Action Item Lists

Over the years, I've developed strategies to turn the overwhelming influx of information from events into actionable steps for business success. If there’s one piece of advice I always hold true, it’s this: To make an event successful, boil down all your action items to three key things and understand how you're going to measure their success. Trade shows are perfect for gaining new insights, networking, and generating ideas. However, the sheer volume of information can be paralyzing. You'll encounter countless sessions and speakers filling you with knowledge and inspiration. But the reality is—you won't be able to remember everything shared. Before attending, take the time to understand the current challenges your business faces. Review the agenda, research the speakers, and consider reaching out to them. Knowing your business’s pain points will help you filter the vast amount of information you receive and identify what’s immediately applicable. During the event, develop a system to categorize the information: 1️⃣ Immediate Action Items - Things you need to implement immediately. 2️⃣ Future Reference Material - Information not relevant today but might be useful later. 3️⃣ Less Relevant Data - Content that doesn't apply to your business. After each session, highlight or underline the key takeaway. Annotate these notes with your thoughts and potential action items. At the end of the day, or before attending social events, rank these action items based on: 📌 Level of Effort (LoE): How hard it is to implement. 📌 Return on Investment (RoI): The potential benefit it could bring. Visualize your action items in a quadrant setup. By placing your action items in this context, you can make informed decisions about where to invest your time and resources. 📌 Low Effort, Low Return 📌 Low Effort, High Return 📌 High Effort, Low Return 📌 High Effort, High Return The goal is to walk away with three focused action items—your “action list.” These should be tasks that will significantly impact your business and are manageable. Knowing these will prevent you from being distracted by the remaining 90% of content that doesn’t align with your immediate goals. Happy Networking! #AmazonAccelerate #AmazonAds #Amazon

How I Structure My Meeting Notes as a Program Manager at Amazon One of the most underrated skills in program management is note-taking. With so many meetings, decisions, and action items flying around, having a solid system for capturing and organizing information is critical. Over the years, I’ve developed a structure that keeps me on top of things—and ensures nothing slips through the cracks. Here’s how I approach my meeting notes: 1️⃣ Start with the Basics I always document the essentials upfront: • Meeting Name & Date • Attendees • Objective or Agenda (Why are we here?) This helps me quickly orient myself when reviewing notes later. 2️⃣ Use Action-Driven Sections My notes are broken into three sections: • Decisions Made: Clear and concise. What was decided, and why? • Action Items: Each action includes an owner, due date, and a quick description of what’s expected. No ambiguity. • Key Discussions: I summarize important points—nothing overly detailed, just enough to provide context. 3️⃣ Keep Notes Digital and Searchable I use tools like OneNote to keep everything organized and searchable. By tagging projects, teams, or topics, I can quickly find past notes without digging through endless files. 4️⃣ Review and Share Afterward After the meeting, I do a quick review of my notes, clean them up if needed, and share them with attendees. It’s a great way to confirm alignment and ensure everyone is clear on next steps. This system helps me stay organized, track progress, and reduce the chances of things falling through the cracks. How do you structure your meeting notes? #ProgramManagement #Leadership #Amazon #Productivity #Meetings

I would fail as a designer without this workflow step: → I write a list of action items immediately after a design review. (or during the meeting, if possible) It helps me avoid embarrassment of forgetting feedback. This is crucial, especially since I work with multiple teams. Even if I don’t plan to do the work for a few days, I write it anyway. Here’s why: - Keeps feedback fresh in my memory - Maintains clear communication with teams - Prevents misunderstandings later on - Ensures no details get overlooked - Helps me prioritize my tasks It’s especially helpful when you sit down to work and your todo list is ready to go. I procrastinate when there’s no clear path for next steps. Having a clear action list helps me avoid procrastination. Bonus tip: I like to send this list of action items to my client/stakeholder right away. This keeps them aware of the changes discussed and allows them to add any additional feedback they may have missed in the review.

I created an AI virtual assistant to convert meeting notes into action items in Slack and Asana. Want to copy it? If your calendar looks like mine, you’re in back-to-back meetings all day, and it can be a day or two later when I finally have time to sit down and type-up action items. Or worse: we’ll have the meeting, agree on next steps, maybe even throw out some deadlines… and then? It disappears. We forget. And no progress gets made. So I built a little AI helper that helps me actually operationalize meeting recordings and actually gets action items pushed into our project management tool and into our team’s Slack Channel. Here’s how it works: → Fathom records and summarizes the call, and generates action items → Zapier picks up the summary + action items → Tasks go into Asana (tagged “Fathom”) and Slack gets a clean meeting recap → The tasks go into a “Preparing” column that me and my Chief of Staff triage daily → Once we’ve triaged Asana tasks, they go to the project-board for the relevant team Bonus Points: because I prefix the Meeting Invite with things like [Sales], [Product], or [CX], I can automatically route outputs into the correct Slack channels or project boards. Here are some specific use cases that are already paying off: Increased Shipping Velocity – because the next steps are on the board with deadlines, there’s a lot more accountability. And because the notes are in slack, it provides a nice little nudge. Async meeting visibility – Summaries + recordings pushed into Slack let the broader stay in the loop asynchronously, without having to attend every meeting Less Context-Switching for me - there’s a huge difference between creating a rough draft of something vs. editing an existing draft. It’s mentally taxing to have to context-switch back to a meeting you had hours ago (or a days ago) to create action items from scratch. Having the “rough draft” of the action items already sitting in Asana is a game-changer. Complex Workstream routing – by adding if/else statements in Zapier for the name of the meeting or the meeting attendees, i can dynamically route tasks to different places -i.e. Sales notes go to the Sales slack channel, RevOps action items go to their Monday board while and Product team action items go to their Jira. I wrote a full breakdown on Substack, with screenshots and setup tips. If you want a copy of the Zaps I created, just drop a “Fathom” in the comments and I’ll DM you the full walkthrough.

