Great Article and it is timely for me. I have never been a great note taker, notes I take I forget to follow up on, or I loose, or whatever. I try to organize them, but it ends up not being organized over time. One thing I do is add all notes to either my laptop or my PDA during the meeting -- that way they are search-able and i find this helps.
Recently we hired a new employee. One of my tasks was to mentor her. Her initial assignment was to work on a project I was leading. She has less experience than I in the work force, but her note taking skills are amazing. She constantly takes notes and is very organized. What amazed me is she used the notes constantly afterwards. She was one of the first people to make it actually work. I may have been mentoring her, but I also learned a lot about how to take notes and make them useful. I am still not an expert and not as good as her, but I've improved my note taking skills immensely as a result of working with her.