The work habit that has had the greatest impact on me: Meeting minutes

It reveals the efficient working habits of meeting minutes in the workplace and solves the dual challenges of information mastery and cognitive improvement. It is especially suitable for newcomers in the workplace and professionals seeking career development and advancement.

01

After the last article was published, someone expressed interest in my experience working with a big boss and asked me some questions. One of the questions touched me, which was: What is the work habit that has the greatest impact on you? My answer was: meeting minutes

Fu Sheng also mentioned in his article that meeting minutes are not only for serving superiors, but the process of sorting, refining, reflecting and thinking deeply is also a kind of learning for oneself. Why are meeting minutes so important?

Because meeting minutes are the fastest way to grasp information gaps, whoever grasps more information gaps will have more advantages in the workplace. A friend of mine who used to be a senior executive also said that when choosing a position, he never paid attention to the head, but only cared about how much information flowed through the position and how much decision-making authority it had.

For example, a company has two promotion opportunities every year. For ordinary colleagues, they know about this information, but they don’t know when it will happen. Another person who knows the time has already prepared for this opportunity. When the time is approaching, who is more likely to seize it? Obviously, the latter.

For example, if the company has a layoff plan, if you know about it in advance, you will be prepared in advance, whether it is changing jobs or switching business lines, you can plan early.

Knowing the significance of taking meeting minutes, I was the one who took the best and fastest meeting minutes in my early days. I knew that this was the fastest way to gain trust. People are highly dependent on high-quality information, not to mention leaders. Once you develop a habit, the threshold for many meetings will be opened, and you will be able to attend meetings that you could not have attended in your current capacity. On the other hand, by taking well-organized meeting minutes, you can make up for the cognitive gap to the greatest extent possible.

If there is only information gap but no cognitive gap, nothing can be accomplished. The same information can produce very different results for different people, and this is the cognitive gap.

My own personal experience is as follows:

Because I will cooperate with different organizations and institutions, I will come into contact with all kinds of people. However, in meetings of all sizes, sometimes you will see the competition for interests between different departments of the same company, sometimes you will see how big bosses reach cooperation, and how superiors and subordinates collaborate. Why can some people succeed and some cannot? If you carefully sort out the meeting minutes, you will see a lot of logic and ideas. At least at that time, what I often felt was the exchange of ideas between masters, and I also gained a lot of useful information from it.

02

So how do I take meeting minutes?

First, let me share my work as a boss's assistant (ps: the boss's assistant is only a small part of my work)

1. The chairman's schedule needs to be arranged reasonably (ticket booking, hotel travel arrangements), and the schedule needs to be arranged in combination with the business of each company in the group in various places. (Who to meet, what business to discuss, what level of business, business value, etc., these have KPIs, and we need to allocate the chairman's time value. If a business target for the whole year is not achieved, performance will be deducted)
2. When traveling, you need to prepare business cards (your own, the chairman's, and different business cards for different people), an itinerary, a notebook and a pen, and some digital tools (recording pen, notebook, pad), in addition to some snacks, common medicines, etc.)
3. Be prepared to take photos and record at any time. Almost every speech requires producing pictures and articles, and doing a good job of disseminating them through various new media channels.
4. Arrange various bureaus and the like.

The most important task among these tasks is to be able to quickly record the key points of the leader's conversation, and then make sure that the logic is clear and detailed enough without missing any. Therefore, "quick distillation" is a very demanding task.

Here I share my experience:

When our leaders ask us to organize the content of the meeting, the first key point is not to start recording immediately, but to listen. It is not to remember every word, but to listen to the complete expression first, and the most important thing is to listen clearly. Then when you record, you need to distinguish the main and the secondary. The main part refers to the consensus/goal that the entire conversation will eventually reach, which can be summarized in one sentence. The secondary part refers to the details, so there is no need to write sentences here, but to list keywords.

During the conversation/meeting, we record a summary in one sentence + key details . Finally, we sort out the context of the entire meeting, and then expand the specific information during the conversation/rest period, and finally output the complete meeting content. Then, we immediately communicate to confirm where you feel there may be deviations. After confirmation, it is a complete meeting record. Based on the complete meeting record, we re-extract it into a meeting minutes, determine the relevant names, synchronize them to them, and get feedback. This matter is considered complete.

Meetings are the occasions where the most information is generated. A good meeting minutes can help you quickly grasp key information without missing anything.

When taking meeting minutes, we need to pay attention to the following:

• Meeting agenda: You need to know what issue is being discussed at the moment.
• Record separately: Record what each person said separately, extract the key points, and sort out his views, attitudes, basis and conclusions.
• Contents of the resolution: what kind of decision is finally made, who is responsible for what, and who to contact if any problems arise.

After I finish taking the minutes of the meeting, I will review them again to improve myself. That is, I will carefully review the context of the whole thing, find out the relationships between the people involved, find out the key people (who are the resource owners, who are the decision makers, who are the executors, who are the supporters), and finally judge the development trend of some things. Doing this review frequently can deepen my understanding of collaborative relationships.

The above is today's sharing. I wish you all a happy May Day holiday!

Author: Zhizhong; Source public account: Shixian Operation (ID: 1086350)