Best I have read on meetings including meeting notes is from Steven Sinofsky - goes into different types of meeting, meeting dysfunctions and finally peak meeting function https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/reaching-peak-meeting-...
How to take meeting notes
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Re: How to take meeting notes
#32Me during a meeting: I don't need to write this down, I'll remember it. Me after meeting: Arg! I wish I had written that down! Me during meeting: I'm going to write this down even if it doesn't seem important. Me after meeting: Why do I have notes on only meaningless stuff!?! Clearly I have some work to do, but the advice to listen and then write notes after is good, but I would suggest doing so towards the end with…
I've taken to just writing simple notes in OneNote during meetings. I've found, especially, when I've told people something.. it's really helpful for me to know that I've told them.
I can also say that.. done properly, when people know that you have strong notes for meetings, they tend to take their take-aways more.
Even in Zooms, sometimes I'll share my notes at the end of a meeting, and I'll copy-and-paste them into an email out to them.. Action items get taken more seriously.
I don't take really verbose notes -- just enough that cover: X said something, Y asked something, I requested something, we reviewed something.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#33A note to the author: the phrase "first tense" should be "first person".
Overall, this seems to be a very laborious process for something not that useful. I'm glad you and the people you've given notes to seem to enjoy it though.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roberts Rules indicates that the secretary (the one who records the meeting) is one of the most important roles. To the point: according to Roberts Rules, the #1 most important item in all meetings is finalizing the meeting notes from the previous meeting (ie: Everyone agrees that the stated meeting notes are correct). Every meeting, according to Roberts Rules, starts with an understanding that everyone at the new me…
Which is exactly why you send the notes by end-of-day. People get the chance to object ASAP, and are otherwise bound to the record going forward.
Roberts Rules recognizes that if there's a conflict in two stakeholder's view of the notes, the only resolution is to call a new meeting.
(Ex: Person A thought that 3-weeks was the agreed upon delivery date. Person B thought that "3 weeks after next Tuesday" was the agreed upon delivery date.)
Who is correct? Person A or Person B? Maybe PersonC or PersonD have insight into the issue. Regardless: the solution is to call a new meeting to clarify and finalize this "meta-issue".
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Since you're calling a meeting "anyway" to finalize the record, the time to finalize the notes and resolve any conflicts is during the "next meeting", whenever that is.
Bringing up those conflicts as soon as possible is important (and should be in email-form under the modern business). But determining the solution to these conflicts is the very decision-making framework that meetings are designed for.
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If the current record is on Person A's side "Three Weeks delivery date". Then the imperious is on Person B to bring up the misunderstanding no later than "the next meeting", wherein it is assumed that the previous record is finalized.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter "what was said" at the previous meeting. All that matters moving forward is the record of what was said.
> People get the chance to object ASAP, and are otherwise bound to the record going forward.
Agreed: the sooner objections are raised, the better. Though it is important to note when the record is finalized officially. "The next meeting" is the most logical time to finalize the record.
EDIT: I should note that I've upvoted you. I feel like you and I are on the same page, I'm just elaborating a bit.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#35Always take notes during a meeting.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#36[deleted]
Re: How to take meeting notes
#37A long time ago, my boss at the time taught me a valuable lesson: every meeting needs an official record(/log/minutes/whatever) documenting all noteworthy decisions (D), tasks (T, with deadline and responsible person), and information communicated (I), with that record being sent to all participants by end-of-day. The reasoning being simple: If anything of consequence was discussed in the meeting, then the official r…
Something I'm a big fan of for wfh meetings is inline comments in quip.
1. Everyone read and leave comments on a doc
2. Overall comments
3. Go through each comment/discussion in the doc, put a final comment on each with the discussion results
Re: How to take meeting notes
#38Why bother? You're filling your brain with junk when you do that. Most formal meetings are totally worthless.
Re: How to take meeting notes
#39A long time ago, my boss at the time taught me a valuable lesson: every meeting needs an official record(/log/minutes/whatever) documenting all noteworthy decisions (D), tasks (T, with deadline and responsible person), and information communicated (I), with that record being sent to all participants by end-of-day. The reasoning being simple: If anything of consequence was discussed in the meeting, then the official r…
I once worked somewhere that had an employee who took notes during every meeting, to what seemed like an annoying level. After every meeting, he emailed everyone who attended the meeting a copy of his notes.
A couple jobs later, we were discussing changing where some images were hosted. It seemed very strange to have them in their current location, and the process that copied new images to that location was clunky.
My manager at the time said, "Well, that's what we decided what the best way to do it was."
I responded with, "Well, what were the reasons for doing it that way, and what were the other options considered?"
He said, "I don't remember."
At this point, I mentioned it might be a good idea to keep notes of any meeting we have, as it would be useful to go back and have a record of that.
His answer was, "I don't think it's a good use of someone's time to record meeting notes."
This was a meeting that involved about 12 people, 9 of which had no real say in the matter (field techs, etc).
Re: How to take meeting notes
#40I have experienced so many meetings where nobody took notes, and the next day hardly anyone was able to say exactly what was discussed, that I don't think this is reasonable. In my opinion, meetings are not effective in most cases anyway, because people hardly ever prepare themselves. If people don't even write anything down, time is completely wasted.
Since I am a consultant and do not want to waste my clients' time, I take notes in real time. Meanwhile, this works so well that I can look at people and discuss things at the same time. After many years of experiments, I wrote a software myself (https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline) that supports taking comprehensive notes in real time.
I was in the management of defence projects for many years and finally not only co-chaired the meetings, but also recorded the meetings using my tool and gave minutes to the people (regularly up to thirty participants). In many meetings I projected the screen of my tool so that the participants could read and make corrections immediately.