Journal
Reading a covering minute without the rest of the file
Covering minutes are written to travel. That is their virtue and their vice. In one Hobart registry we found a neat clip of minutes in a supervisor’s in-tray and the matching folders still on a trolley by the fire door. Someone had meant to be helpful: the decision-maker could read the summary first. The decision-maker then asked questions the folders could have answered, and the folders were not in the room.
A journey map has to show this split. One line for the paper that moves because it is light, another for the pack that moves when a person has a spare hand. We pencil them in different weights. Staff recognise the drawing immediately. They have lived the afternoon in which a minute is discussed as if it were the file.
Our advice is unfashionable: keep the minute clipped to the thing it describes, even if that makes the trolley heavier. If you must send a summary ahead, send a copy, and write on it that it is a copy. The original journey should not fork without a note on both branches.