Mastering Meeting Minutes: Tips for Effective Note-Taking

Introduction to Effective Note-Taking

Stepping into a new role and being tasked with ensuring communication is recorded properly can be a daunting task. If done incorrectly, follow-ups are dropped, ideas are forgotten, and loose ends aren’t tied up. The guide below is meant to offer tips and advice for anyone looking to improve at taking effective notes so that you won’t find yourself in those hot-water situations. In this article we’ll discuss what meeting minutes are, why they’re important, and some tips on how to become a more effective note-taker. Every organization is a bit different in how they approach their communication and documentation style, so while an exact guide can’t be provided on how to write every meeting-minutes document, the following advice can offer steps to take in the right direction.

Understanding Meeting Minutes

Simply put, meeting notes, or 'Meeting Minutes,' are the documentation that accompanies a business meeting, capturing conversations and serving as a log for decisions and discussions. These are also sometimes referred to as “Minutes of Meeting”/”MoM”. Meetings can often be long and complicated, filled with multiple stakeholders from different areas of the organization offering conflicting opinions and requests. During a meeting, important discussions happen, decisions are made, and responsibilities are assigned. If you're reading this article, it's likely your responsibility to ensure all these factors are accurately captured.

Importance of Meeting Minutes

It’s critical that someone on the project team be explicitly assigned the task of ensuring notes are taken; both for the stakeholders partaking in the meeting, the stakeholders absent, and the stakeholders of the future. Organization and transparency within the project are two of the most tangible benefits of having good meeting minutes documented: a conversation that results in a critical decision being made that may impact the direction and future of the project now has a clean, slotted space in time for when the decision was made, and by whom it was made. This historical record can be used to pinpoint when projects progressed in specific areas, and can be reviewed in the future when gauging the impact and effectiveness of decisions. As a bonus, stakeholders who were unable to attend the meeting or were not part of the team at the time can review the notes to stay informed or get up to speed on the project at a high level.

Ensuring conversations are captured efficiently also allows for greater traceability, and therefore accountability of the team members. Often times decisions will be accompanied by delegation; ensuring that someone takes ownership of any task that the decision requires (ex: further research, informing other stakeholders of the decision, informing teams of a new direction, etc.). Effective meeting minutes will be able to document not only the conversation and decision made, but who will be accountable for any results of this decision. When shared with the attendees of the meeting afterwards, this makes it simple for stakeholders to know their role to play after the meeting, and It streamlines the process for you as the note-taker to identify any missing information or oversights after the meeting.

Some organizations officially review and sign off on their meeting minutes after every meeting, potentially using them for legal purposes in the future. For example, proving a conversation took place, the potential impacts were discussed and agreed upon, etc. In these cases it’s even more critical that the meeting minutes taken are accurate, professional, and reflect the conversation during the meeting perfectly.

Essential Components to Meeting Minutes

Each organization will have different preferences and best-practice for what is documented in meeting minutes so it’s important to familiarize yourself with your companies standards. Try to find examples of previous meeting minutes taken by your colleagues to have a better understanding of best practice, and don’t be afraid to discuss within your team what is expected and areas for improvement.

That being said, a good meeting minutes record will document:

• The date and time the meeting occurred
• The agenda that was discussed/to be discussed
• Attendees
• The conversations themselves, important discussions, and decisions made during the discussion
• A list of follow-ups, or “Action Items” to be dealt with following the meeting, often times sorted by priority and assigned for delegation

Tips and Strategies for Optimal Meeting Minutes

Establishing a Clear Agenda

Meetings can be long and often-times confusing, with multiple stakeholders present discussing complicated ideas. It can be all too easy to become side-tracked and wander down conversations that provide little or no value or seem to spin in endless circles. An easy way to avoid this fate is by preparing and adhering to a meeting agenda. Whether the meeting is a regularly scheduled event (think weekly or monthly status meetings) or is ad hoc, allot time in your schedule beforehand — perhaps a day or even more — to prepare an agenda of topics and questions to tackle. Ensure the agenda items are clear regarding the topic to discuss and who will be expected to provide input, and send this agenda out to the attendees before the meeting. This gives everyone a chance to review and prepare anything they may need. Defining the purpose of the meeting clearly and having pre-recorded agenda items will allow you to steer the conversation more effectively; if you notice during the meeting that a topic is being discussed that doesn’t serve the meetings purpose, you’re able to table discussions and refer to the agenda items to get back onto the right path.

