The Mandate Trap: Auditing a Program Launch Memo
Objective: Given a draft internal launch memo for a new employee advocacy program, identify which specific lines will trigger the mandate/forced-participation failure mode the lesson describes, and rewrite them as opt-in framing.
You're the social media manager at Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, reviewing a draft memo your VP of Comms wrote announcing a new employee advocacy program to the whole company before it goes out.
Read the memo line by line, flag every phrase that reads as a mandate rather than an invitation, and rewrite the memo's tone without cutting its actual ask.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
No account friction, easy to share the before/after with the VP of Comms for sign-off
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson's failure mode: mandate participation and watch it collapse, because forced posts read as forced and signal fake enthusiasm to everyone watching.
Which lines in this draft memo will make employees feel this is mandatory, not invited, and how would you rewrite each one?
Procedure
- Paste the 6-paragraph draft memo into column A, one sentence per row
- Mark each row Mandate, Neutral, or Opt-in based on its actual wording
- For every Mandate row, write a rewrite that keeps the ask but removes the compulsion
- Count Mandate rows before and after your rewrite pass
DRAFT MEMO AUDIT, Zillow Advocacy Launch Row 3: "All agents are expected to share at least 2 posts per week." Verdict: MANDATE Rewrite: "Agents who want to build their own audience can pull from a weekly curated post, no requirement to post." Row 5: "Sharing activity will be reviewed in quarterly performance conversations." Verdict: MANDATE (the most damaging line, ties advocacy to review, guarantees resentment) Rewrite: cut entirely, replace with a public leaderboard shoutout for top voluntary sharers Row 7: "Here's a rotating queue of posts you're welcome to edit or skip." Verdict: OPT-IN, keep as written ...3 more rows
Healthy
Zero rows tie participation to performance review or set a required posting cadence.
Unhealthy
Any row that makes non-participation carry a visible or implied cost.
What this means
The performance-review line is the single most damaging sentence in almost every real draft like this, it converts a voluntary channel into an obligation instantly.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Memo ties sharing to performance reviews | Delete the line entirely before it reaches employees, replace with a public but voluntary leaderboard | 5 min |
| Memo sets a required weekly posting count | Rewrite as a curated queue employees may use, with zero required minimum | 30 min |
Final deliverable
An annotated version of the launch memo with every mandate-coded line flagged and rewritten as opt-in framing, plus a one-line summary for the VP of Comms explaining why each rewrite matters.
See a reference example
Yelp Advocacy Program, memo audit summary 3 of 9 lines flagged as mandate-coded, including a line tying sharing to quarterly reviews. All 3 rewritten to remove the compulsion; the review-tie line was cut outright and replaced with a voluntary monthly shoutout for top sharers. Net effect: the ask stays the same, the pressure is gone.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly flags every mandate-coded line in the memo, not just the obvious one
- The review-tied line specifically gets flagged as highest severity
- Rewrites preserve the actual business ask while removing compulsion language