Those kind of minutes waste hours. The idea behind minutes is to distill the meeting, not replay it. I tend toward over-producing reports as well, but brevity is very much a virtue in meeting minutes.
Enjoy,
Steven
I do minutes often, and the only time I have done minutes in that level of excrutiating detail is when there was active hostility between board members and, er…some of the staff, and we knew some of the staff would lie about it afterward. And indeed, the bastards did, except that I had kept a copy of my minutes and also converted them into a pdf the minute I typed them and saved them in multiple places (they attempted to change the Word documents to their version, if you would believe it)/
But beyond that, I would also ask myself - are they better? Maybe I should start writing them better.
This! I was asked to do minutes for a team once that did nothing but snipe each other. I’d sat through their tripe for weeks, so when it came time to do the minutes, I did a transcript. But I left off the names. The minutes went up the chain with my boss laughing and telling me that they knew exactly who was speaking each line. The following week’s meeting was much more productive and the sniping went away (for a little while, at least)
Hmmm, that sound like it might be worth a try.
Add me to the list that says minutes should be short and to the point, anything else wastes too much of everyones time. If I cared about the tiny details I’d have gone to the damn meeting.
For those meetings where a transcript might be useful (as referenced above) I really don’t see why people don’t start recording these things. I really think it’d help keep things going if people knew they were being taped.
No one like being shown up so it’s kind of natural to have those feelings.
But, let her be excellent at taking minutes. Hell, advocate her brilliance at that task, while you concentrate on being excellent at tasks that people really rely on and take notice of.
When it comes time to choose between you for promotion, who do you think they will choose to leave taking minutes?
The minutes of a meeting are usually read at the next meeting of the group. How does the OP’s co-worker plan on having that transcript not take up the entire time when it’s read?
At my work, the minutes are sent as pre-reading for the subsequent meeting. One of the first orders of business is to accept the minutes, with the assumption that attendees have already read them. The minutes are not read aloud unless there is a request to change something.
I can’t argue with that.
[QUOTE=Colibri;12658232Unless you get feedback from others that they would prefer to see this kind of detail rather than summaries, I wouldn’t change the way you do minutes. And if you do get feedback that your way is better, don’t be mad at your co-worker, but make sure she knows what others said about it.[/QUOTE]
I agree.
Indeed, unless you hear that the attendees* really liked her minutes, I would make the next set you do very stark, almost an outline – greatly contrasting the way she did them. Example: Proposed shutdown of project X. Lengthy discussion. Major points For: a, b, c. Major points Against: d, e, f. Passed on 6-3 vote.
- Note attendees. This kind of minutes are often greatly favored by those that missed the meeting. But they’re usually not very important.
To the OP, here’s whatcha do:
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Don’t try to become a transcriptionist; record only the meeting minutes (ie, what was decided, as others here have recommended).
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When drafting the next meeting’s minutes into a formal, final version, make them hilarious. Fill them with one-liners, common-knowledge inside jokes, and a good-natured rib or two at those in attendance.
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Tell your overachieving co-worker, “No, THAT’S how you do minutes!” and let her read and get amused by them.
That way, you’ve defused her “attack” on your technique, saved yourself a lot of work in refusing to emulate her excessive detail, and hopefully everyone will get a good laugh out of it. Who knows! Making the minutes funny might become an unofficial competition of sorts.* Note that this might or might not work, depending on your workplace culture.
*This is the way we do things at my job. I work at a university library, and the other librarians and I take turns chairing and recording the minutes of our biweekly meetings. At some point a few years ago someone filled the report with jokes and humorous editorial comments, and now it’s become an ongoing, unofficial contest, to see who can make the best, funniest meeting minute reports. Very fun. 
Yah…I might think about this pretty carefully before I did it - at my workplace it would go over like a turd in the punchbowl.
Assuming he’s a professional, the BEST thing to do is to go on about his business as normal and not become preoccupied with such minor nonsense.