On Taking Notes, Part 8: Getting Feedback

Unlike the six middle steps of note-taking, the first and last steps are collaborative efforts. A good planner asks those in the know for ideas in setting the stage for note-taking; a good writer does the same by asking other good writers for their input on those notes.

This step can take some extra time at first but not in the long run.  Think of some of the benefits:

• Increased confidence – You'll go into the drafting and rewriting stages of the writing process with a greater sense of being on the right path for your reading audience.
• Deeper insights – You'll have a better understanding of which details to embellish and which to truncate. 
• Improved efficiency – You'll save time as you transpose notes to the formal report.

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Read previous installments in this series:

Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes

Part 2: Listening with a Purpose  

Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

Part 4: Hitting the High Points
Part 5: Organizing the Notes
Part 6: Reviewing the Notes
Part 7: Rewriting the Notes

On Taking Notes, Part 7: Rewriting the Notes

Rewriting notes is akin to reviewing them; as you review your content, depth, and structure, you make necessary changes. The point of making rewriting a seventh separate step of note-taking, however, is to guarantee you've followed through on your plan. 

Have you ever failed to pack one incidental for a trip, pick up one item from the supermarket, or recall one fact for a test? The same can happen when taking notes. So rewriting stands out for those moments when you move, add, and delete details as you review your notes. The more skilled you become at note-taking, the more reviewing and rewriting seem simultaneous.

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Read previous installments in this series:

Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes

Part 2: Listening with a Purpose  

Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

Part 4: Hitting the High Points
Part 5: Organizing the Notes
Part 6: Reviewing the Notes

On Taking Notes, Part 6: Reviewing the Notes

Now you've been through the first five steps of the note-taking process: preparing, listening, reading, summarizing, and organizing. Why add review as a sixth step? After all, summarizing and organizing notes are a form of review. The review can be redundant in a great many cases, especially where templates are involved, with their pre-defined categories and limited space. But if you have a broad audience with contrasting concerns and no pre-determined guidelines or standard template, a review is in order.

You should review your notes for consistency in content and depth:

• Content – Ensure each reported section gets equal treatment among each talking point (e.g., problem - impact - solution - benefit, or, criteria - condition - cause - effect, or, issue - method - options - analysis - recommendation) 
• Depth – Provide the coverage that each talking point deserves with sufficient detail.

Of course, you can take care of these matters during the drafting stage, but you would be better off with a strong plan because of the increased efficiency it will bring to the writing. Now you are ready for step 7: rewriting, the stuff of the next post.

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Read previous installments in this series:

Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes

Part 2: Listening with a Purpose  

Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

Part 4: Hitting the High Points
Part 5: Organizing the Notes

On Taking Notes, Part 5: Organizing the Notes

You've prepared diligently for your meeting, conference, interview, walk-through, or reading; taken copious notes for what you saw, heard, or read; and selected the most important ones for reporting. Now you need to make sure those key points are in order.

Let's say you were organizing a list of problem areas in a production facility. Here are four ways you can organize them:

• Category – by the three major issues: equipment, staff, and building 
• Chronology – within equipment, the time in which the problems appear: compressor, conveyor, and wrapper 
• Importance – within staff, their relative value in the production process: assemblers, packagers, and maintenance
• Space – within building, the areas in the facility: shipping, production, and storage 

What makes structuring tricky is the range of organizing options available to you. Use them based on what your readers need to know.

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Read previous installments in this series:

Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes

Part 2: Listening with a Purpose  

Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

Part 4: Hitting the High Points

On Taking Notes, Part 4: Hitting the High Points

This eight-part series on note-taking is about the planning stage of the writing process, when you need to collect, organize, and assess content whether reporting on a meeting, documenting a project, or writing an essay for publication. 

Assuming you have captured the key words and phrases described in part 2 of this series, you should now be ready to transcribe them into a bullet list of high points. You're still in the note-taking stage, so quantity is more important than quality. Don't even concern yourself with organizing your list of ideas; that step will come after you have content to assess. You should get started as soon as possible to maximize your chances of recalling what you heard and saw at the meeting. 

As an example, Gino's assignment is to determine the feasibility of renting a satellite office for his company in a neighboring town. Your assignment is to capture the key points of the discussion at a weekly meeting. Your notes look something like this:

Not feasible to rent 135 Main Street, 3rd floor, only available space in Oakville. Toured area. No problems there except no public transportation. No big deal, all of our staff  drive to work. Good restaurants a block away (Big Garden Chinese, Americana Diner, Supreme Soul Food, Suave Soups). Walked entire floor: 2,000 square feet, sufficient for proposed 15 staff. Rent $12.75 square foot. Area average $8.40 square foot. Report at meeting next week on Parkton rental space.

