Meeting Recap SOP

A repeatable process for turning a meeting into a recap people actually act on.

Before the meeting

• Get consent to record. In many jurisdictions recording without it is illegal, and in all of them it destroys trust. Say it at the top: "I'm recording for notes — any objection?"
• Write the agenda as questions, not topics. "Which vendor do we pick?" produces a decision; "Vendor discussion" produces a discussion.
• Name the decisions to be made. If there are none, ask whether the meeting needs to happen.
• Drop a context note into your transcription tool — attendees, their roles, project background. Transcripts mangle names and jargon without it.

During

• Let the tool transcribe. Do not split attention taking notes as well.
• Note timestamps for the two or three moments that matter — a decision, a disagreement, a commitment. Timestamps make verification trivial later.
• Say decisions out loud and explicitly: "So we're agreed: Priya owns the migration, done by the 14th." This gives the transcript something unambiguous to capture.

After: the extraction

Here is a meeting transcript. Attendees: [NAMES AND ROLES].
Context: [PROJECT, WHY THIS MEETING HAPPENED]

Extract:

DECISIONS
What was decided, who decided it, and any condition attached.
Only include things genuinely settled — not things discussed.

ACTIONS
Task | Owner | Deadline | What "done" looks like
Only include commitments someone actually made. If no owner was named,
write OWNER UNCLEAR rather than assigning one.

OPEN QUESTIONS
What was raised and left unresolved.

DISAGREEMENTS
Where people did not converge, and on what specifically.

RISKS
Anything mentioned that could derail this.

Then, separately: list anything ambiguous in the transcript that I should
check before sending this out.

That final instruction is the one that matters. Transcripts mishear, people talk over each other, and "yeah, sure" is not always agreement.

After: the recap email

Turn the extraction into a recap email for [AUDIENCE].

- Decisions first, then actions with owners and dates
- Under [N] words
- Neutral tone — this is a record, not a persuasion
- Flag anything I marked as unclear with [CONFIRM: ...]
- End with: "Reply if anything here is wrong" and a deadline for objections

The objection deadline is what makes a recap load-bearing. Without it, silence is not agreement.

Verification before sending

• Every decision is one you remember being made
• Every action has a named owner who was present
• Every deadline was actually stated, not inferred
• Nobody is attributed a position they did not take
• Sensitive remarks are not quoted verbatim into a wider audience than heard them
• Names spelled correctly — transcripts get these wrong constantly

That fourth item is the one that causes real damage. A transcript that attributes an objection to the wrong person, repeated in an email to twenty people, is a problem no apology fully undoes.

The weekly roll-up

Here are this week's meeting recaps: [PASTE]

Produce:
- Every action still open, sorted by deadline
- Anything overdue, with who owns it
- Decisions made this week that people outside these meetings need to know
- Any place two meetings decided contradictory things

That last line catches the failure mode of organisations that meet a lot.

Privacy

• Transcription tools store recordings on their servers. Check retention before recording anything sensitive.
• Do not record HR conversations, performance reviews, or anything involving someone's health or personal circumstances.
• Tell people where the recording is stored and for how long.
• Delete recordings once the recap is agreed. Keep the recap, not the raw audio.

Your defaults

Transcription tool
Where recordings are stored
Retention period
Recap sent within	hours
Objection window	hours
Meetings I do NOT record