I think the CEO had good intentions but a very poor choice of delivery. E-mail is best used to share information and facts very quickly among one and other in a work place. It is not the best place to try to correct what you feel is a growing problem in your company. It is especially not a good idea to use such a harsh tone in your e-mal for many reasons. One as the CEO found out is that it leaves a firm trail that can be traced back to you. Another reason is that it is very hard to judge a persons tone and demeanor from an e-mail message. That makes it hard to be sarcastic, serious, happy, or mad and have everyone correctly interpret your e-mail. It would probably have been better if he sent out a very professional memo that stated that he saw certain problems in the office and listed them. Then had a meeting with all of his managers to discus the problem further.
His memo caused people to become offended and defensive about their jobs. Instead of provoking a positive response he provoked a very negative response. Even if the e-mail had not leaked on the internet it still would have been a problem for the company. If you are ever going to talk about potentially disciplining someone you should do it face to face. This way they will be able to ask questions and truly understand what you are asking of them. In his case he just made employees worried about having their cars parked in the lot rather than improving the quality of work in the company. In the weeks after the e-mail I would expect an increase in the amount of sloppy work around the office because people are now more than ever going to be looking at the clock and just waiting until they can get out of the office. I think next time a manger has any form of discipline or problems with the employees they should address the issue using managers instead of e-mail.
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I think that the CEO had good intentions also but was unaware of how he should go about showing his emotions. I think that if he would have spoken to the managers of the company and expressed his displeasure with how the company is being ran or how the employees were working he could have avoided the big blow up that was this fiasco. Had he not used a medium that is traceable, such as emailing or memos, he could have had a little discussion about how he felt and moved on. Instead he is national news about something as silly as an email. I know that if I ever received an email like his I would have been A) in fear of how stable the man was when he saw something he didnt like and what his reaction would be and B) laugh at it because the man couldnt verbally say what was on his mind and that he should be able to as he is a CEO of a large company. All in all, I think its better to verbally communicate ideas of displeasure than to leave a paper trail.
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You are right in saying that email is good to share information. Mr. Patterson should not have utilized this tool for such an emotional issue. Even though he sent the email to bring notice to a situation, he really should have run the note by more people before sending. He probably thought his email was harmless but his tone came across different from what he expected. Just like you, I believe the best thing would have been to discuss the issue face to face. He should have talked to managers and found a solution before sending out any emails. By following email etiquette, you can easily prevent this problem. When writing an email, you need to make sure the content is appropriate and informational. If you have something with a more emotional issue, you should really take the time to proofread and make sure your tone is appropriate. Have multiple people read your email before pushing send to make sure you are sending the intended message. When in doubt, do not send. People would rather meet face to face to talk about emotions instead of receiving a nasty email.
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I agree with what you said in this response. There is no reason for sending out his message in an email, and beyond that, sending it in the way he did. I don't know what gave him the idea being so negative would give him positive results in the end. It all comes down to leadership skills. My current boss where I work seems to be somewhat of the same way. He doesn't use constructive criticism, but seems to wait until you do something wrong, and then gets upset with you. Granted he didn't do this through email, but I don't know why any manager would use this approach. Most of my coworkers tend to talk poorly about him behind his back, and this promotes a worse work environment. I'm sure this is how the situation was with the corporation in the article. If a boss is nasty with his employees, it is only natural that work will suffer, and this is what happened. It is definitely not right to use email for any big topics for the reason that you can't tell a person's demeanor through email. It is most important to know the proper time to use email, and the time to have meetings instead.
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I think the CEO had good intentions to but he was unaware of his emotions that he was showing. I don't think he did it in the right manner to. If he wanted to be harsh and teach his employees a lesson he should have called them in one by one and spoken to them. he should have thought really hard before sending that email because pressing the send button was like a death wish. After he press the sent button he hasn't been the most favorite guy around office and the public anymore and because of that he even brought is company down.