Better Minutes and Better Meetings

LONDON - April 5, 2013 - PRLog -- DSPress authors are established subject-matter experts who both practice and teach in their areas of expertise, their books representing many years of professional knowledge. All DSPress titles are written in an approachable and readable style, using anecdotes and examples from the authors’ working lives to bring the subjects to life.  DSPress books are concise, packed with information, occasionally amusing and provide a good, informative read at a realistic price.

The first two titles are Service Management with ITIL® and Essential Minute Taking Skills.

Summary of Essential Minute Taking Skills

Without minutes participants often leave meetings with a differing understanding of what was agreed in the meeting. Minutes form a permanent record of the meeting, and what was agreed, therefore minutes need to be
• Clear
• Concise
• Consistent

This is rarely the case: few people are trained to take notes in meetings. The minute taker is often an ad hoc appointment, and sometimes done on the basis of who is available, rather than who will be good at the task. Often someone with secretarial skills is appointed to take the minutes, but secretarial skills transfer poorly to minute taking. The key skill in minute taking is not writing, but listening: the ability toactively listen to a human being, extract the key message from what they’re saying, and record it.

This book provides an end-to-end process that shows you how to:

• Plan, organise and run your meetings
• Use an end-to-end writing process that delivers effective and clear minutes
• Plan what you need to do at each stage in the meeting cycle
• Take notes, not full minutes, using a variety of tools
• Summarise the meeting and convert your notes to minutes
• Organize a review of your minutes with the chairperson
• Draft for clarity, and revise for concision
• Distribute your minutes

Peter Dillon-Parkin has developed and delivered courses to teach non-writers how to write clearly, concisely, and quickly for hundreds of organizations including the UN, OPEC, Credit Suisse and many more. He has published technical documents, books, articles, and white papers for over 40 years, and has focused on teaching writing skills for the past 15 years.

A sample chapter from Essential Minute Taking Skills follows:

ITIL® is the registered trademark of The Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom in the UK and other countries.

What Makes a Successful Meeting?

Clear Meeting Objectives

All meetings should have an objective, if only to avoid the type of meeting held simply because ‘we always have a meeting at nine a.m. on Monday.’ These are not likely to be useful meetings... Meetings can be used to:

•     Share and exchange up-to-date information

•    Exchange views and ideas

•    Decide upon a course of action

•    Accelerate requirements gathering

•    Analyse and solve problems in a team environment

•    Coordinate activities amongst different locations

•    Plan projects

•    Review progress

•    Build commitment
In fact there are too many reasons for calling a meeting to give a complete list. The key thing is to make sure you have well-defined reasons for calling a meeting. According to an Excel survey carried out for the tech company PolyVision, of workers who attend meetings each week, 75 per cent say that those gatherings could be more effective. Second only to clear objectives in improving effectiveness are meeting rules.

Interested in reading more?  Then get hold of the book!

Price printed IRO £7.70 $12.40/ISBN: 978-0954528843

Price eBook IRO £3.67 $5.56/ ASIN: B00AGYB6DU

All books will be produced in both electronic and printed versions, and are available in all good bookstores. Discounts are normally available on the printed books.

DSPress is an independent publisher located in the United Kingdom.

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Contact: www.dspress.org.uk     email feedback@dspress.biz

Forthcoming Titles:

Books in preparation include: Business Analysis Basics: What The BABOK Won’t Tell You; The Business Analysis Basics Toolbook; Technical Writing: The POWER Process; Project Management Essentials and Change Management Essentials