out at 140 characters or less that are at risk of signifying nothing. Any medium carrying a message that lacks meaning will fall short of its intention: a television ad, a department memo, a client email, a birthday card.

To that end, she must win every competition she enters. (Here are your four hundred participation trophies, distribute accordingly.) She must feel that everyone likes and loves her and wants to be with her at all times. She must be constantly entertained and amused; every one of her days on Earth must be like Disneyland, but better. (If you go to actual Disneyland, get a fast pass because she should never be forced to wait. For anything, ever.) If other kids don’t want to play with her, call those kids’ parents, find out why, and insist they fix it. In public, walk in front of your child and shield her from any unhappy faces that might make her sad, and any happy faces that might make her feel left out. When she gets into trouble at school, call her teacher and explain loudly that your child does not make mistakes. Insist that the teacher apologize for her mistake. Do not ever, ever let a drop of rain fall upon your child’s fragile head. Raise this human without ever allowing her to feel a single uncomfortable human emotion. Give her a life without allowing life to happen to her. In short: Your life is over, and your new existence is about ensuring that her life never begins. Godspeed. We got a terrible memo. Our terrible memo is why we feel exhausted, neurotic, and guilty. Our terrible memo is also why our kids suck. They do, they just suck. Because people who do not suck are people who have failed, dusted themselves off, and tried again. People who do not suck are people who have been hurt, so they have empathy for others who are hurt. People who do not suck are those who have learned from their own mistakes by dealing with the consequences. People who do not suck are people who have learned how to win with humility and how to lose with dignity. Our memo has led us to steal from our children the one thing that will allow them to become strong people: struggle.

The institution of a concentration camp is something horrible. It is torture for the inmates.” DuBois introduced that memo to demonstrate that Ambros knew terrible things were happening in the camp. Nothing of the sort, maintained Ambros, who claimed he had simply an aversion “for the short-cropped hair [of the prisoners]. . . . That is the torture to which I referred.

Shortly after Scotty’s decision in favor of Steve, Raskin quit in a huff. But before he left he fired off a memo to his bosses that still stands as an angry summary of Steve’s weaknesses. “While Mr. Jobs’s stated positions on management techniques are all quite noble and worthy, in practice he is a dreadful manager.… He is a prime example of a manager who takes the credit for his optimistic schedules and then blames the workers when deadlines are not met,” he wrote, adding that Steve “misses appointments … does not give credit … has favorites … and doesn’t keep promises.