Customer Reviews

Taking Minutes of Meetings (Creating Success)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Written by freelance training consultant and secretarial education expert Joanna Gutmann, Taking Minutes of Meetings is a no-nonsense, self-teaching tool instructing the reader in the theory and application of proper forms for taking minutes (records) of a meeting. Chapters cover tips for setting up a meeting, personal preparation recommendations, guidelines for taking notes and constructing minutes, how to record decisions and actions in such a manner that any reader will immediately understand what happened, and much more. Numerous examples and sample formats clearly show the note-taking forms that Gutmann recommends, in this one-of-a-kind quick-study tool that can swiftly transform any willing student into a skilled minute-taker.

This second edition of Gutmann's book is succinct and practical. However, American users beware! The spellings and, more important, the idioms and assumptions of this book are British. References are to British laws and practices. Money is in pounds.

The unsung hero of any corporate meeting is the minute-taker, quietly and diligently recording the decisions, big and small, that fuel the engines of business. Minute-taking is not simply the process of scribbling notes on a pad. A skilled minute-taker distills lengthy discussions down to their essential messages, and creates order and harmony from the often discordant process of reaching a consensus. Office communication consultant Joanna Gutmann carefully explains every aspect of the process, from setting up the meeting and distributing the agenda to taking notes and formatting the minutes. You will encounter quite a bit of redundancy if you read the book cover-to-cover, but we believe you will find it to be an indispensable reference if you are assigned to take the minutes.

Very useful for note taking, imperfect for minute writing:

- The author uses too much passive sentences which fail to address who will do what. E.g.: "the managing director would be informed": by whom ? "the department head will inform the MD" seems better.

- The author repeatedly starts sentences with "It was agreed that". Useless. State directly who will (could, should) make happen what by when and save 4 words at each sentence.

- The author seems to imply that "business-like" means heavy, as far as writing style is concerned. I strongly disagree.

Why the 4 stars ? Because the book delivers.
- For Chapters 8 and 9, taking notes and structuring notes
- The Note taking process p82 = worth the price of the book.
- Despite the above mentioned flaws, the author covers all the bases.

Other book worth exploring: The Pyramid Principle.

I'm a real dummy when it comes to taking minutes at a board meeting - this book set me straight.