SUPERCHARGING YOUR DOCUMENTATION

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DOCUMENTATION FOR EFFECTIVE MEETINGS By Adrienne Bellehumeur

www.leadersinbusinessanalysis.com

This booklet covers Step 5 Documentation for Effective Meetings of the six-step documentation process (Step 1 –

Capturing, Step 2 – Structuring, Step 3 – Presenting, Step 4 – Visual Documentation, Step 5 – Documentation for

Effective Meetings, Step 6 – Storing & Maintaining Information). This booklet provides some basic tips, techniques,

approaches and exercises for understanding and practicing how to capture information effectively.

WORKBOOK SERIES

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CHALLENGE

Effective Documentation to Make the Most Effective Meetings

Meetings are one of the most important areas that will improve your communications and documentation.

In the documentation process, Communicating represents Step 4 (after (1) Capturing, (2)

Structuring and (3) Presenting) is all about sharing your documentation with your stakeholders.

Your ability to communicate is based

largely on your verbal skills and

confidence in talking to people.

However, it is also based on your written

skills including your documentation skills.

While this booklet does not go into the

many ways to improve your verbal

communications, it does focus on one of

the most important areas that will

improve your communications and

documentation: meetings.

We live in a culture of meetings: team

meetings, progress meetings,

communications meetings, update

meetings, manager meetings, standing

meetings, organization meetings, and sales meetings. Without strong meeting practices

complemented by effective documentation techniques, this culture can be unhealthy and

unproductive.

Meetings must have purpose: to achieve specific objectives tied to the

objectives of your organization. Effective documentation practices break the

cycle of useless meetings.

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SOLUTION:

How to Break the Cycle of Useless Meetings

The ability to create effective meeting notes is one of the most important skills for mastering documentation.

Meeting notes are fundamental to the process and to

maintaining a culture of accountability. Without them, you cannot capture intellectual property within

your department or drive momentum in your projects, operations

or sales results. If your organization does not have a practice of

taking meeting notes, then your meetings are no more than

information sharing, or even whining and gossiping sessions.

Your meetings may have interesting discussions but, without

effective notes and a follow-up process, the issues and

challenges are likely repeated over the life of the project or

team. If your organization does take meeting notes but does not

use them, then you need to educate your employees on how to

create effective meeting notes and how to use them.

What barriers might your employees be facing?

(1) Your employees may not understand the true value of

meeting notes: that they are not bland paperwork, but the

compass for your projects and operations where actions

begin and decisions are made.

(2) Your employees may not know how to create notes.

Dumping everything attendees said during the meeting into

lifeless documents is not effective meeting note taking.

Your employees may not understand the meeting concepts or

issues.

Note – this booklet

has conscientiously

not called meeting

notes “meeting

minutes” for the

reason that it

often conjures an

inaccurate

stereotype of the

practice of taking

meeting notes.

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QUICK TIPS:

Creating Highly Effective Meeting Notes

Are you looking to improve your meetings and meeting notes?

(1) Have a Clear Purpose of Your Meeting – This might sound like an obvious tip to

you, but sadly many professionals – if not most – conduct meetings without putting

enough thought into what exactly they need to get out of them. The person responsible

for taking your meeting notes must understand what issues he or she needs to listen for

and clarify with attendees. Your meeting purpose must be as clear and focused as

possible. “Making a decision about whether to buy ABC software.” “Planning the action

items for XYZ proposal for March.” “Defining the key messages for the monthly project

communication to management.”

(2) Put a Value on Your Meeting – This step reinforces the need to treat the time of

your employees, consultants and your organization overall as valuable. Assign a rate for

all attendees; say $100 per hour. Then calculate the amount it would cost you to run

this meeting using the assigned rates for all attendees. If you needed a business case to

hold this meeting, would the meeting really be worth the price you calculated? If not,

then consider whether the meeting is really necessary or whether you need all

attendees to be present.

(3) Do Not, Repeat, Do Not Regurgitate What Was Said in the Meeting – This

is the most common and most serious mistake when it comes to writing meeting notes.

Notes are not intended as a dumping ground for everything that everyone said; they

structure unstructured information. You must closely examine the information and then

strategically structure it into logical headings, emphasizing the important points and

removing useless information.

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(4) Practice Active Listening – Listening skills are essential for creating effective

meeting notes. Practice active listening through asking attendees to clarify the most

important points from the meeting (before they leave from it), and the decisions they

made during the meeting or decided to delay to a future date.

(5) Label Action Items and Decisions – The primary purpose of your meetings should

be to drive actions and decisions. You need to clearly label all action items and decisions

(“Action Item 1:”, and “Decision Needed:”). You also need to assign clear owners

accountable for these actions and decisions. Although action items may be clear, the

specific decisions required to act upon them are generally murkier because team

members are often reluctant to make strong decisions. (Ask for suggestions rather than

definitive answers if decisions aren’t forthcoming.) Meeting notes will power more

accountability into your decision-making process.

(6) Make Them Readable and Engaging – Treat meeting notes like a critical

document that you will reference over the life of your project or team. Apply best

practices of technical writing to ensure that your notes clearly communicate to your

audience. Don’t be afraid to use tables, simple graphs, pictures and bullets to make your

notes visually appealing.

The Challenge with Traditional “Minutes” The challenge with traditional “minutes” is that they typically

record the discussions of the meeting in the order that they are

discussed and not necessarily in a way that drives the most

value out of the process.

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Graphical Facilitation & Meeting Notes

Graphical facilitation captures the attention of your audience, creates notes that

you will remember, and enhances the effectiveness of your meetings.

Graphical Facilitation is a technique that uses the power of visuals to help groups to think

through problems more effectively. Graphical facilitation typically uses large, wall-size sheets of

paper displayed in the meeting room. Throughout the meeting, the facilitator draws engaging

visuals to illustrate the key ideas and concepts discussed by the group. Especially when working

with more creative facilitators, the output from graphic facilitation sessions provides dynamic

meeting notes that become part of your project or operational documentation.

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EXERCISE:

Graphical Facilitation

This exercise will provide you with valuable practice in facilitating through both visuals and text.

STEPS:

You will need a group of at least four people to do this exercise effectively. Have your speakers

begin speaking about the subject for 15 minutes while the facilitators capture the key points

from the meeting on each of their white pieces of paper.

The facilitators can use a combination of visuals and text to capture key points.

(1) Place large sheets of paper around the room and take out markers to draw on the

paper.

(2) Assign half of the members of your group to act in the role of “speakers” first.

(3) Assign the other half to act in the role of “graphical facilitators”.

(4) Choose a subject for the speakers to discuss; this can be any subject your speakers will

enjoy discussing.

Some of the ideas include:

Pet peeves

Favourite places to travel

Best movies of all time

Comfort foods

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DISCUSS & CONSIDER

How did each facilitator capture the information differently?

Did they list different key points or messages?

Did they list different key points or messages?

Where was the use of text appropriate?

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Which visuals were effective?