Let's Talk Meeting Minutes!

Great minds think alike. But, greater minds collaborate! Sharing thoughts and bouncing ideas off with those around you are essential to any creative process. You can gather all the ideas you want and try to power through challenges by yourself, but you’re limited by your own manpower. This is where meetings come into play.

Here at Glo, we meet at least twice a month as a team and toss around ideas, news, and a lot of laughter! We have more than doubled in size over the year and have updated our workflow and procedures along the way to fit our ever-changing needs. This dynamic process also includes our good old meeting minutes and we have some tips to share with you!

1) Have meeting minutes

Comprehensive note-taking during meetings works wonders for our sanity in the days following. You may feel like you will remember everything. But, you will not and a record of one or two words will be just as bad as not writing anything down at all when you are trying to recall the exact task that you are supposed to complete. Make a habit of recording details even in informal meetings just to speed things up when you go back to make sense of things. 

2) Choose your tools and stick to one

Laptops are great as you can type away as fast as the person talks and grabs screenshots and insert website links into your minutes with a click of a button. Electronic documents can also be easily shared amongst your team. If paper and pen is your choice, remember to stick to just one notebook and a typical format to make post-processing much easier. Taking a photo of the diagram or table drawn on the dry erase meeting board also helps save valuable time as a picture is worth a million words!

3) Document Decisions

Ideas get thrown around and solutions get voted up or down. Minimize confusion and subsequent problems by documenting decisions comprehensively. The topic at hand may not come up until a few weeks or months after. Hence, recording clear and concise notes on decisions will help your team remember why a task was assigned and it also allows them to refer back to discussions in the minutes. 

4) Choose your template

A basic table template proves to be quite effective when it comes to recording, reviewing, and reading the content. Standardized templates help to save time and make it easier for all team members as they aren’t adjusting to new formats sporadically. Glo’s meetings consist of a lot of decisions and task assignments. Hence, having minutes divided into three columns, item number, a discussion summary, and action owner, works well.  Tweak your template and find what works for you!

5) Post-Processing

Schedule time to process your minutes or notes shortly after your meeting when details are still fresh in your head. Your records may have included extra or lacked certain details that need to be corrected. Make necessary revisions and send copies to your teammates within 24-48 hours so they can advise if changes need to be made. 

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