How to write meeting minutes

Meeting minutes are a record of what a group decided and who is doing what next. Writing them well is mostly a matter of deciding what not to include. This guide covers the three stages, before, during and after, and the mistakes that make minutes go unread.

Before the meeting

Prepare the shell. Meeting name, date, expected attendees, purpose in one line, and the agenda items as headings. Half the minutes are written before anyone speaks.

Know your format. A board meeting needs formal resolutions and a quorum check; a team sync needs four lines. Formality is set by what the minutes are for, not by preference.

Agree who writes them. The chair and the minute-taker should not be the same person if the meeting matters, because chairing well and writing well at the same time is not possible.

During the meeting

Write decisions, not discussion. Every time the group settles something, write one line. That line is the minutes; everything else is context you can add later.

Catch actions as they're assigned. Action, owner, date. If no owner was named, say so out loud and get one, that question alone justifies having a minute-taker.

Mark what's unresolved. "Pricing deferred to next meeting" prevents the same discussion in three weeks.

Don't try to capture wording. If the exact phrasing matters, record the meeting. A person typing quotes is a person not following the argument.

After the meeting

Write within a few hours. Notes decay fast; by the next morning "J to check with legal" can be a genuine mystery.

Order by importance, not chronology. Decisions and actions at the top, discussion below. Most readers stop after the first block, and that's fine, it's the block that matters.

Cut ruthlessly. If a paragraph doesn't explain a decision, record an action or answer an open question, it doesn't belong.

What good and bad lines look like

Getting minutes approved

In formal settings minutes are approved at the start of the next meeting, and corrections are recorded rather than silently edited. Circulate a draft beforehand so the approval takes a minute, not twenty.

In informal settings, "reply if I've got anything wrong" is enough. Either way, once approved, the minutes are the record, which is exactly why a paragraph you were unsure about should be checked before you send, not after.

Common mistakes

• Writing everything, so nobody reads any of it.
• Attributing opinions in an informal meeting, which makes people guarded in the next one.
• Leaving actions ownerless.
• Sending days later, when the decisions have already drifted.
• Burying the decision in paragraph four.
• Recording people without telling them.

Using a recording

Recording the meeting changes the job: instead of typing while listening, you edit a draft afterwards. voxnoto returns the decisions, owners and open questions, and you cut what doesn't matter and fix what the summary misread.

Say at the start that the meeting is recorded, and keep the recording only as long as you need it. In some organisations retention is set by policy, not by preference.