Taking the meeting minutes is one of those startlingly effective hacks to steer a project you've been landed with, without taking the blame for others' failures

Taking the meeting minutes is one of those startlingly effective hacks to steer a project you've been landed with, without taking the blame for others' failures. Always volunteer to take minutes, email them to all afterwards, keep them short - "under one page" was the rule in the paper days, these days I'd say "one desktop screen or two laptop screens". Shorter is better. You control perception and you control ensuing actions. You (literally) write the narrative. (Requirement: you at least need to know what your desired outcome is.) Holy crap, it's like having cracked a secret code. Nobody in a corporation knows what the hell they're doing; look like someone knows even slightly and stuff actually gets done. (Also: if you're not the white male in the room, it can seem to slot you in as lower status. But it's still a fabulously effective way to get everything done to your ideas. Jessica Price, who knows her stuff, recommends taking them standing at the front of the room, not off to one side: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424 https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/846086667790311424 YMMV, try stuff.)