Note Takers, Don’t Work So Hard!

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Online Learning Materials

Posted May 13th, 2011 by Sofia Helpman No Comments »

The other dayI taught the online class Meeting Notes Made Easy. No wonder most of the people had enrolled in the class: They were working way too hard.

WhenI reviewed their sample meeting notes, Ifound huge amounts of detail.The note takersexplained new procedures in detail. They described new job openings in detail. They included long lists ofcomments made during meetings. They produced5, 10, even 20 pages of notes for meetings only a few hours long!

That is too much detail for normal meeting notes.

Meeting notes should include the answers to questions 1 to 8 and sometimes 9 to 11:

Which meeting was it?
What was its purpose?
When did it take place?
Who attended? (Who did not?)
Which topics were discussed?
Which important points were made?
Which decisions were made?
Which actions were agreed upon? Who will complete them? By when?
Which topics were tabled for the future?
Which materials were distributed? Where are copies available?
Is a follow-up meeting scheduled? When? Where? For what purpose?

Notice that this question does not appear on the list:

What are all the details?

I believesome note takers in the online classwere doing the job ofother managers, supervisors, and specialists who were announcinginformation at meetings.The note takers were recordingentire announcements and new procedures in the meeting minutes rather than just mentioning them. But the notes should say only something like this:

Brooke Nelson announced a new position in Human Resources: Training & Development Coordinator.

OR

Safety Manager Ralph Howe presented a new inventory procedure for the flammable storage cabinets. The procedure is attached.

Then it is the task of Brooke Nelson and Ralph Howe toinform people in their organizations about the new position and procedure. They can useemail announcements, newsletter articles, flyers on bulletin boards, training programs, procedure manuals, web pages, Intranet posts, blog posts, and other ways. But they cant expect the meeting notes to make the announcements to everyone for them, can they?

Note takers, dont work so hard! Capture what happened at the meeting. But dont record all the details–thatis not your job.

Do you agree?

Note: The next online Meeting Notes Made Easy class takes place on September 13.Enroll before June 1, when the price will increase. Learn about other upcoming classesI will teach.

JY Teachers