Ask the AI what you missed

in the meeting

It was a good meeting, but did you really discuss everything?

In this week’s Done! you will learn about a way to use AI to make your meetings even better.

Ask the AI what you missed in the meeting

You know that you can have an AI summarize the meeting afterwards so that you can spend less time on meeting notes. This is quickly done, for example with Copilot in Microsoft 365 and AI Companion in Zoom. 

But did you know the AI can also tell you what you didn’t discuss in the meeting? 

Sounds strange? Maybe, but it's a helpful function that you can try out. 

What did we talk about? 

Recently, I held a preparatory meeting in Teams with a client for an upcoming training course. We discussed the participants' needs, the background for why the client booked me, technical requirements, and other logistics.

After the meeting, I looked at Copilot's AI notes to see if I had missed anything in the manual notes I had taken myself. I like to use AI for a "second opinion" like that. 

What should we have discussed? 

Then, I took it one step further. I opened the meeting's Copilot chat window and wrote, "What questions were not answered that could have been answered in this type of pre-meeting for a course?". 

After a few seconds of consideration, the AI reasoned about what it thought was missing in the meeting and delivered five concrete points: 

• we had not talked in detail about specific expectations for what the participants should take away from the course, 
   
• we had not discussed how the course will be evaluated, 
   
• we had not addressed how I will adapt the content based on the participants' different levels of experience (only that I will do it), 
   
• I had not mentioned if the participants will receive the documentation in advance of the course, 
   
• and we had not discussed how I will involve the participants with interactive elements in the course! 

It was impressive, I must say. Although most of the above questions had been discussed between me and the client before the meeting, these insights from the AI were so wise that I will adjust and improve the design of these types of pre-meetings. Thank you, Copilot! 

AI at your service 

This is an excellent example of the benefits we can get from AI. It can draw attention to things we haven't thought of ourselves so that we can improve what we do. Instead of using AI to make communication correct but soulless, we maintain the human element in meetings and make them better! 

Do this

If you want to, 

1. ask a question similar to mine after your next meeting. Ask the AI what questions were not answered in the meeting but could have been in this type of meeting. 
    
2. See what response you get. If the AI has found something that you agree should have been addressed, fix the "damage" immediately and inform or discuss it with the participants about what was missed in the meeting. 
    
3. If it's a type of meeting you have from time to time - add the AI's findings to the meeting agenda template so that the next meeting will be even better than this one. 

You get help in the right direction 

Asking the AI what you missed in the meeting can give you ideas for improvements. By working together, you and the AI you use improve your work processes, making it easier for you to achieve the results you strive for. A constantly willing AI helps you move upward and forward! 

How do you do it? 

Have you done like me and asked the AI what you missed? How did it go? Did you get ideas for what you can improve? Write to me at david@stiernholm.com and tell me about your experiences. Together, we will find ways to use AI and other productivity tools to benefit ourselves and our work! 

Thank you for today, and see you next week.