Effective Meetings - Keeping a Record

Having planned and run an effective meeting you will want to ensure it's continued effectiveness. Keeping a record of the meeting will help should anything need to be revisited or if actions are to be followed up. Mind mapping software is particularly good at this.

The key topics to record will include:

'Planning and Goals' may include:

'Outputs and Outcomes' may include:

You can create the map from a template prior to the meeting and document items such as purpose and agenda. You can add the attendees as resources, ready to assign to key topics. Also include attachments or links to key documents, briefing papers, background information or data.

You will want to assign attendee names to the issues they raised, the actions agreed upon. You will want to record who made which decisions. With mind mapping software you can do this easily by adding the attendees as resources and then tagging topics with the appropriate resources.

Tagging items with resource markers also lets you organise or filter the map according to contribution or responsibility.  Here a 'Resource Map' has been created from the main meeting record and then the map focus has been placed on Attendee3.

 

Mind mapping software lets you categorise topics using icons or markers. In addition to providing a visual cue, using category icons let's you filter and analyse the meeting notes. For instance, you might want to focus on just the decisions.

You can distribute the meeting record as a map, as a PDF or export it to Word.

The MindGenius template used in this post is available to download from Biggerplate as 'Record of Meeting - Template'. The map can also be found in the Planning Effective Meetings Group at Biggerplate.