to hate doing minutes of a meeting

[CaptSkippy]

Last week, due to the absence of a person who usually does the minutes, I was asked two minutes for before a meeting started to do minutes.

I hate doing minutes. I can't keep an accurate record of a meeting and participate in it at the same time. People also talk too quickly for me to take notes of all that was said. The end result is that I always end up with scores of complaints any time I have taken minutes. It also takes me a really long time to write them up afterwards and if things are busy with my main responsibilities people keep pestering me for them when I really have no time to write it all out and share them.

These days I make sure that minutes are not part of my job repsonsibilities anymore and I refuse to even consider a job where that is a requirement.

I told the person who asked that I am no good at doing minutes, that I never end up with anything useful and that I only jot down a few things for myself. Despite my telling him this, he came back later and asked me what I got. I got all of two lines of the two hours meeting. I hope his own notes were more useful, but I never agreed to do them.

So was I being unreasonable?

In my career experience, I've worked on programmes where minutes of meetings were either :

A: legally required and and enormously important record and agreed actions
B: not legally required but still an enormously important record and action list
C: taken because the leader or function thinks they should be, they are never agreed, no one cares and they're never looked at again

A and B are very skilled jobs that require agility, knowledge of the topics, acronyms and business language.

C is a job that these days, typically indicates an inefficient workplace where it's no-ones real responsibility and generally falls to the junior, the unlucky or the female.

Next time suggests the host types up.minutes as you go along

Why on earth did he ask you to take the minutes? If he wants minutes: he writes them. Cheeky fucker

I have managed to avoid taking minutes my whole life.
I am always surprised when people step forward to do them.

Was this meeting online or in person?

You say you never agreed to do it, so Random Man who asked you due no doubt to you being female will have to try and survive without the Minutes.

I find Minute taking ok, but my background is in newspaper reporting so that probably helps.

You could have always just done it like this:

“Two pointless hours were spent discussing x project.
It was agreed we would all do it again in a fortnight.”

Thanks, @OstrichFeathers that's helpful

Whoever is chairing the meeting (if anyone) should at least pause and say, "OK, so Harry will chop down the oak tree by Friday 10th Jan"
(Or whatever other actions have been agreed) and "So it is decided that the new Whizzog will be painted green" (or whatever other decisions have been made) and write them down herself.

The chair should also note down the names of participants, apologies, and AWOLs.

How can a competent chair not do that?

Chair's notes will have to do if nobody is doing minutes.

A spiteful chair like myself will also note "Anastasia spoke from 10.00 to 11.15 about the colour of the new wallpaper. No decisions made"

I used to take loads of minutes (we had to keep them on file as they formed part of the documentation we had to retain), it's just finding something that works for you. I just scribbled down pertinent decision or action points and didn't bother to include stuff on the slide pack aside from perhaps referencing it ie slide 3 of x pack. It's a different issue if you're being asked just as you're a woman- we had a rota of sorts and would cycle through so everyone did them at some point.

I am only 1 of two women in my department

Why am I not surprised ...

[quote HalfShrunkMoreToGo]techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/live-transcription-with-speaker-attribution-now-available-in/ba-p/2228817[/quote]
I have tried that before. It really doesn't work very well and it also gives you all the ahs and uhms and incomplete sentences that are not usefull at all.

As @godmum56 has said, if you control the minutes, you control the meeting. Most people do not remember what was said in a meeting (that's why we have minutes, after all). Most people "remember" what they wish they had said, whether they did or not. So by producing the minutes, you can ensure that the outcome of the meeting is as beneficial t you/your tea/your allies as you wish.

On a more prosaic level, I never write detailed notes. I sketch out the agenda before the meeting, note any major disagreements expressed, and what the meeting decides. Minutes will read "the meeting noted paper x. In discussion, the following points were raised: x, y, z. It was agreed that ". At the end I add a table showing action, due date, and person responsible. For a two hour meeting I'd expect to type up three sides at most.

Finally, and going back to the first point, always remember Sir Humphrey Appleby's advice:

It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials. And it isn't so it wasn't.

@Needcoffeecoffeecoffee

I had never agreed to do them. There are no repercussions. It was a coworker who asked me to do them, not my boss. It's not public sector and I avoid taking roles with these kind of admin duties, because I know I am no good at them.

I like the suggestion of just recording the meeting next time. Then I can do my notes as usual and just share the recording and people can use that.

@TheFoldOx

As *@godmum56* has said, if you control the minutes, you control the meeting. Most people do not remember what was said in a meeting (that's why we have minutes, after all). Most people "remember" what they wish they had said, whether they did or not. So by producing the minutes, you can ensure that the outcome of the meeting is as beneficial t you/your tea/your allies as you wish.

