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Online Minute Taking Training vs. In-Person: Which Works Best?
How Traditional Minutes Are Sabotaging Business Success - An Operations Expert's Reality Check
The sound of relentless typing overwhelmed the boardroom while the important critical decision making happened second place to the documentation ritual.
Let me tell you the brutal truth that many Australian businesses don't want to admit: most minute taking is a total waste of resources that creates the pretence of professional practice while genuinely stopping real work from getting done.
I've witnessed dozens of sessions where the best experienced experts in the room waste their whole time documenting conversations instead of engaging their knowledge to address real operational challenges.
The problem doesn't lie in the fact that documentation is unnecessary - it's that we've turned record keeping into a administrative ceremony that helps nobody and wastes significant amounts of useful working hours.
Here's a actual case study that completely illustrates the madness of modern documentation practices.
I witnessed a sales team spend an hour in their scheduled meeting while their best contributor remained silent, frantically writing every comment.
This individual was earning over $100,000 per year and had twelve years of professional experience. Instead of engaging their expert knowledge to the decision making they were functioning as a expensive note taker.
So they had multiple separate resources creating multiple distinct versions of the identical conversation. The experienced person writing typed minutes, the electronic capture, the transcription of the discussion, and whatever extra notes different participants were creating.
The meeting addressed important decisions about project strategy, but the professional most equipped to guide those discussions was entirely focused on documenting all trivial remark instead of thinking productively.
The total cost for recording this individual session was over $3,000, and completely zero of the documentation was subsequently referenced for one practical objective.
And the ultimate absurdity? Eight months later, not a single individual could recall a single specific action that had emerged from that conference and none of the comprehensive documentation had been referenced for one practical purpose.
The digital advancement has made the record keeping crisis significantly worse rather than better.
Instead of simpler administration, we now have systems of redundant electronic documentation systems: automated documentation systems, connected task tracking tools, shared note taking tools, and complex reporting tools that interpret all the recorded data.
I've consulted with teams where employees now invest longer time organising their digital documentation records than they invested in the original sessions that were documented.
The cognitive load is staggering. Professionals are not participating in decisions more meaningfully - they're simply handling more documentation complexity.
This assessment will probably annoy most of the compliance officers hearing this, but detailed minute taking is usually a legal exercise that has nothing to do with meaningful responsibility.
The regulatory requirements for corporate record keeping are almost always significantly simpler than the sophisticated systems most businesses maintain.
Organisations develop elaborate minute taking protocols based on misinterpreted concerns about what potentially be demanded in some imaginary potential audit challenge.
The consequence? Substantial investments in resources and budget for documentation processes that offer questionable value while dramatically reducing workplace effectiveness.
Genuine responsibility comes from actionable outcomes, not from extensive transcripts of all word said in a conference.
How do you develop effective accountability approaches that support business objectives without destroying productivity?
Apply the 80/20 principle to meeting record keeping.
The most productive meeting minutes I've seen are focused records that answer three critical questions: What decisions were reached? Who is responsible for what actions? When are tasks required?
Everything else is documentation excess that generates no utility to the team or its objectives.
Stop the one size fits all strategy to meeting record keeping.
The record keeping approach for a creative meeting are completely separate from a official approval session.
Establish straightforward categories: Minimal records for routine discussions, Essential decision recording for standard team conferences, Comprehensive record keeping for critical conferences.
The investment of professional documentation services is almost always far less than the opportunity loss of requiring high value staff waste their time on documentation duties.
Separate between discussions that must have formal records and those that shouldn't.
I've consulted for companies that reflexively expect minute taking for each meeting, regardless of the objective or value of the session.
Limit formal record keeping for sessions where decisions have regulatory consequences, where different stakeholders must have shared understanding, or where multi part implementation initiatives must be tracked over long durations.
The critical factor is ensuring conscious choices about documentation requirements based on genuine need rather than applying a standard method to every conferences.
The hourly cost of professional minute taking support is almost always much less than the opportunity cost of having high value professionals use their mental capacity on administrative work.
Choose digital tools that truly improve your operations, not platforms that need constant maintenance.
The most effective digital systems I've worked with are unobtrusive - they manage the administrative aspects of coordination without requiring new effort from session contributors.
The key is implementing technology that enhance your decision making objectives, not tools that become focuses in themselves.
The aim is automation that facilitates focus on important decision making while seamlessly managing the essential information.
The goal is automation that supports engagement on meaningful problem solving while seamlessly managing the essential coordination tasks.
What I need all executive knew about meeting documentation:
Effective governance comes from actionable decisions and consistent follow up, not from detailed transcripts of meetings.
Perfect documentation of poor discussions is still ineffective minutes - it won't transform poor meetings into successful ones.
In contrast, I've encountered companies with sophisticated minute taking systems and terrible follow through because they mistook record keeping instead of actual accountability.
The worth of a session lies in the impact of the outcomes made and the actions that follow, not in the comprehensiveness of the documentation produced.
The real benefit of each conference resides in the quality of the outcomes established and the results that follow, not in the comprehensiveness of the documentation generated.
Focus your attention on facilitating environments for productive problem solving, and the accountability will follow naturally.
Direct your resources in creating excellent processes for excellent decision making, and appropriate record keeping will follow automatically.
The fundamental truth about corporate documentation?
Record keeping should serve results, not replace meaningful work.
Record keeping should support outcomes, not replace decision making.
All else is just bureaucratic theatre that destroys limited time and takes away from meaningful activities.
To find out more info about how to take accurate minutes of meetings have a look at the web-page.
Website: https://meetingsmoreengaging.bigcartel.com/product/training-for-engaging
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