Meetings can be the bane of many businesses and are not infrequently pointed to by those in attendance as a waste of time. They may have a point!
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Pulling staff away from their work activities to gather in a room for discussion around a topic can lead to lost productivity. Worse, in some cases, the time spent fails to lead to any real actions or outcomes once the meeting is over. That’s unfortunate for all involved.
While not the only factor that impacts meeting effectiveness, the practice of creating and distributing meeting minutes can have a very positive influence on whether something, and what, gets done after attendees have dispersed.
Here are some key ways that meeting minutes can add value.
Inform Those Not in Attendance
Sometimes, not everyone can attend every meeting. People may be traveling for work, be on paid time off, or have scheduling conflicts. Meeting minutes help keep everyone who wasn’t at the meeting in the loop. A key caveat here is that you should make sure people do attend if they are available. Don’t let receiving meeting minutes turn into an excuse for not attending the meeting.
Record Key Decisions
Most meetings aren’t simply for the purpose of general discussion. Chances are that your meetings will produce a wide range of decisions that impact not only those in attendance but also others in the organization. Meeting minutes can help document those decisions. That’s important for continuity, clarification, and communication.
When someone questions your course of action a few months down the road, being able to point to meeting minutes where a decision was made, or approved, is critical. Meeting minutes provide a tangible record of actions taken.
Record Action Items
Too often, meetings are held and a course of action is decided upon, but nothing actually gets done. Maybe nobody was assigned specific tasks, or maybe tasks were assigned but nobody remembers to whom.
“Minutes record meeting decisions, which makes them a useful review document when it comes time to measure progress,” says an article in AllBusiness. “They also act as an accountability tool because they make it clear whose duty it was to perform which action.”
Avoid Having the Same Meeting Several Times
The points above allude to a general theme: Meeting minutes help prevent having the same meeting over and over again. If decisions were made and tasks were assigned, that should be the end of it. Don’t have a follow-up meeting just because people forgot about what was discussed in a previous meeting. Document through minutes!
Meeting minutes should be a part of the standard process of all of your meetings. At the very start of every meeting, assign someone to take notes and send them to the group at the conclusion of the meeting. The benefits will quickly become apparent.