I have an extremely simple trick I use to manage cross-functional initiatives with many moving parts. And it might surprise you. Part of the work of any product leader is ensuring the team is always moving in the right direction. This is easy when work happens within a product squad but much more problematic when it involves people from multiple departments. - You need an engineer to assess the feasibility of a few ideas - You need an expert in your team to structure information - You need your brand team to work on new imagery - You need a data analyst to gather required data - You need a designer to prototype a solution When this happens within product, you can likely use your existing planning software (Notion, Linear, Jira, Asana, Monday, etc.) However, not everyone will be comfortable with that software when it touches on multiple functions. That’s where I love using extremely simple solutions. 1. Create a temporary working channel on Slack with all the key people. 2. Create an action list using emojis to communicate the status of each item. 3. Tag the respective people in each list item. 4. Track and update that list, resharing it in the group when key milestones are met. (You can also use Slack's new lists function, but where is the fun in that?) Example: 🟢 @akash to add funnel data to the board 🟢 @filippos to share key discovery insights 🟠 Everyone to add comments on the pre-read material 🟠 @annie to conclude on our key coaching principles 🟠 @shelina to evaluate different integration providers 🟠 @filippos to schedule follow-up workshop Here is why it works: - It takes a few minutes to create vs. using specialized software. - It holds people accountable and adds a bias for action. - It gives everyone the visibility they need. Is anyone else using something similar? -- If you found this useful, consider reposting ♻️ #uxdesign #productdesign #uiux

Here's my 4-step system to make sure nothing slips through the cracks: I know when it comes to keeping track of everything—commitments, tasks, and all the tiny details—it can be easy to get lost. To stay on top of it all, I follow a simple mnemonic: Every Commitment Needs Tracking (ECNT). It stands for the four key areas where I manage my responsibilities: email, calendar, notes, and tasks. Here’s a quick look at my process: 1. Email: I start by reviewing my inbox. I check for anything that needs to go on my calendar, save resources to my notes, and tasks that require action to my to-do list. This first step lets me pull essential information from my emails into my downward systems. 2. Calendar: Next, I review my upcoming week. Any meetings or deadlines I need to prep for get turned into tasks. This way, my calendar and to-do list stay aligned. 3. Notes: Moving down the ladder, I review my note-taking app (Evernote) to catch any ideas or project notes that need action. Anything relevant gets added to my task list, ensuring no loose ideas or insights are overlooked. 4. Tasks: Finally, I pull it all together in my task manager (Things). This is where everything actionable lives. I prioritize my day and week here, choosing what’s urgent and what can wait. By following this routine—usually several times a week and especially during my Weekly Review—I gain clarity on what’s on my plate and prioritize with confidence. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try this sequence. By processing each source of information in order, you’ll capture everything you need to move forward with clarity and focus.

7 Ways to Make Your Retrospective Action Items Actually Happen Let’s not sugarcoat it: Retrospectives without action are just polite venting sessions. The team talks. Sticky notes go up. Everyone nods, and nothing changes. Here’s how to break the cycle and actually action those action items: ✅ 1. Limit it to 1–2 changes per retro. Trying to fix everything means fixing nothing. 🧠 2. Assign ownership out loud. “If everyone owns it” = no one does. 📅 3. Timebox it like a task. Put it on the board, size it, and treat it like real work. (Because it is) 👀 4. Follow up in the next retro. Ask: Did we do what we said we would? If not why? 🔁 5. Visualize it publicly. Kanban-style “Improvement Board” in the team space = accountability without nagging. 💬 6. Involve the team in prioritizing actions. Not every good idea is the right idea right now. 🔥 7. Celebrate traction loudly. Momentum grows when change is seen and felt. Retros aren’t just for talking. They’re for transforming.

Do you close every meeting with actions and deadlines? Does every deadline have accountability? How you close your meetings and conversations can make or break your project and the team's productivity and momentum. If you are closing with actions, great! If those actions are not assigned a deadline and accountability, well...that's not great. And, it happens more often than not, especially when a meeting goes really well. Nobody likes to break the momentum of the meeting's success by assigning deadlines and let alone, talk about accountability. But when we fail to assign actions with deadlines and accountability, we are leaving our success to chance and making it much more difficult to hold ourselves to account. As a general practice save the last 10 minutes of every meeting to assign actions, deadlines and accountability. Here are 3 questions you can begin to use consistently if you aren't already: 🎯 What actions do we need take on and by when? (action + deadline) 🎯 Who will take that action on and by when? 🎯 To the owner of the action...How do you want to be held accountable for that action? When you get in the pactice of closing every meeting with actions, owners, deadlines and accountability, you are setting you and your team up for success. Try this #Tuesdaystip and let me know how it goes! ** For more tips and tools to communication effectively on your team, join over 87,000 Learners in my Linkedin Learning course, "Communication Skills for Modern Management". Link in comments. #Tuesdaystip #accountability #actionitems #meetingmanagement #emotionalintelligence