If you’re tired of having the same meeting over and over again, it might help to rethink your ideas of agenda and minutes to prioritize progress.
Even more freewheeling work conversations (the kind that don’t usually have formal agendas) can benefit from a planned list of topics of discussion, if you want to have meaningful action as an outcome.
Then, at the meeting, just two pieces of information are vital to record.
- What is the action item? That is, what’s the next step we need to take?
2. What is the deadline? Is this a one-week project? A two-year project?
With simple notes recording the topic, action item, and deadline, it’s easy to look back and know the next step to take. Without that information, I find that wheels spin and time passes without progress…until the next meeting, discussing the same topics with the same people.
(In larger meetings, it can be useful to also make note of the lead person next to each action item. So I can look back at the notes and see the topics I’m in charge of.)