Did you know that every time you hold a staff meeting more than half of what you have said has already been forgotten before the meeting is over? If you’re wondering to yourself why your staff members have forgotten so much information, you might be surprised that it has more to do with human nature than a slipping memory.

Note taking has always been expected in meetings, especially for those who might forget who was responsible for individual tasks. There is more to note taking than simply writing down some key points that won’t mean anything tomorrow. With the proper note taking methods you can turn your office into a knowledgeable, actionable powerhouse. A commonly used method that we also recommend is the Cornell method.

If you haven’t used the Cornell method it’s simple and eliminates the need for constant review and memorization. Essentially, you break your page into three columns; notes, cues, and summary. The notes column is where you work during the meeting, making sure you use short hand, but not to the point where you don’t know what you wrote. Once the meeting is finished you will want to move over to the cue section of your notes. Here you begin to break down what your notes are about like main ideas, questions, and prompts that will help you remember what was said in the meeting. These are more or less line items of what your notes are, words that will help you remember parts of the meeting.

The next section you’ll move to is the summary section. This is a rather self-explanatory section but this is where you wrap it all up, making top-level ideas for quick reference. At this point you have well-organized notes that are easy to navigate especially when reviewing someone else’s notes. It’s easy to quickly glance and know what the notes are about and if you need further information you look to the cues to help you remember what was discussed at the last meeting. If you need further help you can then review the notes section so you can fully understand and remember what transpired.

While this provides great notes, we like to add an extra optional section called action reminders, this can be added onto the summary section. This part of the section is the most important aspect of your notes because it allows everyone to see who is supposed to follow up and when. When you implement this last part of note taking you’ll see that fewer items will fall through the cracks. It will eliminate staff members feeling like meetings as useless when actionable items are followed up on and recorded for accountability purposes.

Once you have these notes it’s good to convert these notes digitally and to store them according to your company or clients. When you set a standard for note taking, you empower your staff with collective knowledge that can help them make decisions. When you have a digital document system that is categorized by your company and/or clients you begin to change the way information is handled. When you’re working on client files you can quickly navigate to the clients notes and instantly find what you we’re looking for.