Meetings
Meeting to decisions
You have raw notes and thirty minutes before everyone forgets.
Here are my meeting notes: [PASTE]. Return four sections only — Decisions taken, Owners and deadlines, Open questions, Nothing-happened items. No summary paragraph. No preamble. Use names exactly as they appear in my notes.
Meetings
Pre-read instead of presentation
Turn a status meeting into a document and get the half hour back.
Convert these notes into a one-page pre-read: [PASTE]. Structure: what changed since last time, what needs a decision, what I recommend and why, what I need from the room. Maximum 400 words.
Meetings
The agenda that ends on time
You are running it and it always overruns.
Build a [30/60] minute agenda for a meeting about [TOPIC] with [WHO]. For each item give the minutes allotted, the decision we need to reach, and what someone must bring for that decision to be possible. Mark any item that does not need a meeting.
Meetings
Voice note to action list
You walked out of a site visit or a call and talked into your phone.
Here is a transcript of a voice note I recorded after [SITUATION]: [PASTE]. Pull out every commitment I made, every commitment someone made to me, and anything I said I would find out. Put dates against them where I mentioned one, and mark the rest as undated.