Honeywell had a policy that a meeting had to have a leader, an agenda and someone had to produce minutes. The agenda was often an action register. Each action had an assigned actionee. He’d report on what he’d done. It was very effective. At subsequent companies I’d do the same thing and mostly ended up running the show even though I was often not the guy in charge. In a meeting with an action register there was no need for separate minutes. For a meeting that required minutes the trick was to be the guy who wrote them. Then, regardless of what happened at the meeting, I’d get whatever I wanted done by putting it in the minutes. Nobody ever called me on it.
I love it!
It's an excellent policy. In part, because no one wants to put together an agenda before the meeting, and some people may dread having to do minutes after the meeting. Sure -- if a meeting is NEEDED all of these steps will be done. But if the meeting is just busy work -- a way for people to pretend to work without actually working -- and if people are going to actually do real work in putting together agendas and minutes ... well ... maybe an email is better than a meeting ...