How to Take and Use Meeting Notes

Happy Tuesday to all 190 of you! If you’re taking the time to read this, mind telling us how we’re doing? If you have any topics you think we should cover, just hit that reply button in your inbox. And as always, the best gift is sharing this with someone you love… or hate, we’re not picky. 

Maximize your opportunities

At The Sphere, we’re all about building great relationships. 

We constantly interact with other people, and every interaction is an opportunity to improve our relationships. Our time with others is finite, so we always want to maximize the impact of each meeting. There are three primary challenges that get in the way.

First, we often come into interactions less prepared than we could be, because we lack context. We’ll talk about this soon. 

Second, we often fail to conduct a meeting effectively. We’ll address this more later as well.

Third, we can fail to effectively collect and act on the information we receive during the meeting. That part, we’re going to address right now. Let’s go!

It’s three simple steps. 

Capture, summarize, act

Henry David Thoreau recommended that we live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. I think 2022 Thoreau would say we should listen deep and suck the marrow out of meetings!

Information is the marrow of our meetings. Whether you capture (and act on) what is important is the difference between Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and . . .being the groundhog. Pay attention, learn, and grow, or repeat the same things over and over again.

As I get older, I definitely notice my memory isn’t as great as it used to be. Not that it was ever “great” relative to the tools around us. Our brains have barely changed in tens of thousands of years, yet if our smartphone is more than a couple years old, we think of it as ancient. 

Fortunately, none of us need to rely on our memories. We have the technology!

I’m not talking about fancy devices or apps, although those can be extremely useful. I’m talking about one of the greatest and oldest technologies: writing stuff down. Everything we put into writing is information we can keep, without having to rely on our extremely fallible brains.

In a nutshell, collecting and acting on relevant information is how we convert meetings into better relationships. We know it’s easier said than done, so we’ll break it down a bit more.

Step 1: Capture

Whether you use pen and paper or something digital, it’s vitally important to capture key information in writing, as soon as possible. What should we capture? There is a bit of an art to knowing what is important. 

Think about your meeting before it happens and write down a few key areas you want to learn about. Setting your intention before you meet will help you recognize when the conversation is on fertile ground. We might call this step 0.

Even if you don’t know exactly what insights you’re looking for, certain information is always valuable. Listen for it and write it down.

Next steps (are like oxygen)

A relationship is a process, more verb than noun. Actions are the oxygen that keeps a relationship breathing and alive.

Next steps (aka actions) are the single most important thing that you must capture in any meeting. Whatever actions you discuss are a roadmap telling you exactly how to progress the relationship.

If you don’t write them down, there is a high probability that something important will fall through the cracks. Don’t be that guy!

Personal details (are golden)

Always be attentive to personal details. If somebody shares something personal, that offers a key peek into who they are and what they care about.

Remembering personal details is a great way to show other people that you care. The sad truth is that most people don’t care enough to pay attention to and remember little personal details. Birthdays, kids’ names, favorite sports teams, and any other personal details are all great details that will help you strengthen a relationship.

Personal details, and the insights they offer into other people can also help you figure out how you can be helpful. Helping is a great foundation for a quality relationship!

Capturing and flagging these personal details sets you up for an even better interaction, next time. As mentioned above, it pays to be prepared.

Other stuff is important too

While next steps and personal details are the most important information to capture, you also want to understand the other person’s goals and problems. Pay attention to anything that offers insight into what they want or need.

Write it all down. You can always discard unnecessary information later.

Step 2: Summarize

Once you have captured information, you still want to process it into more useful form.

Revisit your notes after you’ve captured them, and turn them into a summary. The sooner you do this, the better, because . . . I forget. You get the point.

Delete unhelpful information. Anything we can’t use is like a kind of mental plaque that clogs up our minds and obscures the good stuff.

How should we distinguish between helpful vs unhelpful information?

1. Keep information that is personally relevant (and you would feel comfortable bringing up again in the future).

2. Keep information that reflects on the state of the business, problems, opportunities, strengths, etc.

3. Keep anything that you think you can use to connect them to other people in your network. Being a connector is powerful!

Get rid of the rest.

Step 3: Follow up (with action)

All the personal details in the world are useless if you don’t follow through with action. This is the most important piece and it’s where so many people get stuck. We take notes and summarize them specifically to make it easier to take action!

Start with your next steps list. These should be top priority for follow through. 

The same social niceties that help after a job interview or a date apply to every meeting. Give yourself a next step to send a little note saying you enjoyed the conversation and look forward to the next one. Acknowledge any next steps and bonus points if you mention a relevant personal detail (thank you, notes!).

Make a plan of action for other next steps. Are any of them time-sensitive? Don’t let them linger! 

If you have another tool or system for keeping track of your to dos, make sure your next steps get incorporated. 

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. ―Thomas Edison

Once you have addressed (or made a plan for) your next steps, enter other key information into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. This is how you turn those personal details or insights into goals and challenges into a useful resource. Before your next interaction, consult this tool and you’ll be better prepared to maximize the meeting.

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky. —Oprah Winfrey

Summary

There is a virtuous cycle available here:

1. Prepare for meetings to get the most out of them.

2. Capture next steps, personal details, and other relevant information.

3. Prune away unhelpful information so your notes are focused on the good stuff.

4. Go through your fridge and get rid of any cilantro. Yuck.

5. Follow through on next steps.

6. Update your CRM (or other related) tool so you have helpful information easily on hand.

7. Be even more prepared for the next meeting.

8. Rinse.

9. Repeat.

See you next week!