A simple way to capture the value and outcomes from every meeting

Make clean agreements at the end of each meeting and capture them quickly.

You’ve made it through most of the meeting - and you’ve had some truly powerful conversations. 

But how many times have you felt really clear and even excited about something in a meeting - only for that feeling to almost entirely ebb away by the time you’re back at your desk and into deep work again?

Question: how can you translate what’s been discussed in this meeting into tangible outcomes that everyone is completely clear on back at their desk - without endless note-taking? 

Let’s tackle getting clarity first.

You know that thing where someone senior says… we should really do X.

Everyone else is all, “oh yes, absolutely” but no one quite knows:

- Is this a decision?

- Do we mean do this now?

- Are you going to do it?

- Or are you politely telling us WE need to do it?!

So first, this is normal. Early group research(1) shows people often use a proposing style in meetings to float ideas and see if they fly. It feels more collaborative and less authoritarian. 

That’s great. But each time, this messy, non-threatening language needs cleaning up. 

There is nothing less collaborative than feeling completely unclear about what’s been agreed. So by all means propose. And then clean up.

(1) Bales, R. F., & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1951). Phases in group problem-solving. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 46(4), 485–495.

Clean up

The first step is to make clean, clear agreements that we plan to keep.

You can do this as you go along and I like to separate out decisions from actions.

First decisions.

“How do you see us making that happen?

“Is that a decision?” 

“How should I capture that?”

“Who will own this?”

Then actions.

“What’s the first action on that?”

“What needs to happen by when?”

And also items to park for later:

“Shall we list that as something we want to come back to another time?”

And/or you can do it all at the end:

“What decisions have we made today?”

“What will happen next?”

“What do we want to come back to next time?”

And now capture

Now’s the moment to introduce the ‘capture canvas’. 

Here is my super simple version.

What have we decided? Log that.

What should go in a car park to be addressed next time / in another meeting? Log that.

What will happen next? Log that

Be as specific as possible - enough detail to preserve the ‘group brain’ you’ve developed during the meeting.

Keep it in a shared format - on a whiteboard, a shared document, spreadsheet - whatever. The point is, everyone can see it at the same time.

I do have a a more exciting capture canvas which is here: