Do you take too many notes during meetings and find them difficult to action
afterwards? Or maybe you forget to take notes and miss important points? Try
these four tips on how to write meeting minutes.
Use shorthand
Make your meeting minutes as simple
as possible so you can spend more time listening and engaging in the meeting.
Use symbols and abbreviations to save yourself time. Using initials to
represent people will save you from writing their names over and over. You
could also try different coloured pens to categorize speakers or topics.
Being prepared before your meeting
begins will help you to make quicker notes as well. If you are running the
meeting, create an agenda so you can see which topics need to be addressed. If
you are a participant, ask for a copy of the agenda in advance. This lets you
get a head-start on your notes and know what to expect during the meeting.
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Use a meeting minute’s
template
Using a template
is another handy way to save time. You can use an online meeting tool to set up a web-based template
or create a basic form and print hard copies ahead of time.
Ensure that your template includes
all the basic information: the date and time of your meeting, names of
attendees and the reason for the meeting. Add notes as you go including the
topics discussed, decisions made, questions answered and any important points
you may need to reference later.
Any questions or tasks that need to
be followed-up on should be included as well. Take some time to mark these
clearly before leaving the room, so you can quickly delegate or action them
afterwards.
Use visual notes
Visual notes are easy to follow and
understand, and can be quicker to take. Using white space, colours, borders,
arrows and symbols, you can create a visual map of your meeting. This method
highlights only the most important points, avoiding long lists of useless text.
It also happens to be a lot more fun.
Mike Rohde’s sketch notes blog is a great place to see
examples of visual note taking methods. He also has some helpful pictures on Flickr that explain the
basics of his process and how to get started.
Follow-up
Quick follow-up will make your
meeting minutes more useful. Review your notes before leaving the room to
highlight everything you need to action: calls to make, emails to send,
appointments or deadlines to add to your calendar and tasks to complete.
If you are responsible for sending
copies to other team members, ensure this is done as soon as possible, while
the meeting is still fresh in their minds. Make any tasks, questions and
deadlines clear for others to see and include only relevant information.
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*It helps
you create an agenda, it even adds tasks from the previous meeting(s)to the
agenda
*During the meeting you write short bullets and save them as a note, decision or task
*To structure your meeting you can load a standard template or create your own
*In the minutes you Notes, Decisions and Tasks have different colors
*At the end of the meeting you can email the minutes with one click
*Tasks are automatically emailed to the owner
*Personal task list will remind you of what you need to do and what others need to do.
*During the meeting you write short bullets and save them as a note, decision or task
*To structure your meeting you can load a standard template or create your own
*In the minutes you Notes, Decisions and Tasks have different colors
*At the end of the meeting you can email the minutes with one click
*Tasks are automatically emailed to the owner
*Personal task list will remind you of what you need to do and what others need to do.
*What do you find to makes your meeting
minutes more useful?
Leave us a comment with your tips below.
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