Fail To Keep Meeting Records At Your Peril!

As a member of a community organisation, I became used to meetings having agendas to be followed and minutes of meetings as a record of decisions that had been made. At first this seemed overly bureaucratic and time-consuming, but I soon came to learn it was far from either of these things and, in fact, was important for keeping us all on-track.

The minutes of those meetings, as a formal record, proved invaluable for communicating decisions amongst the wider group.

Generally, it is less common for decisions to be formally recorded the further you go down through an organisation’s structure. I have even seen instances where an executive team didn’t keep records of meetings or decisions, instead relying on each attending member’s memory to guide them after the meeting had ended.

In many cases, this created confusion, misalignment, and, at worst, counter-productive activities, particularly where one or more executives may not have agreed with a decision or course of action and so simply didn’t act.

None of this is likely to enable long-term business sustainability, profitability and relevance.

Excerpted from Chapter 9 of my book "Profitable Decision Making".

Simon Higgins is The Trusted Authority On Profitable Decision Making For Business Leaders. His company, Gently Consulting, works with clients to make work-life better by achieving interconnecting solutions through strategy and governance. Click here to learn more about fostering effective communication in your organisation!