Posting Your Meeting Minutes By now you should be aware that you should post your meeting minutes within 24 hours of the meeting being held. But this is just the start of the expectations and actions that you should take.
The best place to start when thinking about your meeting minutes is a frame of reference for the audience. Generally this breaks down into a couple of different groups...
- Those who were in attendance to the meeting
- Those who were not in attendance
For the first group, the minutes should be a way of jogging their memory of the meeting and determining next steps including any decisions and action items that might personally apply to them.
For the second group, the minutes should be a way of recapping what happened in the meeting so that one can catch up and also flag any actions required of them.
These vantage points, therefore give you a foundation of the things that should be included in your minutes...
- Purpose
- Attendance
- Decisions
- Actions Required (also known as Action Items)
- Binned Topics
- Meeting Notes
- Next Steps
By including the purpose, you keep yourself honest as to why the meeting was held, as your agenda and related minutes should correspond.
The attendance list of course adds some social pressure for attending the meeting, but additionally ensures that folks know who they can follow up with for more information from those who attended.
Decisions, actions required and binned topics are all items that ensure expectations are properly set and everyone understands the current direction and what is expected in the future.
We've already gone over taking the meeting notes so all that's left are the Next Steps. These might already be included in your notes, either as an agenda item or simply as part of the closing for the meeting. But if they aren't, and depending upon the type of meeting that was held, it might be helpful to define what is going to happen next after the meeting.
Once you've captured these items, you're all set to send out your meeting minutes. You'll want to include everyone who was originally invited to the meeting and you might include additional project stakeholders, management or others that might have an interest in the meeting or its outcome.
Once sent, the meeting is tentatively complete. Why tentatively? The reason is that the minutes sent shouldn't be set in stone. Maybe something was missed or maybe something was captured slightly incorrect. All attendees should have an opportunity to reply to all for suggested updates, changes or clarifications. Ideally this should only happen occasionally, and if so, the minutes should be revised and resent until everyone is good with the result.
Only after sending out minutes with a passage of time with no additional comments should the most recent meeting minutes be considered final. And for important meetings or those that might want to keep a tight ship, you can specify what that time period should be, such as "all comments, updates or revisions to the minutes need to be sent within the next 48 hours."
As you can see, now that we're at the final step of managing meetings, the entire process is very much like being a conductor of an orchestra. When done right, things will appear to flow effortlessly and when done wrong, the whole process can be a series of train wrecks. But don't be disheartened if you have an occasional issue, as these are great learning opportunities that can help you improve your skills for future meetings.