Not surprisingly, 85% of executives are dissatisfied with the efficiency and effectiveness of their companies’ meetings, reports Harvard Business Review. Here are two ways to help drive better decision-making during a meeting—and boost your boss’s efficiency:

Taking minutes wasn’t getting any easier for Terri Michaels, even after years of practice. “I had become wordy, and the minutes were sometimes eight pages. Each new director or company wanted them done differently,” she says. Finally, she enrolled in a workshop, and things changed. Now she uses these 10 best practices:

At Progress Energy’s quarterly “compliments and concerns” meeting, senior administrative assistant Amy Finelli uses a template for minute taking. As a result, she can quickly send out notes after the meeting “because I don’t have to figure out how to organize the topics,” she says. Here are a few more of Finelli’s power tools for meetings:

Tasked with recording minutes? Designate a “parking lot,” where all off-topic ideas can reside. It can be a real or figurative whiteboard where you list ideas as they pop up. Participants can pursue those ideas at a more appropriate time.

“I hate taking minutes. What do I write down? How do I know what’s important?” Streamline your minute-taking by recording notes as bullet points. Distill any conversation down to its essentials.

“Write this down in the minutes,” demands a board meeting attendee, implying that his clout alone should be reason enough for you to do what he says, right or wrong. In such a situation, you could use minute-taking standards.

You won't find many people who love meetings. That might be because attendees often feel like meetings are a waste of time. At Marilyn Halsall’s workplace, “action minutes” are part of the remedy.