Smart meeting minutes: decisions in minutes

Project Management Tips, Trends, and New Tools

Smart Meeting Minutes summary - Definition: Smart Meeting Minutes are minutes that record decisions with clear owners, deadlines, and success criteria, turning discussions into actionable tasks aligned with business objectives. - Key elements: Decision (what was agreed), owner (who executes), deadline (when it should be closed). Often paired with an executive summary and an actions section. - Benefits: Faster decision-making, greater accountability, better traceability and transparency, and built-in continuity between meetings. They can also integrate with project management tools to auto-create tasks. - How they work in practice: During the meeting, the minutes taker captures decisions with the three elements, a formal minutes document is generated and shared, and automated tools can extract tasks and detect dependencies. In follow-ups, action statuses are reviewed and updated. - Practical template: 1) Heading (date, time, duration, participants, absences) 2) Meeting objective 3) Decisions made 4) Actions (task, owner, due date, priority) 5) Follow-up and success criteria 6) Attachments or context - Implementation steps: 1) Use a single adaptable template for all meetings 2) Define roles (leader, minutes writer, decision validator) 3) Integrate with project/task management systems 4) Send minutes after meetings and solicit questions 5) Review progress at the start of each session - What you need to start: a smart minutes template, a system for owners and deadlines, automation/AI for summaries and task extraction (if available), and a follow-up policy. - Useful phrases: examples for decisions, assignments, due dates, and follow-up. - Common mistakes to avoid: not recording decisions leads to improvisation; no assigned owners leads to inaction; no deadlines causes endless tasks. - Audience questions: challenges in clarity, responsibility, or dates; what to automate; useful template types. - Episode goals: show how smart minutes convert debates into executable decisions, provide a step-by-step process, and offer practical tools teams can apply immediately. - Closing: invitation to subscribe, give feedback, and share. Remeber you can contact me at [email protected]