The “Meat and Potatoes” of the Conversation - Capturing the Core Discussion

As I mentioned above in the “What is Taken?” section, it’s important to record the conversations themselves. This includes the discussions, and the critical decisions made during them. Ensuring that the “meat and potatoes” is recorded is referring to making sure you document the details that are actually important: think about if you are a stakeholder new to the project in 6 months, and want to find out why a decision was made regarding a feature’s functionality. You’re told that it was discussed on May 12th, so you find the meeting — only to discover the meeting notes contain,

“1.) Discussed the attendees weekend plans. [Person] stated they would be attending a wedding in Arizona. [Person B] had the opinion that the weather in Arizona is hot this time of year”.

While we try to follow the above advice and stick to an agenda, sometimes conversations will derail — which can’t always be avoided — but we can avoid documenting every single detail discussed over the course of an hour if they aren’t important to the meeting agenda. The term “Meeting minutes” does not mean document literally every minute. When documenting an important conversation, summarize at a high level what was discussed and by whom, any requests that were made, logic behind the requests, counter-arguments from other stakeholders, and most important: the decision that was made. All of these details are important to be able to look back on, and missing any will diminish the effectiveness of the note. Think again to the example of a meeting from May 12th — but this time, a client has asked why a feature had a functionality left out of scope, as they can remember requesting it but can’t remember why it was declined. It wouldn’t be very helpful to find a meeting note stating,

“1.) [Stakeholder] requested [functionality within feature]. After discussion it was determined this would not be included in the scope.”

All this tells us is that it was discussed, and then the idea was tabled and not included in the scope of work. This doesn’t answer your client’s question about why it was left out, and if you don’t have the meeting recorded then this can cause a situation to occur where you aren’t able to prove that due diligence or proper action was taken in regards to this request.

Documenting the “meat and potatoes’ of the discussion might look something more like,

“1.) [Stakeholder] requested [functionality within feature] as they believe it would provide [value] to their users. [Other stakeholder] explained that as this may cause [negative unintended consequence], and that this should be tabled until it can be further researched by [team]. As such this will not be added to the current scope, but documented as a future-improvement”

With this note, you now understand

1. What was requested
2. Who requested it, and why
3. Why the request didn’t result in it being included in the scope going forwards and
4. Any follow-ups from the discussion and who you can talk to for more information

Which overall leads to a much more effective meeting note for anyone reviewing these notes in the future, and more accurately captures the conversation as a whole.

Facilitating Accountability and Staying Organized

In the above example of an effective meeting note, a discussion was tabled until the correct party could research the issue further and document their findings. This is what some organizations refer to as an “Action Item”; an actionable piece of work that someone, or a group of people, should undertake following the meeting.

The first step to staying organized with these actionable work items is ensuring that they contain all of the information needed to properly follow up on them. When documenting an action item, make sure that the task required, the priority, the timeline, and by whom the task is to be completed is all documented.

As the master of the meeting minutes, it won’t be your job to undertake every action item, but it will be your responsibility to ensure everyone knows what's expected of them after the meeting. A good way to accomplish this is by following your companies organizational standard, or if one doesn’t exist, creating one. Some meeting minute documents might have a summary section at the bottom of the document where you can group the action items, which may look something like:

“Action Items:

• Priority: High - [Person] to inform [team] of [decision] by next business day
• Priority: Medium - [Team] to implement [design change] - to be completed before next review meeting”

Being detail oriented in documenting action items and ensuring that all the pieces to a traceable work item are present alongside having a system of organization that is consistent within your company or projects meeting minutes documents is key to your continued success as an effective note-taker.

Tailoring Writing Style

Every organization differs in its approach to communication and documentation style, so your meeting notes should reflect these differences. If you’re new to the company or project, take some time to read through existing meeting minutes, or ask your colleagues for some examples of good meeting minutes taken at the company, and familiarize yourself with the organization system, style, and tone of the notes.

