A document written for people who were in the meeting will be read, eventually, by people who were not. That is its whole future.
Six months on, half the participants have moved. Four years on, the successor reads it with no access to anything that was in the room. Whatever the document left implicit is now gone, and nothing signals its absence.
What shared context conceals
The things a document omits are precisely the things everybody present already knew, which makes them invisible to the writer.
Who the names are. Discussed with Dave and agreed. Four years on, nobody knows whether Dave was the client, counsel, or a supervisor, and therefore what his agreement was worth.
What the shorthand means. Every organization runs on terms that are perfectly clear internally and opaque eighteen months later. The north lot. The Henderson arrangement. The old system.
Which constraints were real. A decision made under a deadline that no longer exists looks arbitrary or foolish, and the successor reasonably concludes the judgment was poor rather than that the situation was different.
What was deliberately not done. The option considered and rejected leaves no trace, so it gets proposed again, considered again, and rejected again at full cost. Organizations rediscover the same dead ends every few years for exactly this reason.
The test
Read it as somebody who joined the organization last week and knows none of the people.
Every place that reader would have to guess is a place the document will fail. This takes about two minutes and catches nearly everything, because the deficiencies are not subtle once you are looking for them from the outside.
The stricter version, worth applying to anything consequential: would this document be sufficient if every person who attended were unavailable? That is the actual condition under which it will be used.
Four sentences that do most of the work
Durability does not require length. It requires four things most documents omit, each of which is one sentence.
Identify people by role on first mention. Dave Ellsworth, the general contractor.
State the constraint that shaped the decision. This was decided under the March permitting deadline.
Name the alternative you rejected and why. We looked at leasing rather than buying; the term available was three years and we need seven.
State the condition under which this should be revisited. If the second tenant does not sign, this needs to be reopened.
Four sentences, perhaps ninety seconds of writing. Together they are the difference between a record that instructs and a record that merely certifies that something happened.
Minutes are usually the worst offender
Board and committee minutes are the documents most likely to be read by strangers years later, and they are typically written to record procedure rather than substance.
Motion carried five to two tells a future reader that a vote occurred. It says nothing about what the two were worried about, and the concern of a dissenting minority is frequently the most valuable thing in the meeting, particularly when it turns out to have been correct.
Minutes need not be a transcript. A single line recording the substance of the objection converts a procedural record into an institutional one: the two members voting against were concerned the maintenance cost had not been established.
Anyone serving on a public body should note that minutes are also the version of the meeting that exists for the public, and a record showing only outcomes invites the assumption that the reasoning would not withstand scrutiny.
Write it now or lose it
The context that makes a document durable is available for about a day.
Immediately after the meeting you know why the deadline mattered, what the rejected option was, and which concern was doing the work. A fortnight later you have the decision and a general sense, and you will write the general sense. Six months later you would have to ask somebody, and they will not remember either.
Which is a practical argument for writing the four sentences before the day ends rather than for writing more. Everything that makes a record durable is perishable, and it perishes considerably faster than the decision it describes.
Edited by Patrick J. Wolf, PhD