
A Starter's Guide to Writing Effective Meeting Notes - Meetnotes
https://meetnotes.co/writing-effective-meeting-notes/
======
peterlk
I'm not really sure why this is on the front page of HN, but I'll add my
thoughts because it is.

> To make your meetings successful, follow up on action items

This is it. Back when I was doing consulting, the only thing that mattered
when I came out of the meeting was action items. Often, even if the agenda is
X, something unexpected will have happened (often the reason why the meeting
was called), and you'll actually spend the bulk of the time talking about Y.
You should still have an agenda, but I found that clients appreciated most
when I drilled at the action items. This also makes it really easy to wrap up
meetings. When you get toward the end, you say something like: "We're starting
to get short on time, here are the action items that I have from this meeting;
x, y, z. Did I miss anything?"

Talking about stuff is pointless unless it leads to some action.

~~~
jtraffic
> Talking about stuff is pointless unless it leads to some action.

True, but why do people do it so much? I think it's because meetings are
indulgent in several ways: usually you aren't working hard in a meeting, you
interact with people you (usually) like, and the organizer gets to feel busy
and command attention.

I used to work as an auditor (no idea why they let me) and I feel like we had
way more meetings than necessary, and I sort of feel like it was because
people were lonely. I could be totally wrong, but I remember concluding that
after two years of frequent, pointless meetings.

That's why I like standing up during a meeting (when reasonable), because it
mitigates forces that lead toward pointlessness.

~~~
steverb
Not all meetings are for deciding on action items. Sometimes you have to meet
so that everyone is exposed to the same information at the same time.
Sometimes, you meet to decide action items, even if everyone already knows
what the action items are, so that people know that their input was factored
into the action item.

And yes, sometimes you have meetings so you can waste time/spread the
blame/look busy.

~~~
discreditable
> so that everyone is exposed to the same information at the same time

Which is usually my least favorite meeting—the one that should have been an
email.

~~~
ams6110
In my experience people don't read bulk email. At least not closely. They
might not pay attention in a meeting either, but it's more likely especially
if you discourage use of electronic devices.

------
pitt1980
In Richard Branson's book he makes a big deal about keeping detailed notes of
meetings, and how useful he's found the practice to be over his career

its really probably a very underrated habit, especially as a new, low on the
totem pole person

it probably makes you a very useful gatekeeper of the information flow

the process of doing it probably reinforces the information flow into your
brain for useful future brainstorming (it forces you to pay attention)

also it gives you the basis for which you can influence future decisions "On
(so and so date), according to my notes we said we wanted to do X, so now we
should do Y"

\-----------

a suggestion,

run how people's ideas are presented in your notes to them directly, before
you distributed them to the wider audience

"I'm trying to get the meeting notes together, this is how I have what you
said about Y, do you mind looking at to make sure it accurately captures what
you were saying?"

"That's not what I said" or, more likely, "That's not what I meant" is a good
way to create dysfunction where none needs to exist

~~~
gregmac
I am a big fan of meeting notes in a wiki, (nearly) immediately published for
everyone to see.

"That's not what I said/meant": okay great, go edit the page and clarify.

~~~
walshemj
NO edit wars for meeting minutes are a BAD thing any errors or omissions
should be addressd in the next meeting

~~~
ams6110
Yes, only the secretary (or official minute-taker) should be allowed to change
the text of the minutes, and once "approved" the minutes should be read-only.

Corrections can be submitted to the secretary by email in advance as a
convenience.

------
Harkins
And, as an excellent Twitter thread recently noted: take notes at the front of
the room.

[https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424)

This is not solely valuable for avoiding stereotype traps, it's a useful
career tip for anybody.

~~~
quirkot
It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it [music note emoji]

------
dctoedt
Lawyers often seek to get copies of minutes of relevant meetings, phone calls,
etc., for use in litigation. A few years ago I posted some note-taking tips
that _your_ lawyer will love you for: [http://www.oncontracts.com/note-taking-
in-meetings-and-phone...](http://www.oncontracts.com/note-taking-in-meetings-
and-phone-calls-three-easy-habits-your-lawyer-will-love/) (self-cite,
obviously).

------
dbg31415
My system for notes is very simple, and similar to what was outlined in this
article.

Before the meeting:

Other than daily stand-ups, no meeting invite goes out without an agenda. We
have a policy that anyone can freely decline a meeting without an agenda. (If
I'm really in a rush, I'll limit the agenda to just a one-sentence purpose
statement about why we are having the meeting.)

Meeting notes look like this:

# Meeting Date

Wednesday March 29th, 2017 @ 10 AM

# Attending

* Dave Dawson (Dave.Dawson@company.com)

* Sally Smith (Sally@Smith@company.com)

* Joe Jackson (Joe.Jackson@company.com)

# Invited

* Bob Billings (Bob.Billings@company.com)

# Meeting Notes

* (Copy and paste agenda here, then make minor edits over the course of the meeting to track updates / changes, and any action items people take on. I like bullets for readability.)

After the meeting:

I write a quick summary of the meeting notes and any action items, "Joe,
Sally, and Dave spoke about XYZ. Joe will take care of a few additional action
items, after speaking with Bob and The Client, and we will all regroup in a
week. Bob was out sick and couldn't attend." This goes at the top so anyone
with a short attention span can skim it.

