Five Things To Do Twenty Minutes After a Meeting

Estimated reading time: 2 mins

What you do immediately AFTER a meeting could make the meeting even more worthwhile.

How many meetings do you leave and then get on with something else? The time immediately after a meeting is critical to making sure you get the most from it. Particularly if you took away actions from the meeting.

Here are five things to do straight away after a meeting.

1. Write up the minutes. Now is the best time to check that all the minutes you wrote actually mean something to you. Leave it to later on, whilst it isn’t as fresh in your head, could lead to confusion and the sharing of mis-information. Often, when taking minutes, we can scrawl in order to keep up with the conversation. Scrawl can result in mis-understanding! It’s far better to double-check what was written now as you will be much more likely to forget later on
2. Make sure your actions are actionable. Use the time immediately after the meeting to make sure that there are no blockers, to your knowledge, to you pursuing those actions. If you know that there will be issues ahead, then ensure that you’ll deal with them as soon as possible. You could also use this time to have a ponder on the actions taken by other people, and if you have knowledge of any reason why their actions are going to prove difficult to progress.
3. Cascade information/decisions to co-workers. Now is the time to share this information, whilst it is fresh in your head, and give co-workers the opportunity to ask questions. Often, what was discussed and agreed in a meeting affects other people, and they should be informed. Don’t wait for the minutes to be circulated. Do it now. You could do this verbally or by email. I prefer verbally – it saves time
4. Follow up. If you need to thank participants of the meeting for attending – do this now – it’s a good opportunity to remind about any critical actions from the meeting. It’s also a good time to remind participants if there is a subsequent meeting, and to schedule this now in their calendars.
5. Review what worked, and didn’t work. Take a moment to look back at the meeting and review what worked well, and what didn’t work so well. Share this with colleagues or cohorts so you can learn and put this into action for the next meeting

Check out these similar posts:

• Ten Things to do Twenty Minutes Before a Meeting
• What Makes a Good Meeting Agenda?
• 11 Things To Do Before the Start of a Meeting
• What is a ‘Stand-Up Meeting’? (and Why You Should Try Them)
• The ‘art’ of Opening and Closing meetings