Now create a bullet list of the items under an agenda-item heading:

Satellite Office Feasibility Study

• Gino says: not feasible to rent 135 Main Street, 3rd floor, 2,000 square feet, only available space in Oakville 
• Rent: $12.75/square foot, 52% higher than area average
• Gino will check in Parkton, report in meeting next week 

Notice all the information that has disappeared: the public transportation factor, nearby restaurants, even the sufficiency of the space. What matters for the record is the agenda item (renting satellite office), issue discussed (too expensive), action item (check Parkton), owner (Gino), and deadline (meeting next week).

But what if questions pop up about how great the space itself is?  They likely won't, but you'll always have your notes if they do.

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Read previous installments in this series:
Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes
Part 2: Listening with a Purpose
Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

On Taking Notes, Part 3: Reading with a Purpose

The main difference between note-taking for a live event and for reading is the control you have over the situation. Part 2 of this series on taking notes offers two useful tips for reviewing meetings. Those pointers, looking and listening for key words and phrases and asking for clarification, apply to an extent when it comes to reading, but you can do more as you have greater control over the content delivery as a reader.

I would suggest as a first step reading Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, which I review in this blog. In this highly educational book, the authors detail four levels of reading: 

• The elementary level focuses on word, sentence, and paragraph recognition and vocabulary development.
• The inspectional level looks at learning the content and basis of the book. 
• The analytical level covers interpreting and critiquing the reader's viewpoint.
• The synoptical level involves capturing the relevance of the book.  

Next, you should check reviews of the book to classify its type (e.g., biography, business, philosophy, politics) and summarize it in fewer than 50 words, including the issues it addresses. Then search the book for key words as you would when taking notes at a meeting or conference. Of course, a lot goes into these steps, but with practice you'll be able to cover them quickly.

Let's assume you have been assigned to review a book for your manager or team. (Yes, there are visionary, proactive managers who still engage in this practice.) I doubt you would do so to contribute to your manager's leisure reading list. A business purpose must accompany the assignment. Are you reading Stephen A. Schwarzman's What It Takes (also reviewed in this blog) to extract business principles that may be useful back at the office? Then you would do well to look at Schwarzman's 25 Rules for Work and Life at the conclusion of the book and search the index for where the author discusses the specific rule that captures your interest. On the other hand, if you were searching Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress to determine whether his historical perspective synchronizes with your company's mindset, you might be looking for supporting content that may bolster your organizational public relations strategy.  Finally, are you reading Rebecca D. Costa's The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction to view how worldwide trends may affect your firm's global ambitions? If yes, then search for the big questions Costa answers throughout the book.

And still there's more. How to Read a Book will fill in the blanks. 

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Read previous installments in this series:
Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes
Part 2: Listening with a Purpose

On Taking Notes, Part 2: Listening with a Purpose

Part 1 of this series on note-taking covered the three key questions to answer in preparing to listen at a meeting or to read a book. This part covers tips for listening with a purpose, and part 3 will cover reading with a purpose because each demands different focuses, skills, and approaches.

1. Look and listen for the key words and phrases. For each agenda item of business meetings, I search for four points: issue discussed, action item, owner, and timeline. For conference sessions, I search for six: issue discussed, critical challenge, strategy used, business result, lesson learned, and business applicability.

But there's more to it than that. Assume you are preparing to write meeting minutes. You have come to this session with a plan by answering the key questions I raised in part 1 of this series. Now that you are at the meeting, you should be prepared to capture the key words and phrases the presenters discuss. If they mention the problem (e.g., the system went down), capture its impact ($50,000 of lost revenue); without an impact, there is no problem. If they analyze the options, create a checklist of their advantages and disadvantages; options without advantages and disadvantages are not real options. It they offer a recommendation from among those options, look for its unique benefits; recommendations are hollow without those benefits. 

Make notes by simply bulleting the points and creating tables for which you must complete all columns and rows. Using this techniques ensures you capture all the key points and their supporting points. For instance, say you plug into your table for agenda item 1 the impact of the problem and just the recommendation 1, and agenda item 2 just the problem and the recommendation and benefits. You will see blank boxes for the benefits of the recommendation in the agenda item 1 and for impact of the problem in agenda item 2. Fill in those blank spaces. These key words or phrases, or numbers for that matter, might appear on the presenter's slides, so keep an eye on them as well.

As for using a tape recorder at meetings, I would advise against it unless you are reporting for a publication where precise direct quotes are necessary. Reviewing the tape recorder can defer focusing at the meeting and will take more time than the verbatim value it brings.

2. Ask for clarification. Of course, the practice of looking and listening for key words and phrases assumes that the speakers are on point. Too often they are not, so you'll have to be bold by asking for the business impact, suggested resolution, or action plan. Those who ask shall receive.

