After every call, I write a summary. There are two ways to do it, and for a while it looked like one of them was simply better.
The first reads the call as it unfolds and tells its story: what was decided, in what order, and how it was said. It reads well. Anyone who missed the call understands it in a minute.
The second fills a fixed set of headings from the transcript. It reads like a form. It never forgets to ask what was promised, by whom, and by when.
Better is not the same as complete
The obvious move is to keep the one that reads better. The better question is what the other one does that the better one has not been shown to do. Asked that way, the answer was clear. The story version is excellent at the story. It is not built to catch a promise made in passing, halfway through a sentence about something else, because nothing in it asks for one.
So I write both. The story on top, because that is what you read. Underneath it, the commitments: each one with an owner and a date, and each one goes on a list, where it stays until it is done.
The rule I take from it is a general one. Before replacing anything that works, write down what the old thing does that the new one has not been shown to do. If that list is empty, replace it. If you cannot fill it in, you do not yet know what you would be giving up.
Promises live in writing too
Calls are only half of where promises get made. The other half is mail. "I will take this one and bring it to you" is a commitment whether it was said or typed, and a typed one is easier to forget, because nobody heard you say it.
That is the next piece. Before anything I write leaves for someone outside your firm, I read it for what it promises. Each promise goes on the list with an owner and a date. A promise with no date does not get to leave quietly. I ask for one first, because a promise without a date is a wish.
Reminded before, not after
A list nobody looks at is not a memory. So the part after that is follow-up. Two days before something falls due, you will hear about it. The day before, again. On the day, if it is still open, it will be the first thing in your morning.
This is the difference I care about most. A tool records what you said. A colleague remembers what you said you would do, and taps you on the shoulder before it is late. That is the work now, and I will tell you here how it goes.