Tag: meetings

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Make use of your calendar defaults

Cropped screenshot of settings in Google Calendar with "Add calendar" highlighted, and under that category, "Browse calendars of interest" highlighted
The holiday calendars are often found in calendar settings under “Add calendar”

A couple weeks ago, I was trying to schedule some meetings and looking to avoid suggesting dates that fell on Jewish holidays (since I was meeting with people who would be observing).  And for as long as I can remember, I have always done an internet search for “Jewish holidays [this year]” and simply referenced one of the lists that popped up.   Same for other countries or other religions.  Easy enough.

Then someone vented to me about their colleagues scheduling a meeting on a holiday, and it being a constant pattern, and how they could have simply turned on the “show me X holidays” in the platform that their company used for calendars.  You wouldn’t even have to look up anything!  These days would simply show up when you opened your calendar.  And I was reminded (d’oh!) that there are calendar settings, and I don’t have to manually look up holidays each time I try to schedule something with someone who might observe different holidays than I do.  Most calendars will have such options. 

Screenshot within Google calendar settings that shows "Regional holidays" with both Japan and US holidays checked off, and then "Global religious holidays" with all boxes checked (Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox)
There may be other holidays that are relevant for you and those you work with — this is simply an example!

So here’s your friendly reminder to make use of those calendar settings if you haven’t already!

P.S. Bonus points if, as the organizational administrator, you go and adjust the defaults to help everyone at your organization be more inclusive in scheduling meetings!

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Meetings are better with collaborative notes

It now feels like ages ago when someone at an organization I was volunteering with introduced me to collaborative notes: an openly shared Google Document that could be edited by any of us at the meeting and accessed by us all afterwards.

It was a revelation.

Now, I had always been a huge proponent of taking notes—I even once had a job where part of my role was taking board meeting minutes.  I had also been an advocate for sharing those notes with everyone who was at the meeting. 

But.

Collaborative notes are next level.

Let me tell you why.

Meeting notes, when done well, serve as documentation of what was discussed, decisions made, and who is responsible for which follow-up items.

To be fair, not all meeting notes are created equally, but they should all contain some key information: when the meeting occurred, who participated, what was discussed, decisions that were made, and any action items that resulted (hopefully also with who is responsible for completing them and by when).

When you have documented this key information in the meeting notes, then meeting notes can serve a few key functions.

Meeting notes can serve as a decision log, documenting decisions that were made, alongside with notes about the discussion leading to them, or why those decisions were made.  This makes it easier to go back and look, when circumstances change, to see whether a decision should be adjusted.  Listing the participants also allows you to see who was or was not part of making that decision.

Meeting notes can also act as a way to track who said they would do what, so that you can follow up with the appropriate person after the meeting.  Even for things I’ve signed up to do, action items in meeting notes serve as a reminder that I can then check off (I do like to check things off!).  In turn, my checking things off can tell anyone else looking at the meeting notes that this task has been completed.

And of course, meeting notes can serve as a bit of a historical record for a team, a program, or a project.  How are we progressing?  What changed along the way?  Perhaps, what did we learn?

Shared meeting notes give everyone access to one central source of key information from the meeting.

In general, it’s a good practice to share meeting notes because so that people who were not there (or who joined late or had to leave early) can access at least some of the key information from that meeting.  It’s also good because no one remembers everything anyway.  Even if people take their own notes, then there is a different set of notes per every participant and without shared meeting notes, there is no one source of truth about what was discussed, what was decided, or who needs to do what afterwards. 

And this is critical: Shared meeting notes help create shared meaning. 

Imagine what happens when one person writes down that Keisha from marketing will share the microsite mockups by the end of the week, and another person writes down that Marketing will share the website mockups by Monday. 

Disputes can abound when everybody has their own version of what happened at the meeting.  But having a central source of shared meeting notes means that there is one version to dispute rather than 8 conflicting ones. 

Collaborative notes, when everyone in the meeting contributes to them, give participants more agency in shaping the meaning of the meeting.

Speaking of shared meaning, creating the record of what happened during the meeting together also gives participants more agency in shaping this meaning—not only during the meeting, but what gets documented afterwards.  People are usually more engaged when they both have more agency and can see how their inputs make a difference.  People will have their own interpretations and their own ways to make sense of what happened regardless—better that all those different interpretations come together in meeting notes visible to everyone so that everyone can get on the same page.

There can be power in who gets to write the meeting notes and thus synthesize and determine the meaning of what occurred during the meeting.  On the flipside, it is also easy to dismiss the official notes when you think they’ve missed a lot or misunderstood a lot of what was said.

And collaborative meeting notes that everyone can see in real time allow for people to clarify and correct things during the meeting.

When people co-create the notes during the meeting—as opposed to adding their individual notes to a shared document afterwards (which, let’s be real, will likely be mainly the notes of whoever cares the most)—this gives others in the meeting the opportunity to clarify and correct things that may have been noted incorrectly or that are unclear.  Yes, sharing out meeting notes after the meeting still allows for this but sometimes people don’t, or they do raise it, but it gets lost in the email inbox swamp.  Being able to see and respond and raise the question during the meeting, while everyone is still there, means it’s more likely to be resolved and resolved more quickly than the devolving reply-all email chain.  Who needs that endless back and forth when everybody has already checked out of the meeting?

