Have you read the last meeting’s minutes?
Fortunately, this question is often omitted at the start of a meeting!
Judging by my experience and what I’ve seen, I think that hardly any minutes of the previous meeting are read by participants. If they existed at all!
Time-wasting, frustrating and irresponsible!!
Time-wasting when you think of the amount of time spent in a meeting to share views, take decisions and get everyone’s commitment to take action.
Frustrating for the person who invested their time in writing minutes.
Collectively irresponsible when the actions agreed aren’t even checked.
Recently, I was talking about meeting minutes with a local government official, who said:
"Here, we don’t write meeting minutes any more. It takes too long. They always arrived late. And nobody read them. "
Oh right... Meetings without minutes... Is that the best use of my taxpayer’s money? I thought.
Meeting minutes are a key feature of any meeting, to enhance any organisation’s efficiency:
- They provide participants with a clear list of tasks to work on after the meeting.
- They are useful for people who couldn’t attend who need some idea of what was discussed and decided.
- For everyone in general, they provide better awareness of effort and progress.
Ristretto or Lungo?
The best format in most cases is "a list of decisions under headings ‘What Who When’. This confirms the key features of a meeting and facilitates action being taken.
The ideal approach is to distribute a "ristretto" summary of decisions the same day, which says to participants ‘OK guys, get going!’
Better than a "lungo" set of minutes, distributed later on, which simply says to people who weren’t there, ‘Look how hard we worked!’
I won’t digress on to meeting minutes sent out the night before the next meeting, which just say, ‘Well at least no-one can say I don’t carry out the actions I’m given, so the boss can get off my back now.’
Choose your best option!
The best is the enemy of the good: A short list of decisions sent out latest the day after the meeting is more useful than exhaustive meeting minutes available the night before the next meeting.
Sending out minutes is one thing ... reading them is quite another.
Minutes of a meeting are made to be read...
- as soon as they are received, for the pleasure of seeing the outcome of collaborative work, for suggesting amendments if needed, for making the meeting ‘live’ – and most of all, for getting down to work.
- just before the next meeting, to check you are up to date with actions given and get ready to contribute actively.
- at the start of every meeting, to check that everyone has carried out their actions.
- in any event, re-reading meeting minutes is a duty we share, out of respect for the work of the person who wrote them.
You have another meeting coming up...
Have you read the previous minutes?
If you’d like to see other articles on this, take a look here:
The unbearable mediocrity of remote meetings
Has Jeff BEZOS got it right about meetings?
Learn to keep your eyes peeled in meetings.