Adding Value not Ego (Was: meeting minutes--)

["Giordano, Connie" <connie -dot- giordano -at- twcable -dot- com>]

Rachel Rawlings wrote:

<I've always tried to avoid having to take minutes. That--and especially
transcription--should be a secretary's job. It's definitely not
something for a technical writer to be doing, and especially not a
female tech writer; we don't want to encourage devolution. ;)

That said, however, the few times I have had to take minutes it just
meant adding a few items to my meeting notes, which the way I take them
aren't much different than taking notes in a lecture. Those were
- the people in attendance, noting whether in person or by speaker
phone, and the names of any expected attendees who were absent;
- any changes to the published agenda;
- /all/ action items and assignments, even if they were not relevant to
me or people I dealt with directly, noting who made the decision and who
received the burden.>


My staff does meeting minutes all the time now (particularly for project
kick-offs and requirements gathering), and the project teams we work
with are falling all over themselves thanking us for them... It's one of
the few ways to bring order out of chaos.  I used to have this attitude,
that it was beneath me or that it just reinforced a stereotype. And I
don't particularly like doing them. But I have long since discovered the
power in being the scribe for projects--you know who promised what, who
needs what, what should happen when,and where all the bodies are buried!

Besides my job is to communicate technical information to the people who
need it when they need and how they need it--so if minutes help the
project and the team, I do them. 

MTC

Connie Giordano, M.A.
Knowledge Management Supervisor
Technology Services Group
Time Warner Cable
 
704.731.3755 (w)
704.957.8450 (m)
rightwords43 (AIM)
rightwords -at- msn -dot- com (MSNIM)
 
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."  - Walt Disney


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