Guide to Action Items: Boost Meeting Efficiency and Follow-up

Action items typically come from meetings and discussions. They are activities that must be done to advance or meet a company objective. An action item will come to you as a task or activity to complete from a meeting or communication sent to you.  Assign a notetaker to your business meetings to record the action items from the meeting discussions. There are many types of business meetings that don’t generate action items, such as company announcements, in-house company training, or HR onboarding meetings. Problem-solving and project meetings generate action items until the problem is solved, company goal is achieved, or a project is completed.

Your list of items to be discussed at your meeting is called an agenda, which is to be discussed or addressed in some manner as a first step towards completing an objective. These agenda topics are sometimes allotted a specific amount of time for group discussions. The chosen topics advance a business initiative that the company believes is worth the expense of gathering a group of individuals to solve it. The problem can be in the form of an initiative to generate more income for the company or to save company revenues as efficiency initiatives. Go through your agenda listing at the scheduled meeting.

An Example of an Action Item Generated from a Meeting

An example of such a discussion is when you organize a staff marketing meeting to generate more revenues for the company. Once you have identified the personnel required, you will invite them to a scheduled meeting. You will also send an agenda with the topic of discussion to the group. At the meeting, you bring up the topic of generating more revenue for the company and ask for suggestions.

Your discussion can take on many forms including brainstorming or using a proven problem-solving methodology such as the 5Y’s. At the end of your team discussions, you should arrive at an agreement such as to engage a Digital Marketing company for Pay-per-click advertising. This type of advertising usually has fast returns and a good ROI. You and your team decide to assign a responsible person to source out possible digital marketing candidate companies who have experience in this type of advertising. The act of sourcing for companies in this example, is the action item from the discussion.

Follow-up is Everything!

Most business owners and senior company managers have a frustrated view of meetings complaining that they are a waste of time. One of the complaints most often cited for the frustration is the lack of follow-up from meetings. Avoid this criticism by ensuring that you record and track all your action items. They cite that action items are not completed on time or forgotten while company resources are wasted. As a meeting leader, you must follow up on the progress of each action item even if they are assigned to someone else to complete. People will quickly forget about previous action items when new and seemingly more urgent requests are being made of their time.  This is the reason why follow-up is so important.

Action items come from group meetings, email discussions, one-on-one in-person meetings, and other means. Any activity that has a responsible person assigned to complete the activity is an action item.

Business Meeting Minutes

Capture meeting minutes of all your meetings as this should be mandatory for everyone who organizes business meetings. The absence of meeting minutes is another culprit that plays a part in action items not being completed. Purchase a meeting minutes journal to make it easier on yourself. A meeting minutes journal has structured pages to capture all the information from your meetings. Your meeting minutes must have a basic format with details such as date, time, location, attendees, meeting purpose, and agenda items.

It is also important for you to record discussion summaries on the topics discussed, topic agreements, action items, responsible persons, and due dates. There are many meeting journals in the market, but the one that I recommend is the Konnect Meeting Minutes Journal. This journal has an easy-to-use index, a separate item action section, and comprehensive meeting minute pages designed for all types of business meetings. Have your company create a policy on the usage of meeting minutes journals. With this policy, your company meetings will be accurately recorded, and the generated activities tracked.

Why trust Me on This Topic?

I have been a business consultant for more than three decades specializing in getting businesses to the next level of their success. One of my tasks is usually to improve business meeting productivity. Businesses regardless of size need to meet productivity improvements whether they are new startups or businesses with thousands of employees. Some may be more advanced than others, but I have yet to experience a company that has maximized their meeting productivity. Here I will provide my thirty-plus years of experience, and through this and other articles that I have written address the misconception that meetings are a waste of time. Conduct your meetings properly and they will catapult your company well ahead of your competition.

Conclusion

Here is a summary of what I have said before I answer the ten most Frequently Asked Questions on action items. Your activities must be recorded and followed up. Use a well-formatted meeting minutes journal. Activities are action items that you will generate and complete from meeting discussions.  Use the  Konnect Meeting Minutes Journal for its many features including a separate location for action items. Lastly, every problem-solving meeting with an initiative or project must generate tasks and activities. Otherwise, the meeting is a waste of time and company resources.

