How to take meeting minutes notes to make a meeting effective?
14 best practices on how to take meeting minutes and a template — all from 10+ years of having meetings in the corporate world.
If you liked this article there are many more in my Productivity Blog:
https://www.productivateme.com/
It happens to us all…
You sit in a meeting, make some decisions and leave the next action steps for people, and the meeting went well.
A couple of weeks go by and you ask your colleague:
“Hey why did you do X?” and he replies “that’s what we said in the meeting, no?”,
Or worse,
“Did you complete what we talked about in the meeting?” and they reply “Remind me again what was I supposed to do?”
In a dynamic world where you have many balls in the air and many meetings on different topics, people are struggling to keep track of everything.
These re-do of meetings and constantly following up with people on their action steps is too much time-consuming and unproductive.
And since I am all about productivity, I decided to change the way things are done.
So I hit the online bookshelf and researched how to take meeting minutes in the most effective way.
BTW, If you want to learn more on how to make your meeting much more productive in General, check out this article.
What is the difference between meeting notes and meeting minutes?
The main difference is in the target for which the meeting notes/minutes are taken.
Meeting Notes are when you take notes only for yourself.
Meeting Minutes is when you take notes for everyone in the meeting.
If you are taking the meeting minutes for yourself -
then what you capture are the decisions that impact you, your next actions, and the key points in the meeting that were new or interesting for you.
You ignore the rest…
Why should you take meeting notes for yourself? for 3 reasons:
- It keeps you involved in the meeting and your mind doesn’t wander to other places.
- It shows that you are serious and eager to learn.
- You need to summarize the key points that lead to action on your side — “the 5 things I take from the meeting that will cause me to create tasks for them”.
If you are taking the meeting minutes to capture what went on in the meeting for everyone then you are writing all the decisions, all the action steps, and all the key points in the discussion.
This is for everyone’s benefit and alignment.
Why should you take Meeting Minutes?
First, Let’s start with the motivation for doing it.
Notes are the most crucial part of making a meeting productive:
- The meeting minutes document the decisions that were decided in the meeting and align everybody on them.
- The meeting minutes document the next action steps required from people involved in the meeting and allow for easy follow-ups.
- It allows for people who were not in the meeting, either because they couldn’t or because they didn’t need to be, to stay in touch with what was discussed in the meeting. This will reduce the need to set more meetings to synchronize people on the action steps and decisions.
- They reduce the need to re-do meetings when all is written and can be used at a later time.
What do you need to write in the meeting minutes?
It’s overwhelming to know what to write in a meeting — but let’s be clear, meeting notes are not a word-by-word transcripts of meetings.
The meeting notes need to capture:
- The agenda of the meeting.
- The decisions that were decided in the meeting.
- The Action steps people need to take next.
- Summary of the key points. This is the tricky part… What I usually do is listen to the conversation, when the topic changes or when there 2 key points that I think are worth mentioning. Then I write the bullets that I think summarize what was said.
- I only who said what if there is a disagreement between people and these lead to tasks.
How to take meeting minutes effectively?
These are the tips I gathered from 10+ years working in the corporate world:
- I prefer using digital note-taking apps. It saves paper but really the main reason is that I keep all my notes in an archive of meeting notes (regardless of if you are using OneNote, Notion, Evernote, Google docs….). It allows for a quick search function to find minutes and notes that you have taken.
- Take the time to clean the meeting notes after the meeting and send something clean and coherent. Not too long, the faster you send it — the faster people can start working on their assigned next steps. The faster you work on cleaning it — the better the minutes will be because it is all still fresh in your brain. I recommend — no more then 24 hours after the meeting.
- Always have a designated “notes taker”. The leader of the meeting is not the Notes taker. You need someone who is available to write and summarize and is not mainly involved in talking and presenting. As the leader of the meeting you should be focused on understanding what people say and think of what questions to ask, not to summarize things. Also, if you are the leader of the meeting and you constantly stop to write — the meeting will get stalled, wasting everybody’s time waiting for you.
- leave 2 min at the end of the meeting to review and make sure that everyone are aligned and agree on:
a. The required next actions.
b. The required decisions.
This impacts the work assigned for after the meeting so it’s important to re iterate it in case someone missed something and they should be working on. Also, you don’t want people to start working on the wrong things because they mis understood what was decided in the meeting. These 2 minutes of re iterating the decisions and the action steps can save you a lot of time. - Good ARs (Actions Required). Next Actions Required need to answer the 3 “W”s: Who? What? When? Each next steps need to be assigned to a person, describe exactly what the outcome of that operation should be, and finally, by when should it be completed.
- Capture the next actions required in a task manager. Right after the meeting while it’s still fresh, create the tasks in your organizational task manager and assign to the relevant people.
- Use a template for the meeting minutes. This saves a lot of time and is easier to quickly find things in a template that you are accustomed to. See below for the one that I use and recommend.
- Share meeting recordings or transcripts. In today’s digital age most online meeting tools (MS Teams, Zoom, Google Hangouts …) offer a way to record and transcribe the meeting. Ask for permission to record and share the recordings at the end — even for the sake that you have missed something and someone will challenge what you wrote in the minutes.
- Take picture of the whiteboard. In many meetings we go to draw on a whiteboard — online or physical. Don’t waste time re drawing it (you will also probably miss things). Take a picture or a screen shot and add it to the meeting notes.
- Pre-meeting notes. If you are the one who originated the meeting, write down the key points in the meeting notes before the meeting. You will come more organized to the meeting and it will save you a lot of time during and after the meeting.
- Add links to sites or documents that were needed for the meeting and attach any presentations that were presented in the meeting. Keep all the data accessible and easily reachable to everyone. If they will need to go and look for it again, they are just wasting time.
- Share the meeting minutes during the meeting If you are using an online meeting tool — share the notes application. This allows for people to be aligned on the agenda which is written in the meeting minutes and also it aligns people on the summary you are writing. Meeting participants can easily ask you to add things or change things — saving you unneeded emails after you send the notes.
- Grammar mistakes. Don’t dwell on it during the meeting but if you are sharing your screen try and keep it to a minimum so all the red lines won’t distract the audience. Use an application to check your grammar, either built in the notes application or external like “Grammarly”.
- Don’t be shy to ask people to repeat what they said or summarize what they mean if they started rambling. You can even ask — “What do you want me to write in the summary?” Don’t keep it blank and don’t ignore someone if you didn’t understand what they meant.
Meeting Minutes Template
This is the template that I use:
It contains:
- Name
- Date
- Participants
- Agenda
- Objectives
- Actions Required.
- Parking lot.
- Meeting Minutes.
Conclusion
Taking meeting minutes and meeting notes is a critical part of having effective meetings.
Having a meeting as productive as possible, and then throwing all that time into the garbage because you didn’t send the meeting minutes is a waste of time.
Having people not do their follow-up actions or not being aligned on the decision you had in the meeting because you didn’t send the meeting minutes is a waste of time.
I know it looks like an annoying action — but trust me, after 10+ years in the corporate world, when you start to do it, your meetings become much more productive.
And save you a lot of time.
If you liked this article there are many more in my Productivity Blog:
https://www.productivateme.com/
Now go get Productivated :-)
