# Examples — Meeting Notes House Style

# Contents

• Action-item pairs
• Complete worked example (bad → house style)
• The "no decisions" meeting
• Gotchas

# Action-item pairs

# Complete worked example

Raw input (chronological ramble):

talked about launch date, marketing wants sept, eng says risky. went back and forth on the export feature. decided to cut it. sarah raised the EU question again, nobody had the legal answer. mike will do something about the beta emails. next meeting tuesday.

❌ Bad version (chronological, ownerless):

Meeting Notes

We started by discussing the launch date. Marketing prefers September but engineering expressed concerns. There was a long discussion about the export feature and it was eventually decided to cut it. Sarah raised the EU question again. Mike will handle the beta emails. Next meeting Tuesday.

✅ House-style version:

Aug 5 · Launch sync · Sarah, Mike, Priya, Simon (notes) · Goal: lock scope for Sept launch

Decisions

1. Export feature cut from launch scope — blocks 0 of 12 beta customers; keeping it risks the September window. (Revisit for the October release.)

Action items

• Mike: send beta-cohort email announcing the export change — by Aug 7
• Priya: confirm Sept 15 with the agency and book assets — by Aug 8
• Simon: circulate these notes; corrections by Aug 6 noon

OPEN

• EU availability at launch — blocked on legal's VAT answer. Next: Sarah asks legal by Aug 7; decision at Tuesday's sync.

Discussion summary

• Marketing (Priya) holds Sept 15; engineering (Mike) called the date "tight but doable" once export was cut.
• Sarah noted the EU question has now slipped twice — hence the OPEN flag with a dated next step.

Next sync: Tue Aug 12, same time.

# The "no decisions" meeting

Aug 6 · Architecture brainstorm · Full eng team · Goal: explore options (no decision expected)

No decisions — discussion only.

Action items

• Dana: write up option A (event-sourced) as a 1-pager — by Fri
• Sam: write up option B (CRUD + audit log) as a 1-pager — by Fri

Discussion summary: [3–5 neutral bullets]

# Recurring-meeting variant (carry-forward discipline)

For weekly syncs, open with last week's actions and their status — an action item that never gets re-read never gets done.

Carried from Aug 5:

• ✅ Mike: beta-cohort email — sent Aug 7
• ❌ Priya: agency confirmation — slipped; new date Aug 14 (2nd slip — flagged)

Decisions …

Rules: a slipped action keeps its history ("2nd slip") rather than silently getting a fresh deadline; done items appear once with ✅ then drop off; an action slipping three times goes to the meeting agenda as a blocker, not back onto the list.

# Gotchas

• "Owner: everyone" means owner: no one. Split it per person or assign one collector.
• Deadlines like "next week" rot instantly — convert to a date while the meeting context is fresh.
• Decisions hidden in the discussion section get missed by the decisions-only readers; if it was decided, it appears under Decisions, full stop.
• Recording who was late/absent-with-excuse is surveillance, not minutes — list attendees, skip the commentary.
• The corrections window ("stands as the record after tomorrow noon") is what turns notes into an authoritative artifact; don't skip it.