Direction skills learned from minutes

Hello, I'm Director Hayato Nakagawa.
Recently, due to the busy period at the end of the fiscal year, I have been doing more coding work than directing.
However, when I'm busy coding, I tend to forget about direction, so I'd like to talk about taking minutes, which was the thing I was worst at, and also as a reminder.

My first encounter with minutes

"Hayato, can you write the minutes?"

When I was accompanying meetings as an apprentice director and my boss told me this, all I could say was, "What's a minutes of the meeting?"

After listening to him, it seems that all you need to do is write down what you and your customers say in meetings.

Thinking that this would work out somehow, I replied, "Okay, I'll give it a try," and that was when my battle with the minutes began...

I can't write the minutes...

"Mr./Ms. ◯◯ (boss), I have prepared the minutes, so please check them."
"Mr./Ms. ◯◯ (boss), I have revised the minutes, so please check them."
"Mr./Ms. ◯◯ (boss), I have revised the minutes again, so please check them."

I wonder how many times this exchange has been repeated...

Not only was it never OK no matter how many times I wrote it, but it seemed like the number of red-ink corrections was increasing with each passing time.
To be honest, I thought I would get used to it as I continued writing and it would all work out, but that was not the case at all.

To begin with, I had no confidence in my Japanese language skills or vocabulary, so why did I think I could manage it somehow?

I once looked at the minutes that my boss had finally revised and submitted, but I couldn't see the difference between them and the ones I had written.

So I thought, "If I can't tell the difference, I'll just compare it mechanically," and decided to compare the contents written using a difference comparison tool.

Comparing meeting minutes using Kaleidoscope

I realized that while the main points had not changed, many small details such as the subject had been added, and that minutes would not be meaningful unless they were written in detail.

for example,

"We will proceed with Plan A for the fourth tier."
In this sentence, it is unclear whether the question is about a PC or a smartphone, and the content of Plan A is unclear.

"For the fourth layer of the PC , we will proceed with design plan A (with side menu) ."

In this way, by filling in the missing parts, it was finally possible to communicate to others.
In this way, when my own knowledge was not enough, I started by using tools to mechanically check what needed to be written in the minutes.

Divide into decisions (decisions) and tasks (ongoing issues)

I also realized that if I did not clearly state what had been decided and how, and what had not been decided, who needed to decide and by when , when recording the minutes, it would be difficult to keep to schedule.

"The color of the global navigation will be decided based on your proposal, but please consider the text of the global navigation and contact us if there are any changes [by 4/2, Mr. XXX]"

At first, I thought that as long as I made a proper schedule, I would be able to manage it.
However, that alone is not enough. I realized that by recording small tasks that do not appear on the schedule in the minutes and sharing the tasks with everyone, things would ultimately proceed according to schedule.

As written in the chapter "Agenda Becomes Issues" in " Daily Preparation Leads to Productive Meetings ", I learned how to prepare and proceed as an MC so that meetings with clients themselves become "decisions and ongoing issues" while writing the minutes.

Through the minutes

I have asked questions to my boss and senior directors.
What are the most important skills for a director?

The answer I got was "to be able to write minutes properly."
Being able to write minutes is a form of "progress management ability" - knowing what needs to be completed by when according to the schedule - and this is the most important skill for a director.

Direction involves a variety of tasks, all of which are important, but learning that "being able to write minutes (is necessary to provide direction like that)" is essential to moving a project forward was a major discovery for me.

That said, my time as a director is still short and I have a lot to learn, but I would like to continue taking minutes and work hard to be able to write minutes that allow "everyone, both clients and our company, to feel at ease and aim for the goal."