Using Meeting Notes and Recordings Effectively

Turn meeting transcripts into actionable priorities.

Almost every meeting gets recorded now. Most of them get summarized automatically, with action items pulled out and sent to everyone right after the call ends. That can be a tremendous benefit. But that is often wasted, because most of us treat the recap as something that shows up in our inbox and then sits there as something else to do or manage. There are ways to take advantage of these and ultimately save time and effort. Here is how I have been using these.

Use notes to catch up on projects, not just meetings

The obvious use for a recap is catching up on a meeting you missed. That is fine, and it is also the smallest version of what this can do. The bigger use is catching up on something you were never part of at all.

I recently joined a project well after it started. I had not been in a single one of those meetings. So I pulled all of the meeting notes together, along with the other work that had been done, and put it into AI to build an executive summary of where things stood. Those combined steps brought me up to speed quickly. More importantly, it got me to the point where I could ask intelligent questions about the topic and follow current conversations. It immediately helped me decide how involved I actually needed to be going forward.

That only works if you keep those notes organized somewhere. If recaps are scattered across a dozen inboxes and chat threads, you have nothing to work with. If your company keeps a real catalog of meeting notes, you have something powerful. In this case I was able to get the backlog from a shared space used for the project.

If nobody at your company is doing that, start with your own meetings. Keep your recaps in one place, named consistently, in a folder or a notebook you actually control. You will use them more than you think. I do this for any meeting I attend. I keep my personal notes, the notes my transcription tool captures, plus any that is shared by others. I don’t always use them all, since a lot of that overlaps, but it prevents me from missing something by assuming either I’ll remember or someone else will have the transcription or meeting notes.

For district managers: turn the weekly call into your visit list

If you run a weekly call with your store managers, record it. Then use the recap as your follow-up list for store visits that week. Think about what usually happens. You have a call on Monday, you ask three stores for three different things, and by Thursday you are standing in one of those stores and you cannot remember what you asked for. As much as “Monday Us” believes that we will remember and keep track of it all, a lot happens each day, new things come up and then “Thursday Us” can’t remember anymore without a reminder.

The recap gives you that list without you having to build it. You walk in already knowing what you asked for and what they committed to. That is a different quality of visit, and your managers notice. It can also be the list of topics covered and other follow up items you mentioned to everyone. It really is a good way to ensure you’re validating what you asked for during the regular visits. Plus, since you may not get to some stores for more than a week or two, this is a great way to ensure you can check with everyone over that course of time.

For store managers: don't hand your team the notes

This is where I would be careful. If you are in a meeting or on a call and you get a recap, do not print it and hand it to your team. Do not leave it up on a screen in the back room and consider that communicated. Notes carry information. They do not carry context, and they do not carry your expectations.

Your team needs to hear what came out of that meeting from you. They need to know what it means for your store, what you expect from them because of it, and what you are going to do about it. Walk them through it. Make it three dimensional. Handing over the page is not communicating.

Be careful making decisions off notes alone

Much like handing a piece of paper to your team, just reading a transcript without checking in for additional context or meaning can create unnecessary challenges. A recap tells you what was said. It does not tell you the tone it was said in, what got debated before the group landed there, or which parts were firm and which were somebody thinking out loud.

If you are about to make a decision based on notes from a meeting you were not in, make sure you have the context that conversation actually happened in. Sometimes that means a two minute phone call with someone who was there. That call is worth it. And, if the video and actual audio of the call was captured, that may be an option to go back and watch to pick up on the context clues you may be missing by only reading the transcript.

Know what recording does to how people talk

Recording can change candor, and how much it changes depends on your company and your culture. In some places, people hold back. They get less direct, or they stop saying the half formed thing that might have been the most useful starting point for everyone to build on. In other places nobody thinks about it at all.

Recording can often cut out the unnecessary banter and keep the meetings a little bit tighter. That's certainly a good thing that comes out of recordings, but the real problem comes if some leaders start to use recordings in a way to coach people or to call out conversations that they don't want to have captured for various reasons.

That's when you start to see people shut down or stay quiet when they really would like to say something because they're not sure how those words might get used against them later. Especially if someone's looking through them after the fact and may not ask them questions in a curious way, but more in an accusatory way. You need to be aware of how those transcripts can be used, and a lot of that is driven by the teams or the company's culture.

Where that behavior does not happen, people's personalities come back over time. They forget the recording is running and they talk like themselves again. That is what you want, and it is worth protecting on purpose.

Summing it up

• Keep your recaps in one organized place. That catalog is what makes any of the rest possible.

• Use notes to get up to speed on projects, not just missed meetings.

• If you run a weekly call, let the recap build your in-person follow-up list.

• Don’t hand your team a page of notes and call it communication.

• Before you decide something off notes alone, get the context.

• Watch what you do with what you read. Quoting a transcript back at someone teaches your whole team to stop talking.

The technology has really improved in getting transcripts, key points, and even assigned tasks right from calls. And used wisely, can be make a big impact on your productivity and effectiveness. But these notes cannot fully substitute for making connections, checking context, or used to replace the face to face conversations that need to happen with your teams.

How are you using meeting recap notes to improve your productivity?

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