Meeting minutes

There are lots to be said about meetings and how to make them more effective and efficient, and throughout this Blog I’ll give my tips on this topic.

Here’s a way to save time on the minutes of the meeting (MoM)

You may work in an organization where there are formal demands to how the MoM should look like. Even so, the following may be useful:

Always – I mean ALWAYS – ask what the purpose of the meeting is. Yes, I know you have an agenda and you have spent time deciding what is the absolute shortest list of people who have to attend and sent out the agenda in advance all that good stuff, and still: ALWAYS ask what the purpose of the meeting is. What is it that you want to achieve and what is going to BE DONE after the meeting?

At the end of the meeting you should have a list of TO DO’s. This is the left column of your RACI diagram.

Who is Accountable for this task or decision? By when is it going to be finished / implemented / done?

This should be the outcome of your meeting. A simple task list that will update your ongoing RACI.

Add: “The purpose of this meeting was:…” as a heading, and your assessment of whether this was achieved at the end of the page. Voilá, there is your MoM done.