It's less easy to do if it's a meeting you're deeply involved with yourself as it's hard to note and talk at the same time.
Plus side is it really cuts down on pointless meetings since many times people just want to call meetings to avoid doing actual work, and with documentation responsibilities falling on the meeting caller, they have to do more work, not less.
Downside is the strong correlation between people who suck at meetings and people who suck at taking notes. Which can be pretty frustrating because you know who the pointless poorly run meeting people are, but you also can't rely on the notes if you skip.
Can you share what company was that? If not the company name, at least the industry?
Hmm... I probably should pickup the habit again. When you move around projects, sometimes you forget about the "good habits" from previous projects...
A couple jobs later, we were discussing changing where some images were hosted. It seemed very strange to have them in their current location, and the process that copied new images to that location was clunky.
My manager at the time said, "Well, that's what we decided what the best way to do it was."
I responded with, "Well, what were the reasons for doing it that way, and what were the other options considered?"
He said, "I don't remember."
At this point, I mentioned it might be a good idea to keep notes of any meeting we have, as it would be useful to go back and have a record of that.
His answer was, "I don't think it's a good use of someone's time to record meeting notes."
This was a meeting that involved about 12 people, 9 of which had no real say in the matter (field techs, etc).