Still taking meeting minutes longhand? This 3-step AI fix changes everything
When I was an EA, minutes were the thing that always seemed to be lurking on my to-do list.
You see, I supported a VC founder who chaired 10-15 portfolio companies plus 2-3 charitable organizations at any given time — and I minuted most of those board meetings. It worked out to 5+ sets of minutes per month 😣 Now that’s one part of the job I really don’t miss.
I wish I’d had AI to help me back then.
So I’m genuinely shocked every time I hear someone talking about a minute-taking training course, or when an EA tells me they still record minutes longhand.
This is one of those near-perfect AI use cases:
Minutes are a mega big time suck
No one likes taking them
AI can really accurately handle the job
(this is all provided you’re using AI safely and within your company policies, more on that below)
Here’s your 3-step guide to how.
Side note: if you’re reading this and you want to dive deep into all the use cases for AI in your day-to-day, it’s not too late to sign up for the spring cohort of Carve AI — 7 weeks of high-impact AI & automation training especially for EAs. Kicks off Tues 29th. Join us.
Step 1: Get a high-quality transcript
Use a speech-to-text tool to transform spoken words in the meeting into a written transcript.
This is pretty simple for virtual meetings using tools like Rev, Granola, tl;dv, Fathom, Otter or MS Teams Premium (the first three listed are my top picks, note that I don’t take sponsorship from anyone so these are genuine recommendations).
For face-to-face or hybrid meetings, of course you could use your phone to record audio but that may not cut it for bigger boardrooms. Consider investing in a small conference room mic/speaker that plugs into your laptop to capture audio (I recommend this one). Once you have the audio, you can upload the file to a speech-to-text tool like Rev to generate a transcript.
If you’re a Microsoft user, note that MS Word has a built-in speech-to-text tool called “Dictate” you can use for free. You can pull this up when you’re in a meeting and literally just hit dictate and it will start listening and transcribing — or you upload an audio file for MS Word to transcribe here. You’re limited to 300 minutes per month though. (You can do similar in Apple Notes and the iPhone Voice Memos app but I sadly can’t recommend these yet as they’re really typo-heavy.)
For face-to-face meetings where you’re using a recording or MS Word’s Dictate, you’ll end up with a transcript that says “Speaker 1”, “Speaker 2”, etc — simply figure out who’s who, Ctrl + S and replace each speaker with their real name. (You could even get the group to do a quick round the room introducing themselves one by one to help you later, if you’re not joining the meeting yourself.)
Step 2: Feed the transcript into ChatGPT, Copilot or your AI chatbot of choice
Copy-paste in your transcript or attach the transcript doc.
Use this prompt (adjust as needed to suit your preferred template):
Imagine you’re an extremely experienced and high performing executive assistant. You are specialized in processing and structuring meeting notes and transcriptions. Use the attached [meeting notes/transcript] to create detailed minutes with clear headings for the name of the meeting, the date of the meetings, attendees list, time the meeting started, a summary of discussions and actions in the order they were discussed in the meeting using the format [Action: xyz], time the meetings was adjourned. Extract the main points and decisions and make them easy to act upon. At the end, include a bulleted list of all meeting actions summed up. Format the minutes in a professional, concise manner. Meeting minutes should avoid using bullet points, except when presenting list of attendees and list of actions. All other content should be presented in complete sentences written out normally. The minutes should always be under 1500 words long. Make the tone professional, friendly and approachable with an emphasis on simplicity and clarity. Use [British/American] English. If any details needed for the minutes aren't available, then use placeholders so the user can add these manually.
Note: if you don’t have access to a speech-to-text tool but you do have access to an AI chatbot, you can still use AI to massively shortcut minute-taking. Simply take notes longhand as you typically do — typed or handwritten — and upload these into your AI chatbot with the above prompt (for handwritten, snap a picture of your notes; for typed, copy-paste in or attach the doc).
Step 3: Quality check
Always, always comb through your AI output to sense check it looks good and it captured the important stuff discussed.
Embrace iteration with your AI chatbot — if it missed something or didn’t get the depth or formatting quite right, give it that feedback and have it give you a fresh draft with those changes.
And while you’re at it, use AI to write the follow up email to attendees calling out actions and immediate next steps :)
Caveat: meetings contain some of the most sensitive information in businesses. Make sure you have your company’s blessing before you use a speech-to-text tool or run whole transcripts through an AI chatbot. Only use tools you have express permission to use.
I’d love to hear how it’s going if you’re already using AI for minute-taking. Hit reply and let me know! I read and reply to every email you all send ☺️
Have a lovely weekend,
Fi