Company mission statements are notoriously abstract and might make a good starting place. If someone didn’t know anything about a company and they went and read the mission statement, they probably wouldn’t have a much better idea of what the company actually did.
For example, if (stereotypical) Grandpa asked you what Google was and you replied, “they organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” you probably wouldn’t do much to help him understand what Google is (despite that being one of the best mission statements I can think of). Instead, if you gave a specific example such as: “If you’re driving to a new store you can type in the store address and Google will print out a map of how to get there, along with detailed instructions. It’s more convenient than a traditional printed map because if you don’t know the address you can type in the store name and Google will tell you the address and show you pictures of the view from the street so you’ll be able to recognize it when you’re driving there.” Grandpa would probably have a better idea of what Google does.
So the activity would be to take a company mission statement (abstract) and come up with several examples of specific things that the company did that you could use to describe the company to your grandparents if they’d never heard of it before. The reason to start with the mission statement would be so that participants would be able to mentally contrast abstract statements (that wouldn’t help Grandma understand) with specific examples (that would help) and so hopefully learn to avoid making the abstract statements themselves. (For those participants who are Grandparents, they can use companies and products that no longer exist that younger people don’t understand and pretend they’re explaining it to their grand kids )
Company mission statements are notoriously abstract and might make a good starting place. If someone didn’t know anything about a company and they went and read the mission statement, they probably wouldn’t have a much better idea of what the company actually did.
For example, if (stereotypical) Grandpa asked you what Google was and you replied, “they organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” you probably wouldn’t do much to help him understand what Google is (despite that being one of the best mission statements I can think of). Instead, if you gave a specific example such as: “If you’re driving to a new store you can type in the store address and Google will print out a map of how to get there, along with detailed instructions. It’s more convenient than a traditional printed map because if you don’t know the address you can type in the store name and Google will tell you the address and show you pictures of the view from the street so you’ll be able to recognize it when you’re driving there.” Grandpa would probably have a better idea of what Google does.
So the activity would be to take a company mission statement (abstract) and come up with several examples of specific things that the company did that you could use to describe the company to your grandparents if they’d never heard of it before. The reason to start with the mission statement would be so that participants would be able to mentally contrast abstract statements (that wouldn’t help Grandma understand) with specific examples (that would help) and so hopefully learn to avoid making the abstract statements themselves. (For those participants who are Grandparents, they can use companies and products that no longer exist that younger people don’t understand and pretend they’re explaining it to their grand kids )