3. Listening and recording at the table

In an hour's meeting, some nine thousand words are easily spoken. Perhaps three hundred of them end up in your minutes. You make that selection live, while the conversation simply carries on. This chapter is about how you make that choice, how you notice that there is a gap in your notes, and what your page looks like so that you don't lose anything.

Selective listening is sharper listening

Selective listening means deliberately directing your attention to what the conversation yields and letting the rest pass by. You hear everything, but you note down only what helps the minutes along. That is something other than half-listening: you are in fact sharper than most participants, because you keep running the same question alongside. Does this sentence produce anything that someone will need to be able to fall back on later?

The main points are the outcomes and the information needed to understand those outcomes. Six types of statement are always a main point. Decisions, including its status: final, subject to confirmation or conditional. Agreements and actions: as soon as you hear a name and a time in one sentence, your pen goes up. Positions with consequences, such as an objection that led to the decision being amended. New facts: figures, dates, names, amounts and changes that were not yet in the documents. Shifts: a point that carries over to the next meeting, an agenda item that is dropped, a deadline that moves. And outstanding questions: what the meeting could not answer and who will look into it.

Everything beyond that is in principle secondary: the repetition of an argument that has already been noted down, thinking aloud, an anecdote by way of illustration, a side track about the car park, and the five sentences someone uses to introduce their point before they actually make it. Nor do you need to recount a lengthy explanation of a document that goes out as an appendix; a reference to the appendix is enough.

Signal words as a switch

Speakers almost always announce their main point. "I propose that", "so in summary", "on condition that", "let's agree that", "I want it noted that": a handful of phrases that you will recognise blindly after a few meetings. Pay particular attention to the chair. Every time they summarise, you are handed the main point for free, in wording that can go straight into the report.

The six questions of WWWWWH

WWWWWH stands for Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. It is a checklist journalists use to test whether a report is complete, and it works just as well at the meeting table. You don't use it to write down six questions in a row, but to scan in two seconds at the end of an agenda item whether there is a gap in your notes.

Who raises the item, who takes the decision and who carries it out? For an action point this is the most important of the six questions: without a name there is nothing left to come back to. What has been decided, agreed or reported exactly? You look for the essence in one sentence, so not "the supplier was discussed" but "the contract with supplier X will not be renewed". Where does it take place? That may be a location, but more often it is a department, an establishment, a system or a document. When does it take effect, when is it finished, when does it come back on the agenda? Vague indications such as "soon" or "after the summer" you write down literally if that is how they were said, but you flag them as something to follow up on. Why was this route chosen? This is the question that still makes the report readable years later, and one sentence is often enough: "because of the sixteen-week delivery time". And how is it carried out, and how was the decision reached? That could be a vote, a decision subject to conditions, or a working method that the meeting explicitly sets out.

The six questions are a checklist, not a form to fill in. For an announcement about building work you don't need to know why that particular contractor was chosen; for a decision on an investment you want to know exactly that. The purpose of the agenda item determines which questions you sharpen. For an informative item, What and When are the core. For an opinion-forming item, Who and Why come first, because you are recording which viewpoints exist and on what grounds. For a decision-making item, What, Who and When must all three be right down to the word, and How gives you the status of the decision.

Your page in zones

A complete list of questions is of little use to you if the answers are scattered across three pages. So divide your page into fixed zones whose function never changes: your substantive notes in the middle, the actions in their own column on the right, your doubts as a question mark in the margin, and a strip along the bottom for the course of the meeting. That way you don't have to think about where something should go while you are writing.

That bottom strip is your process strip. It records who came in later or left early and at which agenda item, which documents were missing, which items were postponed and how a decision was reached: with everyone's agreement, with a note from a participant who was against, or by a vote with a result. Part of this simply belongs in the minutes, certainly for decisions with a long retention period. Another part is for you alone: an item that overruns by twenty-five minutes when ten were scheduled tells you that something is going on and that you need to take sharper notes. You don't describe tension and irritation in the minutes, but knowing that an item was sensitive does determine how carefully you choose your wording.

Every action in the same fixed format

The right-hand zone of your page fills up with the lines your colleagues look at most once the meeting is over. Always write those lines in the same order, because it is precisely because the order never changes that your eye immediately spots which part is missing.

• Who: the initials of one person. If no name is mentioned, put a dash and a question mark: "? – review draft". You ask about that mark before the agenda item closes.
• What: a verb with a concrete object. "Request quotes from three suppliers" is usable, "website" is not.
• When: a date in your own shorthand, for example 1/9. If all you hear is "soon" or "before the summer", note that in quotation marks, so that when writing up you can see that the meeting itself remained vague.
• Sequence number: the number under which the action enters the action and decision list, for example 24-07. Number them consecutively during the meeting, so you can refer back to them in the same meeting.

You only fill in the status when writing things up; during the meeting every new action is by definition open. At the end of each agenda item, run through your right-hand zone. If a name or a date is missing, that is the moment for a short question, while those involved are still on the subject. After the item, the same question costs three times as much time, because the whole table first has to shift back.

Not every statement with a verb in it is an action. "We should look at that some time" is an intention without an owner. Put it in the action list and three months later it will still be open, and your list loses its authority. Put it nowhere and it disappears. The solution is a parking list at the bottom of your page, with the initials of whoever raised it. At the end of the meeting you put that list forward: whatever the meeting does assign to a person moves to your action zone, and the rest goes into the minutes as an agenda suggestion or disappears.

Summary

• Selective listening is sharper listening: you hear everything, you note down only what helps the minutes along.
• Always main points: decisions, agreements and actions, positions with consequences, new facts, shifts and outstanding questions.
• Side issues are the run-up to the point, the repetition, the anecdote and the explanation of an appendix.
• Signal words such as "I propose", "so in summary" and "on condition that" tell you that something needs to be recorded. The chair's summary is a gift.
• WWWWWH stands for Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. At the end of each agenda item, you scan whether any box has been left empty.
• For an informative item, What and When carry the weight; for an opinion-forming item, Who and Why; for a decision-making item, What, Who and When, with How for the status of the decision.
• Divide your page into fixed zones: content in the middle, actions on the right, doubts in the margin, process at the bottom.
• Every action line has the same form: who (one name), what (verb plus object), when (a date) and a sequence number that travels along until the action is completed.
• An intention without an owner does not belong in the action list but on your parking list, which you put forward at the end.