Meeting Synthesis

Meeting Synthesis

Problem

Meeting notes are usually either too raw to reuse or too polished to trust. This skill turns them into a durable record of what happened, what was decided, what is still unresolved, and what needs to happen next.

Audience

• Primary: both operators and investors

When to Use

• Summarizing a partner, diligence, customer, or internal strategy meeting
• Extracting decisions, actions, and follow-up items from transcripts or notes
• Producing a clean meeting brief for a team or memo workflow
• Turning discussion into reusable decision context

When Not to Use

• Broad source synthesis across many documents: use research-synthesis
• Competitive market mapping without a meeting artifact: use competitive-analysis
• Final memo drafting from a full diligence packet: use deal-memo-drafting
• Reviewing spreadsheet assumptions: use financial-model-review

Required Context

Gather or confirm:

• transcript, notes, or a faithful meeting summary
• attendees and their roles if known
• the meeting purpose
• any surrounding project, deal, or strategic context
• whether the desired output is internal notes, a decision log, or a follow-up message

Process

1. Frame the meeting.
   • State what meeting this was and why it mattered.
2. Extract the real signal.
   • Separate decisions, action items, risks, unresolved questions, and useful context.
3. Attribute where possible.
   • Name owners and decision-makers when the notes support it.
4. Preserve uncertainty honestly.
   • If a point sounds important but was not resolved, keep it as unresolved.
5. Produce the right artifact.
   • Decision log, action list, follow-up draft, or meeting brief depending on the ask.
6. Optionally use Open Brain.
   • Search for prior related meetings or project notes before starting.
   • Capture key decisions or the final synthesis after the work is complete.

Evidence and Judgment Rules

• Use the meeting artifact as the primary source of truth.
• Do not inflate tentative discussion into final decisions.
• Keep attribution explicit when it is known and unforced when it is not.
• Preserve material disagreement or open risk instead of smoothing it away.
• Separate "decided", "assigned", and "discussed".

Output

Default output:

• meeting purpose and quick summary
• decisions made
• action items with owners if known
• risks and unresolved questions
• recommended next follow-up
• optional follow-up message or memo input

Works Well With

• research-synthesis when interviews or diligence calls become part of the evidence set
• deal-memo-drafting when management or partner calls inform the recommendation
• competitive-analysis when customer or market conversations sharpen the market picture

Notes

• This skill should reduce ambiguity, not create false closure.
• The most valuable meeting output is often the list of unresolved questions.