How to Take Minutes

Meeting Minutes Make or Break your Corporate Strategies :

Meetings can be a very productive part of corporate culture or they may be a yoke around the neck of management. It all depends on how use the information gained from your meetings.

To collect this information is the purpose of a meeting's minutes.

In today's article, you will learn about how to take meeting minutes and some of the kinds of information that you should record and some of the various techniques currently used to record it.

It is vitally important that your record what occurs in a meeting. However, of equal import that the people be heard and their objections to agenda items and solutions to problems as well as agreement need to be recorded as well. Only then, can effective decisions be made and actions planned and taken for the future. 

Some common ways to capture information about a meeting:

Meetings may be recorded in a number of manners depending on your corporate culture and the amount of resources you wish to devote to your meetings.

You might have on staff a professional stenographer who uses a Steno type machine and they are present at all your company's meetings. 

Often a manager will bring his or her own personal assistant who is skilled in either Gregg's Shorthand or the newer form called Speed Write.

The New iPhone 6 has its own built in assistant called Siri that will record a meeting and transcribe what it hears using Voice to Text technology. So, it is as if you have a secretary taking down you dictation during a meeting.

Micro tape recorders can record the complete meeting as can a tablet computer, and Digital voice recorder can perform the same function and take up less space than a pack of cigarettes.

Meeting rooms now often have their own recording systems and transcripts of meetings are prepared. 

The solution to getting through the Maze of Meeting Minutes:

 

But you are untimely responsible to obtain a good set of meeting minute and to do that well you need to be prepare before the meeting even begins.

Preparing the format the meeting minutes will take can be simplified by creating a meeting minutes template for meetings and their minutes.

This template should be laid out with time markers to record the time of items are brought up for discussion and motions made on their merit.

A good meeting Minutes format will include such things as: Who is the Chairman, secretary recording the minutes, and a list of attendees.

Some addition items that should be also included are, our Firms name, Start & adjournment times.

The Date and time of the meeting as well as the Topic of the meeting can be filled in prior to the temple being printed out.

Detailed information then can be filled in below such things as meeting content, items requiring immediate action, and those assigned to execute the necessary actions.

Finally, a sign off section needs to be placed at the end of the meeting minute’s template with reviewer(s) signatures and that of the person recording the minutes.

This type of template can then be printed out and then filled in during the meeting.

This has the advantage of creating uniformity in the meetings, so material need to be used for creating action items can easily extracted. 

The use of the agenda while creating the template is an additional advantage:

 

If you have access to the meeting agenda, this facilities customizing of the template to match the actual meeting content.

If your company follows a standard format for meetings this saves you, from having to create additional templates as you only have to put the appropriate agenda items in their places in the template.

In either case, if your meeting template matches the agenda it is to everyone's advantage to do so.

This creates a system that can let everyone know what is expected at a meeting.

This streamlines the meeting process and this can save thousands of dollars in wasted time annually 

Additional things to do during the meeting itself:

 

During the meeting, remember to record action items, votes taken, and outcomes of the voting.

It also behooves you to record items that are to be tabled and items to be brought up at future meetings.

New business should be held until the end of the meeting after the other items on the agenda have been covered.

You should also record which items are taken under consideration, those that are rejected, and why.

Meeting minutes not only plan for the future, but can also plot the history of a company and in some instances may be subpoenaed by a court of law. So, any and information should be recorded if it is thought of trivial consequence. 

Check-off, Checkout/Check-in, and Storage:

 

Having a check off sheet, which each attendee is marked as present or absent, is a nice to have feature of while taking minutes and just a small check box, by each attendee helps keep track of who was present.

Also, leave room to fill in names of additional attendees that show up as well.

One of the things many neglect is the proper storage and utilization of the minutes after the meeting.

They should be transcribed neatly and formatted so they are easily read. Action items and those responsible should be listed in a separate section with all name and contact information included.

Proper formatting of the final meeting document is as important as the initial temple you used to record them.

Your final document should be usable to schedule future meetings as well as serve as a work document to accomplish the goals that were agreed to in the meeting.

Filling and the storage of the minutes should be in secure and protected area.

 This means treating these documents as vital to your company’s existence. Corporate theft is especial rampant today and meeting information can give foreign/domestic competition a leg up on all your product plans, patents, and marketing strategies.

So exercising control over access to the meeting minutes should be considered a high priority.

Numbered copies and signing for said copies and checking the copies back in after use should be as routine as carrying your name badge when at work

If you follow the above suggestions you meeting minutes will help your company create new business /products/services, solve problems, and move your company forward into the future.

Conclusion:

Learning how to take meeting minutes and using them can make or break an organization’s ability to get useful information and take action effectively solve the complex issues facing it today.

Meeting minutes format is a secret often ignored which if you use it well, can serve to get meeting information into a form that is usable by all. 

Nice Sites for Free Templates: 

Meeting Minutes Templates for Word - Vertex42 - Vertex42.com

MEETING MINUTES (template) - Google Docs Templates - Docs.google.com

PTA meeting minutes - Templates - Microsoft Office - Office.com

Meeting Agenda Template - Savewordtemplates.org