Choose one of the three options below for your short report:

1. Helping Your Boss Promote Mindfulness: You’re a management major on co-op with a large customer-data company. Your company sells technology that collects detailed records of what customers buy, at what price, and when, and then crunches those data to help companies improve their revenue. The employees include computer engineers, salespeople, client consultants, customer support staff, technicians, and professionals in other business areas. You’ve been assigned to various areas of the company to learn about a variety of topics, and you’re currently reporting to Mark Lindsay, the director of communications. One of Mark’s duties is to work with the president to write the script for his monthly video to the employees. Mark has been coming across more and more articles about the detrimental effects of multitasking and the benefits of focused, “mindful” work, so he thinks he’ll recommend that the president’s next talk be on this subject. That’s where you come in. “See what you can find out about mindfulness on the job,” he asks you. “Find out what it means, how to have it, what its benefits are, and who’s practicing it.” Cite your sources, so they can be accessed, if needed.
   Send your memo report to Mr. Lindsay, as an email attachment to a transmittal message, answering his (and the president’s) likely questions and helping them see what approach to take with this topic in the video.
2. Recommending Ways for Employees to Stay Informed with LinkedIn: You’re a new hire in the _ department of ___ company (you fill in the blanks). Your boss, Sara Dallin, drops by your desk and tells you about a webinar she recently attended that extolled the benefits of using social media to stay abreast of trends in one’s field. She was particularly surprised at how useful LinkedIn can be for this purpose. She thinks the others in your department would be surprised, too, because most people think of LinkedIn as an employment-networking tool. But it’s also a great way to see what people are talking about in various professional areas. “Organizations, groups, and individuals share a lot of useful information there,” she says, “so we should be following what’s going on.”
   She plans to send the department a persuasive message along these lines—but first she wants you to further scope out LinkedIn’s educational potential. Who are the thought leaders in the field? What kinds of things do they write about? How easy is it to contact a specific individual to ask questions? What groups are available, and how easy is it to join them? Can you see what your competition is up to? In what other ways might LinkedIn be a valuable resource for those in your department?
   You’ll do this research for your boss and send her your findings. Try to tell her everything she needs to be able to prepare a persuasive and knowledgeable message to the team.