The organizer of a meeting is responsible for setting the agenda and ensuring action items are decided on and notes are taken.

You can’t fix the idiots who organize meetings and expect them to magically get organized without their contribution, but if you do organize a meeting yourself you can make sure at least those meetings aren’t a waste of everyone’s time.

Having good secretarial staff is under appreciated. Yeah, I can do my own time (I bill by the hour), book my flights, find open meeting times, etc. But if an administrative assistant can support 3 professionals saving them just 5 hours a month, they can pay for themselves.

I really don't get it. Every single place I've been at that had a secretary was running like cream cheese. But no-one has them anymore. The only things I can figure is that the healthcare, retirement, and sexual harassment issues really do add up to remove the utility of a secretary.

What does the phrase "running like cream cheese" mean? It sounds slow, but from context here it sounds...fast? Efficient?

Running smoothly. Smooth as the cream cheese on your bagel.

I guess that's not a phrase everyone is familiar with. It is well illustrated via Coach Finstock in Teen Wolf here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0m5wJRGHEQ

Rich and smooth?

Secretaries were harassing people?

Or more likely, the subject of harassment.

Experienced admin assistants can be found part time, too. A good gig from 1000 to 1400 is great for people with kids in school, but hard to find. Offer a decent rate and you can get a really good person who values that schedule.

That might be enough hours to make a big difference in a small office/studio.

Another good question to ask is "Did we all really need to be here?" after someone adds a mailer to the invite..

Having professional minutes was amazing, maybe we’ll be able to automate it at some point. I would assume that an automated transcript isn’t so far away.

Does every meeting needs notes?

There are, broadly speaking two types of meetings.

The first one is where someone presents a slidedeck or does a demo. In this case, the minutes can be rather short, as in "Bob presented a summary of last quarter's sales, see attached slidedeck", maybe plus a summary of the Q&A if there was one. It's not strictly necessary to have minutes in this case, but they are also very cheap to produce.

The second type of meeting is any form of discussion. You absolutely need to do minutes for these to document your arguments and decisions. Everything else is unprofessional.