Sean was my oracle.

Growing up, he was my friend's older brother. He was an amazing bagpiper, had a beautiful girlfriend, worked on Wall Street… and believed in me. To me, everything Sean said was pure gold, including this:

‍‘observe the things at work that nobody wants to do and do those things every day. You’ll become indispensable.'

‍I took that lesson to heart and found something nobody wanted to do; take meeting notes and send out a recap. I did that a lot in my early 20’s, but another mentor of mine eventually pointed out that I wasn’t adding much value.

What?!?

This mentor taught me that meeting notes are meant to ‘synthesize the themes, bring in external pieces of information, build a narrative, and make it usable.’ That requires context and judgment. Meeting notes aren’t just about what was said; they’re about synthesizing what matters. The relevant context, the key ideas, and clear articulation of what happens next.

This advice forced me to be a better listener during the meeting, and write meeting recaps that added a lot of value for the team.
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You may not want to spend time creating a good meeting recap that can be shared with the other meeting participants, but it will make you indispensable.

‍At Storied, we believe three forces working together can result in high-quality and fast meeting recaps: the right series of questions, the human, and AI models.
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So, this week we added Meeting Recap to our repository of custom starts that focuses on helping you quickly create value-added meeting recaps for both your team and future self.
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Give it a shot, and share your success story with us ;)

FWIW I still admire Sean greatly, but for different reasons; a great father and husband, a brilliant thinker from economics and politics to personal growth… and, of course, still a great bagpiper :)