Some companies may prefer an informal and easy to read style that captures the conversations using casual language. A different company may require that meeting notes be kept strictly professional in their tone and language, and will have their clients sent an official record to review and sign after meetings before being kept with their legal department. In either case, identifying how meeting minutes are written within your specific company is critical so that you follow suit.

Leveraging Recording Tools: Record, Re-listen, and Re-write

One of the most important tools you have in your arsenal taking notes is the little red “Record” button that most, if not all meeting software include in their out of the box features.

DO NOT just begin recording a meeting with multiple stakeholders without first receiving everyone’s consent, or at the very least informing your attendees that you’ll be recording the meeting. Explicitly state that you would like to record the meeting to have a video to refer back to, and give stakeholders a chance to voice their concerns or make necessary adjustments: for example, some of your attendees may be uncomfortable having their camera on for recordings and would want to turn theirs off prior to you beginning the recording. Recording without informing your meeting attendees in some cases may be a breach of privacy; either the recording software policy, company policy or personal policy!

After you’ve informed your meeting attendees that you’ll be recording the session, continue as normal; document conversations, ask questions, and gather action items. At some point in the meeting it’s more than likely something will happen to distract you, especially if the meeting is over a long timeframe. Maybe a question is asked that you didn’t quite understand, or an object was dropped and made you lose focus while taking a note. In this case, don’t be afraid to ask for more clarity or to double back and cover an answer again — but, if the conversation has continued forward and you feel like a topic has been left in the dust, use your recording to it’s fullest extent. During the meeting you can take a temporary note in your meeting minutes,

“1.) [Stakeholder] requested [feature improvement]. (Return to this in recording for conclusion, timestamp 14:57/3:32PM)”

Some software will allow you to view how long the recording has been running for so you can include a time stamp, but if this not a feature offered in your meeting software, you can alternatively stamp the actual clock-time it occurred.

Review the meeting again, re-listen to the sections that were missed or left without clarity, and ensure you document the conclusion and any follow-ups accurately. Guesswork often leads to rework, and you don’t want to find yourself on the hook in a couple of months time for the team committing time and resources to a mistake that stemmed solely from a misremembrance and misunderstanding of the discussion during the meeting.

Bonus: Maximizing the Human Element

With the rise of AI note-taking software, the concept of delegating the entire process of note-taking to machines has become increasingly tempting for companies; you avoid the overhead cost of having someone spend time attending, recording, relistening to and documenting a meeting. In some cases, the software will even have new and innovative features such as “Meeting Summarization”, “Conversation Emotion Detection” that can identify when a stakeholder is angry, or “Keyword detection” to easily pinpoint when topics are discussed within a meeting.

However, in completely replacing a human being with note-taking software, you lose the “human touch” — a real human being capable of critical thought, curiosity, or intuition. Having someone in charge of the meeting-minutes process ensures that questions are asked, topics are re-reviewed and mistakes are personally looked into and rectified, follow-ups are chased down, and action items are provided to attendees. AI note-taking software often times does not include any of this in their out of the box feature list. While AI note-taking software is an extraordinary tool that can be leveraged by organizations to increase their meeting minute effectiveness, care should be taken so that the product doesn’t outright replace the person in charge of taking notes, as taking effective meeting minutes involves more than just transcribing spoken words.

Final Thoughts on Mastering Meeting Minutes

Being tasked with taking effective and accurate meeting notes for a large project or a new role doesn’t have to be intimidating. Approaching each meeting with a clear understanding of what needs to be discussed and having the above tips in your toolbelt will make the process smooth and painless, and after you’ve taken enough meeting minutes, it’ll become second nature. You’ll find that putting the effort into crafting the perfect meeting minutes will save you from potential headache that would be caused by inefficient, but easier to document notes. Empower yourself with the knowledge and skills to excel in the art of note-taking, making each meeting a seamless and productive experience, and until you’ve mastered it, refer back to this article and continue implementing each step and improving incrementally. Thanks for reading!

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