Ten FAQ’s

Find the answers to the most frequently asked questions around action items. I will attempt to provide concise answers to each one shown below.

1. What are the action items in a meeting?

Action Items are generated from meeting discussions. Your meetings will have an identified objective which will generate activities through your discussions. Assign the activities also known as an action item to one or more individuals to complete by a specified date. Projects or problem-solving meetings generate the most action items. Company announcement meetings and HR onboarding meetings generate the least.

2. What are the action items in the meeting minutes?

Meeting minutes are a record of a meeting in a written format. It details where, when, and who attended the meeting, its purpose, and the discussions that took place. Your action items are the activities or tasks generated from your meeting discussions. These actions will have a responsible person or group assigned to complete them by an agreed due date. Use a meeting minutes journal to record all relevant meeting details and tasks.

3. How to write action items?

Writing action items is quite easy as you only need three components. One is a description of the action item in an active form. As an example, you wouldn’t write it as ‘sales team needs to meet regarding asking customers for positive Google reviews’. Write it instead as ‘organize a meeting for sales team regarding asking customers for positive Google reviews’. The second one is as an action whereas the first one is passive. The second element is to assign a responsible person to complete the task. The last component is to have a completion due for the action. Following the example above you would write it as Mr. John Doe is to organize a meeting for the sales team regarding asking customers for positive Google reviews by May 26^th, 2024.

4. How to track action items?

Tracking action items from meetings requires follow-up by someone other than the responsible person assigned to the action item to verify its progress or completeness. You can do so using a meeting minutes journal such as the Konnect Meeting Minutes Journal. This journal has a page section in the meeting minutes pages to write and record the action items properly as well as a separate section for all action items so that you can locate them easily without flipping many pages to find them. It’s a to-do list for you so that you can track as many as hundreds at one time quite easily.

5. What are action items in a meeting example?

Action items in a meeting example are if your company has a customer service problem and your Google reviews are sliding as your company is only getting bad reviews. Your task to solve the problem is to organize a meeting with colleagues to solve it. You notice during your meeting discussions that your sales staff do not actively engage with happy clients and ask them to place a good review on Google. Therefore, only the unsatisfied clients are placing reviews giving your company an unwelcomed biased view of your company services. Someone in the group was assigned the task of organizing a sales staff meeting to ask all sales staff to start asking happy clients to place good reviews for the company. This task of organizing and advising sales staff to ask for good reviews is an action item from the meeting.

6. What are the action items on an agenda?

An agenda is a listing of objectives to address in a business meeting. Look at your meeting objectives and itemize them as these will create your agenda. The objectives in your agenda that you want to cover in the meeting are known as action items. Therefore, action items on an agenda are activities that you must address in a meeting. Your previous meetings can also generate such tasks from those past discussions. Reporting the progress of those action items in subsequent meetings is normal practice.

7. How to write action items in meeting minutes?

Action items from meeting minutes require you to document the meeting discussion points that generated them. For context, ensure that you write the discussion points leading up to the recorded action items. A good-written action item description has three elements. A due date, a clear description of what has to be done, and the responsible person who completes the action item. Use a meeting journal to easily capture the meeting minutes such as the recommended Konnect Meeting Minutes Journal.

8. What are action items in business?

Action items are tasks, objectives, or activities that come from business meeting discussions. These are assigned to one person or a group, that is responsible for completing it by an agreed due date.

9. How to track action items in teams?

Team action items are more challenging to track than if they are assigned to single individuals. Obtain the results needed by assigning a group leader who will be responsible for completing the action items. Doing this will clear any confusion as leaving it to a leaderless group will cause disagreements that will lead to inaction. You don’t want the group to think that others are doing the work when in fact no one is. Both scenarios will lead to pointing fingers at one another and to uncompleted activities.  Ensure that all action items have a due date and are tracked with a meeting minute journal.

10. How to create action items for SMART goals?

Smart goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound. Please break large and complex goals into smaller actions that can be accomplished within the SMART goals timeline. Organize these actions and assign them to a group or an individual.  Use the critical path methodology to detail the longest sequential path that will be completed by the larger goals timeline. Have the other tasks concurrently accomplished within the same timeline as well?