Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

People attend meetings. People make decisions in meetings. Two days later, people rarely agree on what they agreed on in the meeting. This doesn’t have to be the norm.

I lived through one agonizing week a few years ago because notes were taken in a meeting, but they were not done visibly and were not distributed quickly.

I was in California visiting a contractor on a large and troubled project. While on the trip, the people in my office held a meeting of senior managers to decide on one aspect of the project.

When I returned to my office, I needed to learn of the decision made in the meeting. I quickly asked a person who had attended the meeting. She told me all about the meeting, what was discussed, what was decided, and what I was assigned to do. I was a little surprised by the decision, so I talked about it with another person who had been in the meeting. The second person told me a completely different story. Confused, I now went to a third person to hear the tie-breaking story. I heard a third version of the meeting’s outcome. Did these three people attend three different meetings?

I was lost. I decided to wait four long days until the official minutes of the meeting were published. The meeting minutes finally came out on e-mail, but  they did not help. The minutes were written in English and my name was mentioned as the person who had to do something, but I couldn’t understand the words.

I took the minutes to someone who had been in the meeting for an explanation. The person looked at the minutes and told me that the action item written was wrong. That was not what I was supposed to do. I did the same thing with another person who had been in the meeting. They had the same response.

No one agreed on what was said in the meeting. No one agreed with what the official note taker had written.

I am happy to record that we were able to salvage the situation. We gathered the senior managers for an unscheduled meeting. They discussed the situation a second time and arrived at a decision that I could understand and implement.

The principle of taking notes at a meeting applies to most people. I have yet to visit an organization of people that did not have meetings. I have observed two things about people and meetings. One, meetings are almost universal. Two, meetings are almost always unproductive.

One of the problems with writing meeting minutes is that people feel foolish doing it. This seems to do with ego. I am smart and I attend meetings with other smart people. We can understand what we are discussing and can remember what we decide to do. I think we are smart enough, but I have noticed many cases when we didn’t understand and remember. Maybe we aren’t as smart as I would like to believe.

People rarely have a unanimous understanding of a conversation. We all bring different perspectives and different goals to a meeting. We hear different things. Sometimes we hear and see the same words, but interpret them differently. Whatever the explanation, the old fashioned principle of recording minutes of a meeting is still worthy of attention and effort.

Taking meeting minutes is not that difficult to do. The first step is to decide to do it.  I hope that this chapter has convinced you of the need and wisdom of this principle.

Once you decide to have meeting minutes, assign a person to take the notes. I find that meeting minutes work best when the note take is a person who is not interested in the outcome of the meeting. The note taker doesn’t care if the group is going to buy a red car or a blue one. The note taker only cares that the group discusses the car, decides in an agreeable manner,  and agrees on what the note taker writes as the decision.

The note taker should use a large flip chart to take the notes. The note taker should write clear, legible words. Good penmanship is not prevalent these days. Try to find someone who takes pride in their handwriting.

Keep the meeting notes visible to everyone in the room. The flip chart is a good media for note taking.
A computer with a projector also works well. The group can all see the words that the note taker types into the computer.

It is not necessary to record every word said in the meeting. Try to record the names of the attendees, the decisions, and the action items. Sometimes a person will disagree with what the group decides.
If that person wishes, have the note taker record this person’s opinion. Put that dissenting opinion is the minutes of the meeting.

After the meeting, the note taker should type the notes and distribute them quickly. The next business day is the latest that the meeting minutes should be distributed. Delaying the distribution adds to confusion.