“The person who writes down the thing has tremendous power. Independent of their formal role in an organisation.

One of the ways you find up and comers at a tech company is by seeing who wrote down the plan. That doesn’t mean that they came up with everything and that doesn’t mean they had all the ideas. If they were able to organise their thoughts and have the energy and the motivation and the skill to communicate it in a written form. That stands out.” - @pmcarma

I'm not a natural note taker. Early in my career I was not proactive enough to take regular notes. This was a mistake. Taking notes is one of the best ways to have influence in a company. Especially if you are not in a senior position.

Take notes in meetings

Get into the habit of taking notes during meetings. Meeting notes aren’t always useful but you won’t know that upfront. Be the person who takes notes in every meeting, even if someone else does too.

Create actions and follow up

As well as taking notes you should listen out for actions. Things like “Mark can you check with data what fields needs to be encrypted?”. Make a list of notes and a list of actions (todos) assigned to specific people.

This is where your influence grows. By writing a plan and assigning actions you are helping manage the project. Even if you are not the person making decisions or the technical expert.

Iterate and communicate the plan

I worked with an engineer who had massive impact and influence, much more than others at his level. He would write a plan for the team and continually refine it. When he updated the plan he re-shared it with the team, stakeholders and dependant teams.

This person became one of the most influential engineers in the company. He was able to make big changes to the product and architecture.

Write clearly

Write clearly for maximum impact. Sharing raw notes has limited benefit. Instead, you should review your notes and edit them before sharing.

It doesn’t need to be a long edit. Time taken should depend on the importance of the subject. Use Hemingwayapp to speed this up and improve your writing.

Think about reducing the cognitive load for the reader. The more concise your writing, the more likely it is people will read, share and cite your notes.