Meetings and minutes
Action item
A concrete task following from a meeting, with one owner and one deadline.
An action item is a task that follows from a meeting.
An action item needs three things in order to get done:
- Who. One name, not a department.
- What. An action, not a topic.
- By when. A date, not “soon”.
If one of them is missing, nothing usually happens:
- “We need to follow up with the customer” → nobody does
- “Kari follows up with the customer” → might happen
- “Kari calls the customer by Friday 8 August” → happens
Write names, not roles
“Marketing will look at it” is not a task. It is an address nobody lives at. A department cannot call anyone.
Follow them up as a standing item
An action item without follow-up is an intention. Put the status of the last round as the first item in the next meeting, and write in the minutes whether it actually happened. Without that the items disappear quietly, and the same matters come up again.
Many people gather the items in a running decision log or action list that lives across meetings, rather than each set of minutes starting over.