Meeting minutes, also known as minutes of meeting (MoM) or meeting notes are written records of a meeting. Meeting minutes summarize the meeting to the reader by outlining an overview of the discussion and highlighting key decisions, action items and next steps. Meeting minutes can be a powerful mechanism to keep stakeholders aligned and drive accountability within the team.
In this article, we share three quick tips to help you organize your meeting notes such that they are effective and useful.
1. Put your notes in calendar or a collaborative doc
It’s time to ditch the email to share and store your meeting notes. Sharing notes in email instantly shortens their lifespan since emails go stale within a few days. This also makes it difficult to reference notes at a future date. Meeting minutes should be organized such that they are easily referenceable and can be accessed before the next occurrence of the meeting for recap. Hence, it is a good idea to share and organize your meeting notes in a collaborative application that your team uses. Another great way to capture, organize and share your meeting notes is via Loopin. Through Loopin, meeting notes stay on your calendar right next to your meeting and are surfaced automatically before the next instance.
2. Recap before ending the meeting
Effective meeting minutes are critical for the success of the meeting. Hence, always pause the discussion with any clarifying questions or doubts. Often, a meeting is as good as the notes captured during the meeting. If you are meeting owner, reserve a couple of minutes at the end of the meeting or before switching topics to summarize the discussion. When summarizing, highlight key decisions, action items & next steps along with owners. This will help you gather early feedback from the group and discuss any misalignment that gets highlighted as a result. This also ensure that there is less churn after sending out the meeting notes.
3. Assign notetaker and rotate note-taking responsibility
Every meeting should have an individual responsible to share meeting notes after the meeting. Not only does this help drive ownership for the “official” note taker, but this also eases other attendees, including meeting owner, to not multitask and focus on having an effective discussion. Moreover, if it is a recurring meeting, rotate note-taking responsibility every instance. This gives everyone the opportunity to participate in the discussion and present their opinion.
