Whether it’s formal board meetings, an HR interview or a brainstorm data dump, meeting minutes or notes of a meeting are invaluable.  As they provide a record of what was discussed and agreed.  If you are either chairing or attending the meeting as a participant, then taking notes can be really difficult. You want to be able to contribute to the meeting, but you also need to be jotting down what has been said.  It’s extremely easy therefore, to misinterpret something or simply forget to write it down.

Taking minutes is a skill.  This is because you need to be able to summarise the key points of the discussion and disregard those points that are just ‘chit chat’ or irrelevant.  Minutes need to accurately reflect what was discussed and agreed during a meeting. They need to be written clearly, so that you understand what was discussed, regardless of whether you attended the meeting or not.

Recording a list of action points may work for some meetings.  But how many times have you been in a meeting where the actions have been reviewed and nobody can remember what the action was about?!  If you don’t provide any context for the action, then in a few weeks/months it’s meaningless. 

Using my minutes and note taking service, you don’t need to worry about playing an active role in your meetings.  Simply record your meeting and send me the file and let me produce your minutes or notes for you.