Your memory may fade, but meeting notes are forever.

Taking effective meeting notes for and during meetings can help you to have the most productive discussions, but it can be difficult to know what to note down. It is important to recognise which information is necessary and which is not.  

How To Take Good Notes Before A Meeting?

When you receive your Board Pack it is a good idea to flick through it at your earliest possible convenience and highlight what stands out to you as important issues or things you need to learn more about. 

Then when you have time to look over the meeting documents in detail, you should write private annotations of what you would like to discuss in the team meeting. This should include:

• Any issues be that of comprehension or within the organisation that need to be clarified or resolved.
• Any successes the organisation has had that should be celebrated. 
• Any improvements that could be made to strategic planning.
• Any upcoming events or due dates that should be noted.

These will allow your discussions in meetings to be focused on what really matters. 

What To Note Down During A Meeting?

In a Board Meeting it is important to note Action Items that will need to be followed up on. This may be in the form of a separate meeting with a select group to focus on a specific issue or a task that is assigned to an individual member.

Your Board Administrator should be taking down meeting minutes and any other relevant information to be reviewed at the next meeting. Therefore, you should focus on noting down information that will help you in the present rather than the future. 

This information may include:

• Interesting points other team members have made in debates.
• Potential ideas or solutions, both your own and others.
• Potential issues you see arising.

These points will help you in the debate ongoing during the meeting. It can be easy to forget your own or others’ points in the fast-paced discussions and it is impolite to interrupt so your notes can jog your memory when you get a chance to speak. 

How Can Convene Help You Take Effective Notes?

Convene’s annotation feature can help you take notes at every stage of the meeting process. With the option for both private or shared notes on any and all Board Documents helps you to have the most dynamic debates. 

With our intuitive software enabling you to follow along with the speaker’s page-turning, you can be sure you will always be on the same page as your colleagues. This means you can easily turn their attention to any issues you have spotted in your preliminary readings.

You can also easily attach Action Items to specific areas of the Board Pack which will be automatically added to the Meeting Minutes, saving your Board Administrator time and energy. This will be followed up with automatic reminders so you can rest assured that problems will be resolved speedily. 

If you would like to learn more about Convene’s other features, and how we can help your organisation have productive meetings, please do not hesitate to contact us or book a free demo today!