Question: You are an entry-level research analyst at a multinational, best-practices consulting firm called MCC Consulting. You work in the company’s benchmarking division at MCC’s Arlington, Virginia offices, where you help generate reports on how client companies perform in key areas relative to their competitors.

You are an entry-level research analyst at a multinational, best-practices consulting firm called MCC Consulting. You work in the company’s benchmarking division at MCC’s Arlington, Virginia offices, where you help generate reports on how client companies perform in key areas relative to their competitors. In this role, you work under a senior research analyst named Allison Menendez.

In addition to its Arlington offices, MCC has offices in London, UK; Munich, Germany; and Bengaluru, India. These offices correspond to the industries where MCC has the strongest client relationships. MCC’s Arlington offices specialize in consulting services for US government contractors, especially defense contractors. Its London offices mainly work with European banking and financial services companies. Its Munich offices mainly work with high end continental manufacturers. And its Bengaluru offices mainly work with Indian IT services companies.

At each of these global offices, you have two or more colleagues in the benchmarking division. About half the time, you and your global colleagues work independently. At the Arlington office, for instance, you and your colleagues spend roughly half of every work week benchmarking in-country clients against competitors in the same country and industry. Your British, German, and Indian colleagues divide their time similarly. The other half of the week, however, you work collaboratively, reporting on how companies in different industries around the world perform in shared competencies, like HR and management. At present, you and your global colleagues are hard at work on a major annual benchmarking report that represents one of MCC’s highest-profile, most-valuable products.

Your global colleagues all speak fluent English, but your German and Indian counterparts often struggle with English-language idioms and expressions. Your British counterparts, meanwhile, use different words and expressions for common items and occurrences. After two years at MCC, you have come to see the wisdom in the aphorism, often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, that Britain and the US are “two countries separated by a common language.”

Finally, you and your various global counterparts have very different business cultures. You and Allison tend to be big-picture thinkers with an effusively positive outlook. Your UK colleagues tend to be irreverent and ironic in their workplace behavior. Your German counterparts tend to be sober and detail oriented. And your Indian colleagues tend to be precise and exceedingly polite. With minor exceptions, you all get along quite well; but avoiding miscommunication is often a major struggle.

ASSIGNMENT 1: Routine Message
Scenario Update

Today is a normal Tuesday at work. Over the course of the day, you and your US colleagues divide your efforts between two reports. The first is a report for Boeing that only requires input from the US office. The second is a comparative report on management practices among your global client base. This report requires input from across your four offices.

As you conclude your day, Allison asks you to double check that the changes you made to the international report properly synced to SharePoint. She also asks you to update the Bengaluru, Munich, and London offices on the Arlington office’s progress and suggest a division of labor for the next day’s work. This task typically falls to the Arlington team, as the US office is the last of the four MCC locations to finish the workday.

Allison delivers her instructions in conversation. Standing next to your workspace, she says: “First, let everyone know that we’ve gotten final approval from Marta [the benchmarking division head] for the finished report section on effective CIO leadership. Next, tell the Bengaluru team to take a crack at the section on internal IT help desk management practices. Make sure they know that they should draft the section in a separate Word document. We don’t want any mishaps with the master documents. I also want them to put their IT help desk management dataset on SharePoint.

“Then, tell the German office to use that dataset to create some graphics to accompany the Indian team’s draft. Next, tell the UK office to refine the language in both the report and the graphics. And finally, let everyone know that we’ll incorporate the draft document into the master document and standardize branding and design. Got all that?” Allison concludes. You say yes and make a mental note to include deadlines for all of these tasks in your message. As you get to work on this message, Allison heads back to her office for a Teams video meeting .

Over the next week, work on the collaborative report proceeds smoothly – thanks, in large measure, to your well-written daily emails. In fact, by the middle of the next week, the entire section of the report on best practices for IT management is nearing completion. Therefore, Allison asks you to call a Teams video meeting of the four offices to discuss the preliminary structure and approach you will collectively take as you complete the next section of the report on HR management. With your instructions in hand, you sit down to write your message.

Assignment Instructions

Write two routine emails. These emails should correspond to the messages Allison asks you to write in the preceding Scenario Update.

Message 1

In your first message, you should provide instruction to your colleagues in Bengaluru, Munich, and London on the work they should aim to complete during the next workday. Your first message should:

Contain a strong, action-oriented subject line
Follow routine message structure
Clearly instruct your colleagues in Bengaluru, Munich, and London on what they should do during the next workday
Include clear, realistic deadlines for all of these tasks
Translate these deadlines into your readers’ local time zones
Avoid slang, idiomatic language, or excessively complex sentence structure
Adhere to clarity, concision, and coherence style principles
Use block formatting to make the document visually appealing
Conclude with specific, personalized goodwill and, if necessary, a summative closing statement
Message 2

In your second message (which, in the case’s chronology, you send one week after your first routine message), you should set up a meeting with your Indian, German, and British colleagues to discuss next steps for your report. Your second message should:

Contain a strong, action-oriented subject line
Follow routine message structure
Specify a realistic, considerate meeting time for employees at all four MCC offices (you may assume that you have access to your colleagues’ calendars and know their availability)
Translate your meeting time into your readers’ local time zones
Specify the medium in which you would like to meet (i.e. via Teams)
Clearly describe why you want to meet and what you will discuss at the meeting
Indicate that you will follow-up your email with a calendar invite containing meeting logistics
Avoid slang, idiomatic language, or excessively complex sentence structure
Adhere to clarity, concision, and coherence style principles
Use block formatting to make the document visually appealing
Conclude with specific, personalized goodwill and, if necessary