I will apply similar tips but with a different spin to reading with a purpose, the theme of part 3. 

On Taking Notes, Part 1: Preparing to Take Notes

This first installment of an eight-part series on note-taking results from the frequent requests I get to help people write effective reviews of meetings, conferences, programs, and books. The first step to writing focused reviews is note-taking, which is the planning stage of the writing process. Your first draft will go a lot smoother with a strong plan, so let's get started.

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I'm a big fan of reading for pure pleasure. Few activities are better than hanging out on a beach, in a park, or in your living room while cozying up to a fiction or nonfiction book just for the sake of relaxation. But reading with a purpose can happen at the same time. Pleasure and purpose can live in harmony.

What is reading, or listening, with a purpose? Actually, many things. For me it could mean making myself a more knowledgeable education consultant, or to better understanding a social issue in becoming a more informed citizen. For you it might mean getting through an academic course, learning a new skill, or passing a high-stakes test. For someone else it might lead to preparing for a terrific vacation experience, choosing the best academic path for a child, or achieving professional mastery in a craft.

Whatever the aim of our reading or listening with a purpose, we can take three useful steps to ensure we make the most of the reading experience.

First, answer: "Why and for whom am I taking notes?" If you're taking them just for yourself, then answer why you need them. To be updated on a project? To learn a new process? To determine the feasibility of an organizational move? To understand how the author created a cultural shift in her company? If you're taking notes for someone like your manager or your team, answer why they need the notes. If you're not sure, ask well before attending the event or reading the book. Without answering this question (I know, it's really two questions), your note-taking experience will be useless.
 
Second, answer: "What does the audience need to know?" List the necessary items, read them, and reread them to embed them in your consciousness. They will become your mission for attending the meeting or reading the material.

Third, answer: "What methods and sources would best get me the answers I want?" For attending an event, this might mean knowing which parts of the meeting and which speakers are most valuable. These assets shift from meeting to meeting and from book to book. For instance, I once attended a language conference to get a grasp of a speaker's communication theory; when I heard her the following year at the same conference, I was more interested in observing her communication style for my own development as a speaker. As for books, I remember reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Ultimate Experience to learn about his theory, while I read his Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discover and Invention to hear what his renowned subjects had to say about their creative experiences. For reading a book, decide whether you'll read the whole thing, key parts, appendices, and additional resources. Time is of the essence here. You have to be all business.

Now you're planning to listen or to read. You're ready for the next step, listening with a purpose, the topic of the next post.

Template for Meeting Summaries

In an earlier Words on the Line post, I noted why meeting summaries are so challenging to many employees who need to write them. For this reason, I provide a template to jumpstart the composition process. Keep in mind that this template works well for the results-driven business world better than it does for the process-driven government style, which uses the Robert's Rules of Order.  

A Tip for Writing Minutes

In my 2001 article, “Meeting of the Minutes: Writing Meeting Minutes,” I mentioned a major obstacle to writing effective meeting summaries: The writer ranks among the lowest of those attending. Often the staff members assigned to writing the meeting summaries do so because no one else wants to write them; therefore, if they see the meeting straying from the agenda item, their deference to the speakers would preclude them from insisting that the speakers stick to the topic. On the other hand, if the highest ranking person were to take notes for the minutes, he or she would likely keep discussions as focused and brief as possible—thereby making the composing job as easy as possible.

I can vouch for the reality of either situation, having sat in both seats. I remember as a junior manager having to write minutes for an executive meeting that I had thought would cover three agenda items and run one-half hour. It ended after three hours, covering only one of the three items at a level far too technical and politically charged for me to fully comprehend. I spent hours on the phone and in executives’ offices the next day deciding how to best write the minutes. But I also remember taking great pleasure as a marketing director leading a meeting of staff who reported to me, and as a trustee in which the executive director served at my pleasure. In both of these cases, I never hesitated to say, “Since that’s not an agenda item, let’s talk about it after the meeting.” The result: short meetings and brief minutes.

So why not have the meeting leader write the minutes? What a sure way to protect people’s time and ensure a smooth composing process. This is the standard practice at Carlisle Syntec, a leading manufacturer of roofing systems and products in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, according to Brandon Fuller, a Technical Specialist for the company. As a participant in a three-day technical writing class I delivered in Washington, D.C., last week, Mr. Fuller discussed the procedure: “The meeting leader is responsible for writing both the meeting agenda and the summary.” When asked how well the leader runs the meetings he has attended, Mr. Fuller replied, “They’re pretty efficient.”

If you’re thinking, “I wish more meetings ran like that at my job,” then consider the best practice employed at Carlisle Syntec!



To purchase your copy of The Art of On-the-Job Writing by Philip Vassallo, click here: http://firstbooks.com/shop/shopexd.asp?id=144