A meeting transcript is not a decision record until the owner and next step are named

A meeting transcript is not a decision record until the owner and next step are named. Transcripts preserve speech. Decision records preserve agreement. Treating the first as the second creates confusion because teams later search for “what did we decide?” and find only a long conversation.

Modern meeting tools can create recaps, summaries, transcripts, notes, files, and follow-up tasks. That is helpful, especially for people who missed the call. But a transcript still needs editorial work before it becomes a durable team record. Someone must extract decisions, remove false starts, mark uncertainty, and connect each action to an owner.

A good conversion pass asks four questions. Did the group decide anything? Who accepted responsibility? What evidence or constraint shaped the choice? What date or event should trigger review? If those fields are blank, the meeting may have produced context but not a decision.

This matters because transcripts often contain suggestions that sound decisive in isolation. “We should probably move this to next month” may not be a final plan. A decision record would say whether the date actually changed, who updates the schedule, and who must be notified.

The safest practice is to publish a short decision section above the transcript or recap. The transcript can remain as evidence, but the team should not have to mine it for operating instructions.

A meeting transcript is not a decision record until the owner and next step are named

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