Meeting minutes made simple

Meetings are a daily part of life.  Too many are not worthy of the participants investment. 

There are many factors that go into an effective, valuable meeting.  But for this post, I want to focus on what happens after the meeting.  Because it’s the follow up that creates value and once everyone leaves the event, they are all thinking about their next problem.

5 rules for effective meeting minutes. 

1.      Send minutes the same day.

2.     Put actions and decisions near the top.

3.     Schedule follow up asap.

4.     Keep minutes short.

5.    Use a clear title or subject line.

1.        Send minutes the same day.  The longer you wait the less likely your participants will read and act and, as someone once told me, “people often walk out of meetings with different understanding of what was agreed”. Use email, or as I do more and more, in a shared document space, that captures the historical narrative of the project/ program. 

2.       Put the actions and decisions near the top.  Make sure that anyone spending less than 10 seconds on your message can see the actions & decisions.  The reason should be obvious!

3.       Schedule follow up asap.  This helps drive accountability. When you schedule that event make sure the follow up has clear expectations defined in the invite e.g., Follow up on actions from meeting Z.....;  Go/no decision on Project X phase 3.

4.       Keep minutes short.  The value is in the synthesis of discussion. Focus on key outcomes, decisions, insights and actions.  A short summary is more valuable than a blow-by-blow account, meeting transcript or recording.  Personally, I set the expectation that I will not watch recordings, it’s your job as the meeting owner to synthesise – and I will do the same for you, because I value your time.

5.      Use a clear title or subject line.  Add a clear reference and a date. Use internal/ external to reduce the risk of accidental outside disclosure (some only write this for external),

EXAMPLE:

Title/ Subject line:  Internal:  Minutes of Project meeting X, Date Y

Attendees:  A,B,C. 

Next Steps/ Actions

a.       A to do X by Z date

b.       B to do Y by X date.

c.       Reconvene on such-and-such date. Scheduled

Decisions:  Option C was selected by the team.

Reference Documents: Link to presentation

Context:  We discussed 3 options to advance the project.  Trade-offs were captured in the presentation before and during the meeting.  The biggest driver for selecting A was acceleration of program timeline, and the risk was deemed higher than B or C, but still acceptable.