Minutes of a meeting often look like administrative paperwork, yet they carry weight that shapes how organizations function. They capture the essence of conversations, clarify responsibilities, and serve as the official record of what was agreed upon.
The problem with meetings, as most people would say, is that they can be long and boring. Mark Cuban famously stated that he checks 700 to 1,000 emails every day and prefers doing this instead of sitting in long, boring meetings. CEOs and leaders like Cuban often rely on reading the minutes of a meeting instead of attending one.
Thus, being assigned the job of writing minutes is a bigger responsibility than people think. In this article, let’s break down everything you need to do to write great minutes.
Why Should Minutes be Taken?
On a practical level, well-structured minutes prevent the all-too-common problem of meetings ending with enthusiasm but no clear path forward. If written well, they stop discussions from evaporating into memory and instead turn them into commitments that can be tracked.
Professionals who have undergone formal management training often highlight how critical this practice is. Taking effective minutes is something that most people have no experience with. However, they are critical for almost every business or company that has meetings and discussions.
Some organizations might even sponsor key workers who lack experience to take on further education in the form of online MBA programs. The online allowance lets the individual continue their daily work responsibilities without interruption. At the same time, the company benefits from an increasingly effective employee.
As St. Bonaventure University explains, these programs allow people to cultivate specialized knowledge. For many people, that also includes learning aspects such as taking minutes and the norms of business communication.
Pre-meeting Setup: Design Minutes Beforehand
One of the most overlooked steps is clarifying the purpose of the minutes in advance. Some teams need minutes as compliance evidence, while others use them to track tasks and deadlines. Stating this in the invite immediately sets expectations. Assigning roles is equally important.
A dedicated note-taker ensures focus, while a reviewer or approver maintains accuracy. Preparing a template ahead of time saves stress during the meeting. A good template includes agenda items, space for decisions, and room to record owners and deadlines. Even listing “likely decisions” can help the note-taker anticipate where the conversation will land.
On the technical side, confirm access to shared documents, recording permissions, and version control so the minutes do not vanish into personal drives. Likewise, remind people to keep their cameras on if that’s the policy at work.
Research has shown that keeping video on is associated with a 6 percentage point increase in the chance that people will vocally participate. This is specifically for small meetings with fewer than eight participants.
With this structure in place, minute-taking moves from frantic note-scribbling to a steady process of capturing what truly matters.
During the Meeting: Capture High-Value Minutes
The real test of good minutes comes when discussions start moving fast. A helpful framework is D-O-A: Decisions, Owners, and Actions. Recording these three elements covers the essential output of almost any meeting. Adding deadlines next to each action transforms vague ideas into commitments.
Some organizations go further and assign a confidence rating to decisions, marking whether the choice feels solid or tentative. This helps when reviewing minutes later, as it highlights areas that may need to be revisited. Using shorthand tags like DEC for decisions, AI for action items, and DL for deadlines can speed up note-taking.
Whenever possible, add time codes to key decisions, which makes it easier to connect minutes with a transcript or recording. Capturing reasoning matters as well, but it should be brief. A single line explaining why a decision was taken is usually enough.
One study on summaries, highlights, and LLM-powered recap systems evaluated two approaches to meeting summaries. It found that both highlight and hierarchical recaps served distinct purposes. Highlight-focused recaps were preferred for quick overviews and are easier to edit. However, hierarchical recaps were better for understanding nuanced discussions, but were slower to get through due to the chapter-like structure.
Consider the kind of discussions that happen in the meetings you attend and pick the appropriate recap style.
Post-meeting System: Making Minutes Work Beyond the Meeting
Once the meeting is over, the way minutes are shared and acted upon makes the difference between impact and irrelevance. Distributing them within 24 hours keeps momentum alive and signals that the meeting was worth the time spent. A useful practice is to prepare two versions: a one-page executive summary of decisions and a detailed action tracker.
The summary helps leaders scan outcomes quickly, while the tracker integrates with tools like Trello, Asana, or Jira. This link between notes and project management software prevents actions from being lost in inboxes.
Measuring the effectiveness of minutes adds another layer of accountability. Tracking metrics like Action Completion Rate, Decision Reversal Rate, and how often distributed minutes are opened gives insight into whether the process is working.
Finally, storing minutes with version control ensures a clear audit trail. When teams know that decisions will be revisited and tracked, they treat commitments with greater seriousness. Over time, the habit of structured follow-through makes meetings feel purposeful rather than repetitive.
At the same time, remember that you don’t want to make minutes become as complicated or overwhelming as a second job. As Business Insider notes, today, there are AI notetakers that can help with summarizing meetings. Sam Liang, who founded Otter.ai, predicts that AI avatars will stand in for about 20% of executives in meetings by this year’s end.
Thus, be smart and make use of tech if you can, so you don’t burn yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is it called minutes of the meeting?
The term “minutes” doesn’t mean tiny notes; it comes from the Latin minuta scriptura, meaning small writing. Basically, it’s a short written record of what happened in a meeting, not a second-by-second transcript of the whole conversation.
2. How to summarize a meeting recording?
Start by scanning the agenda or key topics, then listen for decisions, assigned tasks, and deadlines. Skip side chatter and keep only the essentials. Bullet points work best, and adding timestamps can make it easy for others to jump to important moments.
3. Which AI can summarize meetings?
Plenty of AI tools handle meeting summaries now. Popular ones include Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Microsoft Teams’ built-in recap powered by Copilot. They can auto-generate action items, highlights, and transcripts, but it’s smart to give them a quick human edit for context and accuracy.
All things considered, while being the designated minutes writer might feel like a dry role, it’s actually a great learning opportunity. If you pay attention, you can really begin to understand how each member contributes, what contributions are most valued by leadership, and more.