Single choice · #495
At Wednesday's review meeting, product manager Zhou reported: 'I suggest postponing the new product launch to September. First, factory capacity won't ramp up until August; second, competitors already launched similar features last month, so rushing to market has limited value; third, the new office will be completed in October, and our team will be more efficient then.' Which of the following evaluations is most accurate?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: B
- AViolates 'conclusion first': stating the suggestion at the start feels abrupt; one should first build background and then give the conclusion.✗ Wrong. Zhou states the suggestion in the first sentence, so 'conclusion first' is satisfied; this option misinterprets 'stating the conclusion first' as 'it feels abrupt and you should first tell a story as a lead-in,' which is a typical misunderstanding of the principle.
- BViolates 'the top governs the bottom': the office information cannot be subsumed under 'postponing the launch', and the whole item should be removed.✓ Correct. The principle 'the top governs the bottom' requires that the top-level conclusion can encompass all lower-level content; the capacity and competitor reasons both support postponing, while the office renovation is irrelevant, making it unrelated information inserted under the conclusion, exactly the typical error from the lecture notes.
- CViolates 'grouping by categories': just regroup the three reasons into internal and external factors.✗ Wrong. Grouping by categories addresses how to classify same-level information; here the issue is that one piece of information is unrelated to the conclusion. No matter which group it goes into, the renovation info won't become a reason for postponing; the idea that 'just regrouping' fixes it misidentifies the root cause.
- DViolates 'logical ordering': the three reasons are not sequenced reasonably by time or importance.✗ Wrong. Logical ordering only governs the sequence within the group; the problem is that the content should not be there at all, not that the order is wrong. Treating a content error as an ordering error means even a perfect order would not help.
Explanation:The principle 'the top governs the bottom' requires that the top-level conclusion can encompass all lower-level content. Among the three reasons, the capacity ramp-up and the competitor's earlier launch both support postponing the launch, but the office renovation is unrelated to whether to postpone, being neither a reason for nor against it, and is thus irrelevant information inserted under the conclusion—exactly the typical error from the lecture notes of 'recommending to postpone a launch but adding office renovation.' 'Conclusion first' is already satisfied since Zhou gives the suggestion from the start; regrouping or reordering cannot change the fact that this information is unrelated to the conclusion, and the fix is to remove it entirely.