Minutes of Meeting

It’s important to send minutes of meeting so that the points agreed can be recorded and actions can be tracked. This serves the purpose to keep other stake holders informed who were not present in the meeting.

The activity starts right there when one of the stake holder feels the need of meeting and sends meeting invite. Meeting invite should be sent to all stake holders categorizing ‘Mandatory Presence’ and ‘Optional Presence’. Generally, people at higher management level are kept in ‘Optional Presence’.

In most cases, the person who sends the invite drives the meeting however if the invite is being sent by subordinate, the name of the person driving the meeting should be mentioned in ‘Chair’. The agenda of the meeting should be mentioned in ‘Summary’ as well as in ‘Detail’. Agenda helps the attendees to keep focused and come prepared with their relevant points of discussion. Any meeting invite without agenda stimulates many confusions in the receivers mind and causes the purpose of meeting badly defeated. 

After completion of meeting, minutes of meeting (MOM) should be sent within 24 hours. It’s better to send MOM on the same mail that has been sent for inviting the meeting. The points discussed and agreed should be mentioned point wise and if possible should be mapped with points of agenda. Owner name and target dates should be mentioned against each Action Items. The information about next meeting should be mentioned.

All the attendees’ names with their organization name should be mentioned in the last. Now a days, to help supervisors have a view of attendees, this section is mentioned on the top.

If there is any tracker file, which has been updated during the meeting, must be attached. MOM should be sent to all those stake holders whom meeting invite had been sent.

Seeds of thoughts:

If you are a professional and keep attending meetings, write MOM of recent meeting including meeting invite. Don’t worry if you are not, consider that you have to arrange the party for your sister’s wedding and you have called an event management agency for meeting. You intended to attend with one of you cousin. Write down what all discussed and agreed including action points and respective owners.

- Amit Roop