Then I email everyone who was on the Attending / Invited list (or anyone
mentioned in the meeting) with all the notes, and / or post it to the public
meeting note storage location in Asana / Confluence / Whatever. Finally I
create any followup meetings as needed. (If I'm feeling exceptionally anal,
I'll create or update GitHub / Asana / Whatever tickets with the pertinent
action items.)

------
wwalser
Since this is content marketing for meetnotes.co (which looks like a pretty
cool service) I feel like it's reasonable to give some constructive criticism
to the team behind the product.

Remove "Beta" from your marketing site. Please.

People, especially early adopters, know that software is made by people. If
something goes wrong or doesn't work, people are willing to forgive other
people. The beta label can only hurt you at this point.

Great work getting to the front page of Hacker News :)

~~~
ams6110
Looks nicely done, what little I can see without divulging my entire Google
calendar to the service.

But I'm honestly having trouble seeing what this does that isn't just as
easily handled by Google Docs, Word, or any other editor.

~~~
anshum4n
I am not sure if you got to try adding an action item. You can just type
"@ams6110 Need to do something" and meetnotes records it as an action item
which would then be tracked and followed up, the key being follow-up and
status tracking.

The idea there is that while taking notes I don't want to look at the screen
and click a button to add an action item, set its assignee and due date etc. I
would rather participate more in the meeting and just keep typing (touch
typist should get me), with the tool being smart enough to parse it as an
action item. Its not as smart as it should be, but thats where we want to be.

Another small but neat feature is interactive widgets. I am not sure if you
saw the how you can run an instant rating with all the participating. Its just
one widget right now, but we are planning to add many more like poll, survey,
mini-workflows, scrum templates etc.

Let me know if that did / didn't make sense. Happy to hear feedback!

PS: Before this, I myself was a heavy user for Google Docs for taking notes.

------
davidgerard
Taking the meeting minutes is one of those startlingly effective hacks to
steer a project you've been landed with, without taking the blame for others'
failures.

Always volunteer to take minutes, email them to all afterwards, keep them
_short_ \- "under one page" was the rule in the paper days, these days I'd say
"one desktop screen or two laptop screens". Shorter is better.

You control perception and you control ensuing actions. You (literally) write
the narrative.

(Requirement: you at least need to know what your desired outcome is.)

Holy crap, it's like having cracked a secret code. Nobody in a corporation
knows what the hell they're doing; look like someone knows even slightly and
stuff actually gets done.

(Also: if you're not the white male in the room, it can seem to slot you in as
lower status. But it's still a fabulously effective way to get everything done
to your ideas. Jessica Price, who knows her stuff, recommends taking them
standing at the front of the room, not off to one side:
[https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424](https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424)
YMMV, try stuff.)

------
cliffbuxton
Good advice, particularly the point about not capturing conversations word for
word. Much better to get the gist correct than strive to get everything
exactly (and inevitably end up missing things).

I also like the "How Might We..." post-it strategy (outlined in
[http://www.thesprintbook.com/](http://www.thesprintbook.com/)). That turns
each point into an actionable question with a positive-spin.

------
6stringmerc
Taking notes is also a form of Influence Capital. Having proof of what people
said, when they said it, is extremely important for people like me with "100%
Accountability, 0 Authority" roles. Being the only person taking notes is the
ultimate CYA outside of an audio recording (not that any of this matters in
the chain of command, but at least it feels good to be right at the end of the
day).

------
dctoedt
This just showed up in my Pocket "trending" list: _Become a Better Listener by
Taking Notes_ , by a "global CEO coach," in the Harvard Business Review [0]
(requires signing up for a free account, apparently).

EXCERPT: "Through my work with executive teams, I’ve developed a simple
technique that can help anyone listen more effectively in meetings. I call it
Margin Notes. You may already take notes during meetings, but unless you’re
using them wisely to understand others and plan your response, you may still
fall into the same trap of speaking before you think. Margin Notes allows you
to think, process information, make connections between points of discussion,
and ask effective questions instead of blurting out the first thing that comes
to mind."

[0] [https://hbr.org/2017/03/become-a-better-listener-by-
taking-n...](https://hbr.org/2017/03/become-a-better-listener-by-taking-notes)

------
ycitm
One of my new years resolutions was to learn to type faster. To get some
practice I started taking notes in all the meetings I attend. This wasn't
common practice in my team before, but I've found it to be really useful. I've
lost track of the number of times someone's said "didn't we talk about this in
that meeting a couple of weeks back" and I've been able to point them at my
notes.

I've found a really simple way of authoring and sharing notes is to write them
in Org mode and then push them to a wiki on github. Github understands how to
render Org markup nicely, so you get a nicely formatted wiki pretty much for
free.

As an added benefit I can now touch type :)

------
Macsenour
I use the phrase "Moving the ball forward" and I apply it to all meetings.
Even if there is an agenda, I ask this question. If this is a status meeting I
often don't go. Before the meeting ends I ask: "How did we move the ball
forward in this meeting?" And if the answer is we didn't, we stay seated.

------
mathattack
This is great. If Meeting notes get written, the chance of follow-up it
40-50%. If not, it trends to 0. Meeting notes are the only good weapon against
our failing memories, and decisions that get changed without everyone being
present.

I use Evernote, and carry my laptop everywhere because otherwise it doesn't
happen.

