So you’ve just finished a meeting. You’ve got three pages of scribbled notes, half the team is confused about what they’re supposed to do next, and you’re already dreading the follow-up email you need to write.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the thing: most meeting notes are completely useless. They capture what was said, but not what needs to happen next. And that’s where AI can actually

help.

The meeting notes problem

We’re all terrible at turning discussions into clear action items. During meetings, we’re focused on listening, responding, and contributing ideas. We’re not thinking about who’s doing what by when.

So we end up with notes that say things like “discussed marketing budget” or

“talked about hiring” instead of “Sarah will review marketing spend by Friday” or “John will post the developer job ad this week.”

The result? Nothing happens. People leave meetings unclear about their responsibilities, deadlines get missed, and you end up having the same conversations again next week.

How AI changes this

AI is brilliant at extracting structure from messy information. Give it rambling meeting notes, and it can identify action items, assign owners, and set deadlines.

But here’s the key: you need to give AI the right raw material to work with.

Take better notes (with AI in mind)

You don’t need to completely change how you take notes, but a few small tweaks make AI processing much more effective.

During the meeting, try to capture:

• Who said they’d do something (even if it was implied)
• Any timelines mentioned (“by next week,” “before the end of the month”)    
• Decisions that were made, not just topics discussed
• Follow-up questions or concerns that need addressing

Don’t worry about making it perfect – just get the information down. AI will sort it out later.

The AI processing

Here’s a prompt you can use with ChatGPT or Claude to turn your messy notes into a clear action plan:

“I’m going to give you notes from a business meeting. Please extract all action items and organise them into a clear action plan. For each action item, identify: 1) What needs to be done, 2) Who is responsible, 3) When it’s due, 4) Any dependencies or notes. If any of these details are unclear from the notes, flag them as ‘TBC’ so I can clarify. Here are the notes: [paste your notes]” 

Tools that make this easier

Option 1: Use a transcription tool + AI

Tools like Otter.ai can record and transcribe your meetings, then you feed the transcript to ChatGPT for action item extraction. This works well for virtual meetings.

Option 2: AI-powered meeting tools

Some tools like Notion AI or Monday.com now have features specifically for meeting notes and action items. Worth exploring if you have lots of meetings.

Option 3: Just use ChatGPT/Claude

Honestly, for most small businesses, just taking notes normally and processing them through ChatGPT afterward works fine and doesn’t require any new subscriptions.

The real benefit

This isn’t just about better meeting notes – it’s about building a culture where meetings actually lead to results. When people know that every meeting will end with clear action items and deadlines, they participate differently. They’re more likely to volunteer for tasks and less likely to let things slide. And you’ll spend less time in follow-up meetings wondering why nothing happened since the last time you all got together.