In the management consulting world, you go to a lot of meetings.

Because of all of those meetings, one of the most important things you can do coming into consulting (or any other career) is make sure you know how to take notes.

Working on consulting engagements, it’s not uncommon to have multiple meetings to prepare for the “real” meeting with the client. If you play your cards right, the meetings, at least, yield useful information.

There’s a huge problem with all of these meetings though – people have short-term memories. By the time the participants leave the meeting and get back to their desks, that discussion will have long faded from their memory.

And even worse, when you ask people about their commitments made in the meeting later, they act like you’re speaking in a language they’ve never heard before. (I suppose accountability could be considered a language, and I know there are some people out there who aren’t familiar with it.)

That is exactly why you’ll find the rich and powerful to be avid note takers.

When taking notes for yourself, you should consider adding structure for searchability using a tool like Evernote.  When it comes to meeting notes, you’ll want to email those out and be sure to focus on capturing the six following pieces of information. [Read more…]