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From meeting notes to action items in five minutes
Meetings produce decisions, but notes rarely turn into work. A short routine closes the gap before everyone moves on.
Leo Park
The five minutes after a meeting decide whether anything happens. If notes stay as paragraphs, the decisions inside them stay invisible.
Separate decisions from discussion
Scan the notes and mark every sentence that commits someone to something. Everything else is context. Keep the context linked, but move the commitments into a list.
Give each item a verb, an owner, and a date. Send the list to everyone who attended, not a summary of what was said.
Let the next meeting start from the list
Open the following meeting with the action list instead of a recap. It keeps the conversation on progress and shows quickly what is stuck.
Thanks for reading. More notes on clearer work every few weeks.