What is the meaning of MOM in Business, Corporate, Email category?
In simple terms, MOM refers to the notes prepared during a meeting, which can include various discussion points, action items, and resolutions reached.
In the below YouTube video, we talk about MOM with the help of some examples. If you like the content, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Many of you would have come across MOM in the context of business meetings, as it is a commonly used term in the corporate world. Below, we will cover everything related to MOM and we will also be looking at some best practices and one sample template.
The objective of an MoM is to summarize various items/topics discussed during the meeting and to highlight necessary follow-up actions.
Some main components of a well-written MOM are:
- Date of meeting: An MOM must mention the date on which the meeting was held. It helps maintain a chronological record and is great for recurring meetings, as it helps generate a timeline view.
- Meeting Agenda: A meeting agenda helps to set up the context of the event and it also often acts as a guideline. A meeting agenda could be something as simple as the subject line of the meeting invite or the initial context provided at the beginning of a meeting. Some examples could be “Monthly Leadership Connect” or “Customer Retention Plan Discussion”.
- Participant Names: If there are only a few participants in the meeting, you can list all their names in the MOM, however, if there are many participants you can either group them by team names or just mention the team names. To make it easier to read you should list the names in alphabetical order and put your name at the end of the list.
- Discussion Summary: A discussion summary is often written in the form of bullet points and one item at a time. Make sure you are writing these bullets as concise and clear points. A good MOM should cover all the discussion points. Also, do not mix your thoughts in the discussion summary, but only write what was discussed in the meeting.
- Action Items: With every action item you should include the name of the responsible person or team and mention any discussed deadlines.
Below is a sample MOM template for a meeting named “Product Roadmap Discussion”:
Best practices for preparing a MOM:
- Responsibility for MOM writing should be assigned before the event or meeting begins. This way the note-taker can be more prepared from the start.
- MOM should be written as concisely and clearly as possible.
- Also, the MOM should be shared soon after the end of the meeting. This way even if you have missed writing about some discussion points, someone else can fill in for you, because things are likely to be fresh in everyone’s mind.
Advantages of a well-written MOM:
- A well-written MoM helps to keep track of various discussion points and outlines the responsibility between attendees/teams, thus making them more accountable.
- MOMs are immensely important for recurring meetings as they provide a timeline view of the progress made.
- MOM from previous meetings can act as well-written notes to bring new attendees up to speed.