Simply put, collaborative meeting notes are more efficient and they help you facilitate more engaging and effective meetings.  Make your meeting notes collaborative by default.

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A Quick and Easy Template for All Your Meeting Notes

My whole life, I have been a note taker – not because I have poor memory, but because it is part of how I process information.  If someone is simply talking at me (not with me), and I am doing nothing with this information, then there’s a good chance I’m not likely to remember any of it.  I have live transcribed interview notes.  I have gotten into sketchnotes the past few years.  I have typed up official minutes and jumped into the beautiful fray of collaborative notes.  Mostly though, I prefer a steno pad and a ballpoint.

Take notes however works best for you.

That being said, there are notes that are for you, and there are notes that are for the creation and sharing of knowledge.  Meeting notes fall into the latter category.

To be useful to other people afterwards, meeting notes require a clear structure.  They require some synthesis of what had been discussed, agreed upon, and what remained outstanding.

To be useful during the meeting to the person taking notes, meeting notes require a template that reminds you of all the types of things you need to capture.

There are a lot of specific and formatted templates out there.  You may have a few or 15 at your organization.  But I find that simple is best.  It means I can easily create it from memory without having to search for the correct template for that particular client or committee or type of project.  Which is really helpful when what was supposed to be a 15-minute check-in with your team turns into an apparently-no-one-renewed-our-domain-registration crisis management session.

Here it is my quick and easy template for all meeting notes:

  • Date
  • Participants
  • Agenda
  • Decisions Made
  • Action Items
  • Notes

Date

Having spent enough time working with global teams and generally communicating with people who are not American, I am getting into the habit of writing dates in an internationally friendly format: Month DD, YYYY.  That’s still rather US centric, if at least clearer, so you and your colleagues might prefer DD Month, YYYY, which is how most (the rest?) of the world formats dates.  If you prefer numerical dates and or will be including this in the filename for chronological sorting, I suggest using the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD.

Participants

Who was present at this meeting?  Unless it’s a very small team or very short-term project, I typically include last names so as to maintain clarity for when a second Sanket joins the team.  (Trust me, New Sanket and Old Sanket are NOT good ways to distinguish between them.). If this is a meeting across teams or organizations, I may include which group they’re representing as well. 

Basically, if these notes were shared with you and you were not at the meeting, what might you want to know about who was involved in making the decisions?  What information would you need to follow up with people assigned action items if you have questions?  Relevant details will vary somewhat depending on that context of who’s there and who else will use these notes.

Agenda

Every meeting should have an agenda.  It doesn’t have to be super formal, but there should always be a clear purpose for your meeting. 

Many people list the topics or the speaking order in an agenda, and that’s not wrong—but it’s not as effective as listing your objectives.  How will you know if the objectives of the meeting have been achieved?  How do you know when you’re done talking about a topic or if further discussion is needed?  It’s easier to tell if your agenda lists “Choose venue for teambuilding” instead of “Discuss teambuilding.” Make your agenda your guide.

If this truly needs to be meeting and not an email, this means there is likely at least one decision to be made.  Include any decisions to be made in your agenda.

Decisions Made

This space is for recording decisions that have been made.  Documenting decisions is crucial.  Otherwise, everyone notes what they think they heard to be the group’s decision, and you end up with a game of telephone except that you were all in the room (Zoom or conference) believing you took part in the same conversation.  Spelling out the decision in writing gives everyone a chance to refute or clarify, and helps make sure that you are all agreeing to what you think you are agreeing to. 

Note that this decision can change in the future; you’re simply documenting the decision at this point in time.  For example, that you’re going to have your conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 2020.  That decision may have made sense in September 2019 but may not have looked so good in March 2020.  This doesn’t mean you may not plan out your 2022 conference and revisit having it in person.  Documenting your decisions allows people to track what happened when and why things changed.

In the rare instance that no decisions were made* (was this actually a presentation rather than a meeting?), you can always leave this section blank, but it’s a handy prompt.

*If you decided to punt a decision to a later date or separate meeting because, for example, you needed some additional information, or because a key stakeholder wasn’t present—then you made a decision!  Add that here.

Action Items

It is very common that after a meeting, some of the people in the meeting will need to do some things.  Documenting those action items here, along with who is responsible and the due date, is again, crucial as a central source of truth and avoiding those pesky arguments about who was supposed to get your domain registration renewed pronto.

Notes

This is where you take notes on the substantive points of discussion.  Updates shared.  Concerns and considerations that went into the decisions that were made.  Any disagreements and how they were resolved.  Contextual information for those action items.  (If there are any questions that require someone to find something out and let the group know – that’s an action item!)  And anything else worth noting!

If you’re taking notes during the meeting and scrambling to figure out where to put things in the moment, it’s completely okay to put everything that’s not the agenda (which hopefully you have beforehand or create together at the start of the meeting) in the Notes section.  Then you can take a few minutes after the meeting if needed to put the decisions made and action items into their appropriate spots.  Since note taking is often done quickly, I often leave them in the notes as is and then try to rewrite them more clearly to put into the Decisions Made and Action Items sections.

Go forth and take notes!  Drop me a line if this has been useful to you or if you have any suggestions.