On a more prosaic level, I never write detailed notes. I sketch out the agenda before the meeting, note any major disagreements expressed, and what the meeting decides. Minutes will read "the meeting noted paper x. In discussion, the following points were raised: x, y, z. It was agreed that ". At the end I add a table showing action, due date, and person responsible. For a two hour meeting I'd expect to type up three sides at most.

Finally, and going back to the first point, always remember Sir Humphrey Appleby's advice:

It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials. And it isn't so it wasn't.

yup....and if you do it subtly people thnk you are SUCH a team player too!

@EinsteinaGogo

In my career experience, I've worked on programmes where minutes of meetings were either :

A: legally required and and enormously important record and agreed actions
B: not legally required but still an enormously important record and action list
C: taken because the leader or function thinks they should be, they are never agreed, no one cares and they're never looked at again

A and B are very skilled jobs that require agility, knowledge of the topics, acronyms and business language.

C is a job that these days, typically indicates an inefficient workplace where it's no-ones real responsibility and generally falls to the junior, the unlucky or the female.

My workplace is let's say not very "formal". When I joined a few years ago we were even more poorly staffed than we are today. Shortly after I joined a few very experienced and talented people walked out due to being frequently ignored by management.

I was only there a few weeks before it became pretty clear to me that they more than half the team had one foot out the door already and I rang alarm bells with HR. Some people they were not able to keep.

Things have improved and they have expanded. But many times I still fly by the seat of my pants and make things happen however I can. I work well that way. I am good at improvising in less structured environments. I am also to quick to learn the technical aspects of most jobs.

But I have als noticed that I don't do as well in more formal settings, if I am forced to work within rules and systems where no one can even explain to me why they are in place, when people waste time following ineffecient procedures, I structure. I can't concentrate and I lose motivation. This is what seems to be happening with this project. I can't get out of the meetings, but since they are remote I listen in with half an ear and try work work on my primary responsibilities as well.

I agree that I should have been more clear, but I also told the coworker who asked that I sometimes have to take calls as we cannot afford to lose a whole morning of our department not being reachable by phone. That was obviously not a clear enough 'no', but it wasn't a yes either.

@CaptSkippy
I didn't say you were
What I actually said was that there had been no mention of a disciplinary action like the poster I quoted said who said if you were private sector it would be a disciplinary and if you were public sector it was typical not to do things properly . I agree with neither of those.

What I actually said to you was say you will take action notes, if you dont think you have them clear ask everyone to clarify at the end of the meeting and if asked a second time say you did it last time and the job should be rotated

@Needcoffeecoffeecoffee

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I wasn't accusing you of anything. I just wanted to provide some details on what you posted in reply to previous poster.

I know there plenty of things at my current place of work that need improving to say the least.

@toomanydogsandcats

What jobs do you people do??? I am a manager and lead leadership meetings, that is an admin job not an executive one.

I'm a senior manager too, but work in the public sector. I've been in the workplace nigh on 40 years and have never been anywhere that has admin staff to take minutes of meetings.

Same as always having to pay for your own Christmas do, and take in your own tea and coffee really. There is another world out there.

@toomanydogsandcats

What jobs do you people do??? I am a manager and lead leadership meetings, that is an admin job not an executive one.

I'm a senior leader with a team of ten and still do minutes. I don't believe in making the most junior person do all the grunt work. It's good to keep everyone's broad skill sets up and keep them humble taking it in turns to lead/support.

I feel your pain - people assume as I’m the only female in the room I have shorthand and minute taking expertise. I have found that all of my recent Teams meetings have been recordered and the minuets taken from them by someone who wasn’t even in the room. Perfect!!!! Also I’ve said - sure I’ll do this meeting and stand so can do tomorrow’s.

Ask to record the meeting then you are not scrabbling! It's not rocket science !!

My response next time you're asked would be 'sorry not my turn this time, i did it last time'

I'm the only woman on a committee of seven - club related, chair, secretary and treasurer plus others, including me.

Twice in recent months, the secretary has been unavoidably absent from meetings at short notice, and twice the chair has asked if someone else can take the minutes. Twice he has looked straight at me as he's asked the question. Twice I've said no. I think he's got the message now.

@suzyscat

Isn't it standard office sexism to expect a woman, however senior or irrelevant her role, to pick up this shit, or book a table for a company dinner. I've seen countless w of senior business women being given as hoc menial tasks, not in their job description, instead asking male office juniours/ interns, or men doing it themselves.

YANBU he isn't your boss, it's not your job and you didn't agree to do it.

100% this.

We don't do minutes just action points and in some meetings we take turns to chair. I would not volunteer take actions for this meeting.