Some people think that minutes are unnecessary.

This is true for any meeting where people wasted their time accomplishing nothing. In that case the person responsible for the mess would want to hide it.

But good leaders like minutes.

They want to publicize the work that they accomplished. They want others to know that they hold effective meetings. And they want to document the action items, decisions, and accomplishments from the meeting.

But writing minutes can be a chore.

So, how can you produce minutes - easily, quickly, and effectively?

Use these tips:

1) Ask a facilitator (or scribe) to attend your meeting. During the meeting the facilitator will write all of the key ideas, decisions, and agreements on chart paper.

This helps make your meeting more effective by letting the participants see their work as they produce it.

It keeps people focused on the issue.

It frees you to participate without having to work at recording the meeting.

And it documents the results of the meeting as it progresses.

After the meeting, ask the facilitator (or scribe) to prepare a draft of the minutes from the chart notes.

2) Put only the highlights of the meeting in the minutes. This would include action items, decisions, and agreements. Avoid creating a word-for-word documentation of everything that was said. If you need to capture every detail, use a recorder.

3) If you must write the minutes, use the notes written on the chart pages as a rough draft of your minutes. If possible, have an assistant copy them and then edit the draft.

Some organizations skip typing the notes: they just make letter-sized copies of the chart pages and distribute those as the minutes.

4) Send the minutes within a day after the meeting. This publicizes the meeting while people still remember it, and it conveys the news while it's still relevant.