Run better meetings with Notes

The difference between a meeting that produces something and one that produces a feeling is usually a note that existed before anybody joined the call. Not a long one: a heading, three topics with owners, and a blank space under each. Do that and the meeting runs itself; skip it and the first ten minutes go on establishing what the meeting is for.

Before: the note is the agenda

• Write the topics as questions or decisions, not as nouns. "Pricing" tells nobody what is needed; "Decide whether to raise the annual plan" does.
• Put an owner against each topic — the person who brings the context, not necessarily the person who decides.
• Share it far enough ahead that someone can add a topic, which is the cheapest way to find out the meeting should not happen.
• Note what people should read beforehand, and accept that half of them will not.

During: capture decisions, not dialogue

Write two things as they happen: what was decided, and what somebody agreed to do by when. Discussion is what the meeting is for; recording it is almost never useful and occasionally harmful — minutes attributing positions to people make the next meeting more cautious. If something is unresolved, record it as unresolved with the name of whoever will resolve it, which is the item most often lost between a meeting and its notes.

Read the actions out loud before the call ends. It takes thirty seconds and routinely surfaces one action that two people each thought the other had taken on.

After: the note is the record

1. Tidy and share the same day, while the shorthand still means something.
2. Separate actions out of the prose into a list with owners and dates.
3. Link the documents referred to, so the context survives longer than the thread.
4. Carry unfinished actions into the next agenda rather than starting fresh.
5. Keep one running note per recurring meeting instead of a new page each time — the history is the value.

What to keep out

Verbatim quotes, who disagreed, and anything you would not be comfortable with the subject reading. Notes get forwarded, included in disclosure and found years later by somebody with different assumptions. The test is simple: if a line only makes sense alongside the tone of voice it was said in, leave it out.

Ettex Notes suits the running-note pattern directly: one note per recurring meeting, checkboxes for actions, and links out to the documents discussed. Where actions need chasing beyond the next meeting, they belong in a register with owners and due dates rather than inside the note.