This booklet is part of Step 4 – Communicating Information of the five-step documentation process (Step 1 – Capturing Information, Step 2 – Structuring Information, Step 3 – Presenting Information, Step 4 –Communicating Information, Step 5 – Storing and Maintaining Information). This booklet provides some basic tips, techniques, approaches and exercises for understanding and practicing how to apply documentation practices for creating highly effective meetings.

1. SUPERCHARGING YOUR DOCUMENTATION
1
DOCUMENTATION FOR
EFFECTIVE MEETINGS
By Adrienne Bellehumeur
www.leadersinbusinessanalysis.com
This booklet is part of Step 4 – Communicating Information of the five-step documentation process (Step 1
– Capturing Information, Step 2 – Structuring Information, Step 3 – Presenting Information, Step 4 –
Communicating Information, Step 5 – Storing and Maintaining Information). This booklet provides some
basic tips, techniques, approaches and exercises for understanding and practicing how to apply
documentation practices for creating highly effective meetings.
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WORKBOOK SERIES
CHALLENGE
Effective Documentation to Make the Most Effective
Meetings
Meetings are one of the most important areas that will improve your
communications and documentation.
In the documentation process, Communicating represents Step 4 (after (1) Capturing, (2)
Structuring and (3) Presenting) is all about sharing your documentation with your stakeholders.

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Your ability to communicate is based largely on your verbal skills and confidence in talking to
people. However, it is also based on your written skills including your documentation skills.
While this booklet does not go into the many ways to improve your verbal communications, it
does focus on one of the most important areas that will improve your communications and
documentation: meetings.
We live in a culture of meetings: team meetings, progress meetings, communications meetings,
update meetings, manager meetings, standing meetings, organization meetings, and sales
meetings. Without strong meeting practices complemented by effective documentation
techniques, this culture can be unhealthy and unproductive.
Meetings must have purpose: to achieve specific objectives tied to the
objectives of your organization. Effective documentation practices break the
cycle of useless meetings.

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SOLUTION:
How to Break the Cycle of Useless Meetings
The ability to create effective meeting notes is one of the most important skills
for mastering documentation.
Meeting notes are fundamental to the process and to
maintaining a culture of accountability.
Without them, you cannot capture intellectual property within
your department or drive momentum in your projects, operations
or sales results. If your organization does not have a practice of
taking meeting notes, then your meetings are no more than
information sharing, or even whining and gossiping sessions.
Your meetings may have interesting discussions but, without
effective notes and a follow-up process, the issues and
challenges are likely repeated over the life of the project or
team. If your organization does take meeting notes but does not
use them, then you need to educate your employees on how to
create effective meeting notes and how to use them.
What barriers might your employees be facing?
(1) Your employees may not understand the true value of
meeting notes: that they are not bland paperwork, but the
compass for your projects and operations where actions
begin and decisions are made.
(2) Your employees may not know how to create notes.
Dumping everything attendees said during the meeting into
lifeless documents is not effective meeting note taking.
Your employees may not understand the meeting concepts or
issues.
Note – this booklet
has conscientiously
not called meeting
notes “meeting
minutes” for the
reason that it
often conjures an
inaccurate
stereotype of the
practice of taking
meeting notes.

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QUICK TIPS:
Creating Highly Effective
Meeting Notes
Are you looking to improve your meetings and meeting
notes?
(1) Have a Clear Purpose of Your Meeting – This might sound like an obvious tip to
you, but sadly many professionals – if not most – conduct meetings without putting
enough thought into what exactly they need to get out of them. The person responsible
for taking your meeting notes must understand what issues he or she needs to listen for
and clarify with attendees. Your meeting purpose must be as clear and focused as
possible. “Making a decision about whether to buy ABC software.” “Planning the action
items for XYZ proposal for March.” “Defining the key messages for the monthly project
communication to management.”
(2) Put a Value on Your Meeting – This step reinforces the need to treat the time of
your employees, consultants and your organization overall as valuable. Assign a rate for
all attendees; say $100 per hour. Then calculate the amount it would cost you to run
this meeting using the assigned rates for all attendees. If you needed a business case to
hold this meeting, would the meeting really be worth the price you calculated? If not,
then consider whether the meeting is really necessary or whether you need all
attendees to be present.
(3) Do Not, Repeat, Do Not Regurgitate What Was Said in the Meeting – This
is the most common and most serious mistake when it comes to writing meeting notes.
Notes are not intended as a dumping ground for everything that everyone said; they
structure unstructured information. You must closely examine the information and then
strategically structure it into logical headings, emphasizing the important points and
removing useless information.

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(4) Practice Active Listening – Listening skills are essential for creating effective
meeting notes. Practice active listening through asking attendees to clarify the most
important points from the meeting (before they leave from it), and the decisions they
made during the meeting or decided to delay to a future date.
(5) Label Action Items and Decisions – The primary purpose of your meetings should
be to drive actions and decisions. You need to clearly label all action items and decisions
(“Action Item 1:”, and “Decision Needed:”). You also need to assign clear owners
accountable for these actions and decisions. Although action items may be clear, the
specific decisions required to act upon them are generally murkier because team
members are often reluctant to make strong decisions. (Ask for suggestions rather than
definitive answers if decisions aren’t forthcoming.) Meeting notes will power more
accountability into your decision-making process.
(6) Make Them Readable and Engaging – Treat meeting notes like a critical
document that you will reference over the life of your project or team. Apply best
practices of technical writing to ensure that your notes clearly communicate to your
audience. Don’t be afraid to use tables, simple graphs, pictures and bullets to make your
notes visually appealing.
The Challenge with Traditional
“Minutes”
The challenge with traditional “minutes” is that they typically
record the discussions of the meeting in the order that they are
discussed and not necessarily in a way that drives the most
value out of the process.

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Graphical Facilitation & Meeting Notes
Graphical facilitation captures the attention of your audience, creates notes that
you will remember, and enhances the effectiveness of your meetings.
Graphical Facilitation is a technique that uses the power of visuals to help groups to think
through problems more effectively. Graphical facilitation typically uses large, wall-size sheets of
paper displayed in the meeting room. Throughout the meeting, the facilitator draws engaging
visuals to illustrate the key ideas and concepts discussed by the group. Especially when working
with more creative facilitators, the output from graphic facilitation sessions provides dynamic
meeting notes that become part of your project or operational documentation.

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EXERCISE:
Graphical Facilitation
This exercise will provide you with valuable practice in
facilitating through both visuals and text.
STEPS:
You will need a group of at least four people to do this exercise effectively. Have your speakers
begin speaking about the subject for 15 minutes while the facilitators capture the key points
from the meeting on each of their white pieces of paper.
The facilitators can use a combination of visuals and text to capture key points.
(1) Place large sheets of paper around the room and take out markers to draw on the
paper.
(2) Assign half of the members of your group to act in the role of “speakers” first.
(3) Assign the other half to act in the role of “graphical facilitators”.
(4) Choose a subject for the speakers to discuss; this can be any subject your speakers will
enjoy discussing.
Some of the ideas include:
 Pet peeves
 Favourite places to travel
 Best movies of all time
 Comfort foods

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DISCUSS & CONSIDER
How did each facilitator capture the information differently?
Did they list different key points or messages?
Did they list different key points or messages?
Where was the use of text appropriate?

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Which visuals were effective?