Asking The Right Memo Analysis

University of Maryland University College

Critical Thinking Individual Paper

Abstract
In the memo written by Mr. Arturo Romano to Ms. Charlotte Greyson, he wants to show her that it is not viable to “establish and fund a new leadership development program” (A.Romano, personal communication, November 12, 2012), like Ms. Felton suggests. In order to break down the memo and see if everything that is said in the memo is correct, I will be using the techniques that authors Keeley and Browne teach us in their book Asking the Right Questions. The authors teach us in order to be critical of something we must ask the right questions to dig through what we are reading and “be able to make a decision if we believe what we are reading
Asking the Right Questions defines descriptive assumptions are “beliefs about the way the world was, is or will be” and value assumptions are “beliefs about how the world should be” (Browne & Keeley, 2011, p.65). In the memo, Mr. Romano makes value assumptions that Ms. Felton is trying to discredit him, take his position, and push her own ideas that the Aspen Institute training is worth the extra money for training. While the descriptive assumptions he uses in the memo are the height of leaders, the traits, and a Wikipedia definition as to causes that these trainings are not needed. The assumptions he uses do help lead the reader to the conclusion, but does not mean they are
Hill’s New Manager Development for the 21st century she says that “What we know for sure is that managers are mostly made, not born” (Hill, 2004, p.122). That is a direct opposite belief of what Mr. Romano feels, so we must continue to ask questions to see who is correct. After going through these 11 steps in Asking the Right Questions, I have now realized the importance of not taking anything you read at face value. There are many underlying tricks of the trade that I have learned after going through the book. As far as Mr. Romano memo, it was well written to prove his point at first read, but after breaking down the memo, you realize it has many holes and leaves a lot of facts out. Instead of proving his point Mr. Romano made the memo about himself and forgot the point of the memo was to prove why they should not spend the extra money to train their junior executives. Mr. Romano gave many good examples of what leader’s height, traits, and journals said they didn’t use trainings, but this had nothing to do with his company and those leaders were leaders in different fields than where he worked. All of the good examples he made he couldn’t back them up with facts and instead used words like exception, suspect, and intentions. When writing a memo of this importance that deals with hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should only deal in facts that back up your conclusion. In conclusion, I would reject Mr. Romano’s memo, because the facts used were broad,