Minutes for meetings are crucial as they allow for team members to be aligned on what was discussed throughout the meeting. This can be helpful in ensuring that team members are aware of what tasks need to be completed as well as establishing when the task should be completed by. Having this documentation is a way to prevent from team members forgetting to complete the task or claiming that the task was not discussed. Additionally, if testing is the task that needs to be completed, the minutes may show the test design. For example, for a test that requires Instron testing on syringes, the minutes may lay out different test parameters such as the sample size. Additionally, the minutes can help fill in a team member who was not able to attend to meeting through summarizing what occurred during the meeting as well as the next steps. Meeting minutes can also help for future projects as they can help project teams refer to see how tasks were completed in the past, which they can use as a template.
At work I have implemented the use of meeting minutes as a way to highlight project progress and highlight team member achievements. In the minute meetings we all highlight the main progress in our projects which can then be easily transferred over to my project managers Ghantt chart or management software, these can also be easily used for employees to highlight milestones throughout the projects progress. It is useful every week especially when we have topics that discuss previous points of progress whether it be trouble on a project that may cause some delays or milestones that benefited the entire team that we could follow up on.
Meeting minutes are one facet of the diamond I like to call personal responsibility in the workplace. It may seem tedious and unnecessary, but taking notes for every meeting or call is absolutely necessary. This is in addition to taking notes on one's own progress for every task. This enhances the experience at work, because one can visually see the progress and ensures honesty. Honesty is a virtue that makes or breaks your experience in any job. One must be honest in what was said in meetings, progress, what was completed on which day, and who said what, when and where. There may be dishonest people who will try to twist their own words, or other people's words in order to achieve something for themselves or get themselves out of trouble. The blame game is always played when a deadline or milestone is missed. Therefore, having documentation of what you completed, what other people have said, and changes made along the way of a project helps keep everyone honest and does not allow for injustice. It may seem unnecessary, overbearing, or "try hard", but these methods are just extrapolations of common workplace values. Honesty, hard work, and meticulousness are the concepts that need to be implemented. Meeting minutes, notes for calls, and other forms of keep track of work is one way that makes one own up to their own work or mistakes.
Hello Roberto,
While I understand where Dr. Simon and many of these posts are coming from, I would like to play devil's advocate and also recount a more negative aspect of meeting minutes. I have found in the past that taking and reviewing meeting minutes can also feel more tedious than beneficial. In many cases, especially when everyone is already in agreement, the minutes can be very repetitive of information we are already aware of. Additionally, with so many meetings, it can often feel overwhelming to keep up with the details of the minutes especially when they do not always add something new or constructive. I worked in a company where this was the case and even though minutes are helpful for those who need a refresher, sometimes it often feels like an additional item for your workload rather than simplification to it. The company I work for now has a streamlined process to focus on only key points or action items so that the minutes are more digestible. I highly recommend companies to adopt a similar approach as it was very useful!
As others have mentioned here, meeting minutes are useful for keeping the team in the loop as to what was discussed in every meeting. This is true, however, typically the project manager would send out tasks and dates associated with these tasks after the meeting, or cover these thoroughly within the meeting. Often a power point and Gantt chart or some equivalent would be used to track specific tasks and due dates, and then these followed up with in next meetings. These are usually enough to keep track of due tasks in meetings.
What meeting minutes are most useful for are for holding people accountable for anything else mentioned in meetings. Often times besides due tasks that might cover a larger scope, there are other smaller or unexpected tasks that need to be completed from a person on the team before being able to tackle the overall ask/task. Meeting minutes would document discussion on this and hold the person accountable. Something not commonly thought about...is also that these meeting minutes can be used to hold anyone accountable-possibly even management. Say you're in a project that's been delayed/impacted by a fixture not being ordered that management vetoed purchasing months ago-now you at least have a record of this happening so it doesn't fall on you.
Thus meeting minutes are helpful to those in a project as a refresh of small tasks needed, but also as good insurance/back up if things go awry.
Meeting minutes are essential for staying on track with a project and being able to recollect information. I have used meeting minutes for numerous courses and clubs I have been involved in on campus. Without the use of meeting minutes, these group projects and tasks would have been much more difficult. Having scheduled meeting with a group for a project is essentially pointless is documentation regarding any and all updates, feedback, and progress is not kept. It is easy to become forgetful about small details within a project, especially those that are long and in-depth. Meeting minutes solve this issue and allow all group members to reference a shared document with very valuable information.
To my experience, meeting minutes are ver very important. They are brief but has important information in them. We can track how the project progress through the minute and is a great resource to keep track or look up something. THe minute is like a check list that we keep track of the meeting and can be like a reminder as we go through and check off things that need to be discussed. The minute of this meeting can also be used as a reference to build the next meeting: checking up with what discussed in the previous meeting, check the implementation of what initialized in the previous meeting, etc.
Design minutes, while often ignored, I think are a very valuable tool. For one, they help to ensure accountability. If minutes are kept, they can always be referred back to if someone was given a responsibility or a decision was made, but then the person denies being responsible for it or says they were never told something. They also allow ensure that meetings don't need to be repeated, in cases like when a decision is made for something that won't take place for months. In case people forget the decision, they can just refer back to the minutes.
Hello!
In my opinion, meeting minutes do matter as long as all topics and information was laid out on the table. Sometimes I find that when a meeting minutes time is established, people tend to worry on how long the they should be talking and sometimes topics get exacerbated. On the other hand, I definitely think there should not be a rush and good conversations should come about it. I would say a good 10 minutes per topic should be around how long good conversations should be had. 5 minutes would most definitely be too short and 45min - 1hr is where the topic can be too drawn out and lose interest of individuals. These can be extremely beneficial for big projects and help individuals get an idea on their roles and goals.
