I think there have been many articles about how to run meetings, and other than just a few tips on how to prepare for it and some on writing minutes but they do not focus on what you do before and after the meeting. So, let me avoid the meeting itself and be contrarian to share tips with you on what to do before and after the meeting to maximise productivity of the meeting.
This is the second of two articles. What you do before the meeting is here. While this is written from the perspective of the organiser of the meeting, it also gives useful recommendations if you are just an attendee - helps to avoid that nap in an uncomfortable meeting room chair.
Get the minutes out
I will not talk about the minutes themselves as I think that subject is well covered but I will deal with the when, how, where, who and why of minutes writing. I will only leave out what you write.
If you prepare minutes of the meeting before or during the meeting as discussed in my previous article, getting minutes out is relatively easy: just tidy up the format, language, a few additions or amendments here & there to better illustrate points raised and the minutes are out within an hour. If you are not that fast, that is fine: As a rule of thumb for my team, minutes for monthly meeting should be out within a week while those of weekly meetings should be out within two days, preferably the end of the same day. Minutes of daily meetings should be replaced by a simple working template that is discussed and updated during the meeting itself, and circulated by the end of the meeting.
As with any report writing, I never start from the beginning of the minutes and write all the way to the end. If you end up with a writer's block, it is quite a pain to drag yourself to finish a lot of empty screen. I set out the framework of the minutes itself, with all the agenda items and sub-headings within them to denote all the key talking points be included. Basically, everything you write can be categorised as interesting or mundane. Interesting stuff is really what the meeting was about - decisions, disagreements, surprises. Mundane stuff is the boring bits about who presented what etc. Interesting stuff are normally fun to write, especially when they are still fresh in memory: so, write them while still hot. The problem with the interesting stuff is that they can get a bit difficult to word, especially if it is about a dispute between two powerful executives, either of whom will have your entrails at the next meeting table if their version is not preferred: so, don't sweat it, just state key points in square brackets to keep the momentum going and you can always think about the actual words or solicit advice later. Mundane stuff just need to be located on the document because there are so many of them but once identified, are quite easy to deal with because the wordings are quite standard, sometimes even copy and paste.
The whole idea of doing the frame and separating the wheat from chaff in the minutes is to break it up into manageable chunks instead as seeing the entire minutes as a single monolithic tome to be tackled at one go - that tends to be so depressingly daunting that we often never get started. Breaking it into sections that you can compose each section independently of what comes before and what comes after, enables you to keep the momentum going. Seeing the minutes fill up motivates you to finish it, and with pleasure. Also, with the frame, you can really deal with the individual sections anywhere, not necessarily at your desk - on the train, over coffee, or even when out on a drive/walk, which is a good time to deal with those difficult square brackets. It is a useful technique which can be applied to any report you have to write.
Once completed, who do you send the finished product out to? All too often we just reuse the previous email but it will be good to periodically review the recipients for relevance. Of course, anyone who is a meeting member or in attendance should be on it but review those who are there by invitation: will they still have an interest in the minutes if the matter they were invited for is no longer on the agenda? Is there any confidentiality issues that precludes anyone from getting the minutes or are only entitled to a redacted version? Also, should we do the normal thing and attach the minutes to the circulation email? If we embed presentations into the minutes (surely, the most effective way to detail out what someone presented rather than to describe the presentation point by point), the minutes get rather large and will just clog up everyone's email inbox. Sending a link to the minutes in the shared folder in the email is not only more environmentally and IT friendly, but will also familiarise everyone with the shared folder itself and the smarter ones will use your email for a easily found path to the shared folder. Just that check if anyone is in a low phone coverage area or on international roaming and would appreciate the minutes downloaded on their intermittent wifi rather than only having a link.
Following up
When you think about it, what's the point of having minutes? They are a record of decisions made, and of actions needed to move management forward by the time of the next meeting. As such, one measure of effectiveness of a set of minutes is how much it assist in the resolution of issues raised in it.
I find the easiest way to achieve this is to start working on the next set of minutes once you finished the previous one. Every outstanding action point must find its way into the subsequent minutes under Matters Arising until final resolution. Each action point has to be referred to in subsequent meetings, and therefore the minutes too, even if they are not yet due - this is to preserve the trail of documentation of each issue from first discussion to eventual resolution.
If an action item is due, follow up ensures that the person-in-charge is reminded of their responsibility and assisted if necessary. If completed, you can minute it down as such and it is another square brackets taken care of in the next minutes.
Some of these action items are so large or complex that they can be considered corporate wide projects in themselves, and therefore, your responsibility will be to ensure initiation of the project under its appropriate governance process so that it can be tracked there. If the member who raised the issue at your meeting is not involved as part of this other governance process, you may still have some residual responsibility to track the progress towards addressing the underlying issues of the concerns raised.
You will realise that the end of work on one meeting runs into the preparation for the next and truly, this is the cycle of meetings - they keep on going. Until of course, the forum for that meeting is abolished or the project is declared closed at the closeout dinner. Til then, I hope my tips in these two articles will help you with the never-ending cycle of work and let me know whether the tips work for you.
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