What Is an Objective Summary + How to Write It

The ability to produce an objective summary of extensive, intricate documents is incredibly valuable for enhancing workplace productivity, achieving academic excellence, and improving personal understanding. But how can you be certain your summary is genuinely "objective"? This comprehensive guide will explain the essence of an objective summary. You'll explore real-life examples and learn techniques for creating objective summaries for various contexts like meetings, lectures, podcasts, interviews, and more. Let's get started!

Also read: Meeting Takeaways: 7 Points Every Attendee Should Leave With

What is an objective summary?

An objective summary effectively conveys only the most significant and crucial aspects of a longer piece of content, without incorporating personal interpretations or opinions. Its aim is to furnish readers with a succinct, unbiased overview, enabling them to quickly grasp the core ideas and decide if they need to delve into the full content.

Objective summaries adhere strictly to key details and typically omit repetitive or tangential information from the source material. Key qualities of objective summaries include:

• Clarity: Must be clear, direct, and readily comprehensible.
• Conciseness: Brief and to the point, covering main ideas without superfluous details.
• Accuracy: Represents the main ideas faithfully, without distortion or misrepresentation.
• Hierarchy of information: Prioritizes the most vital information, concentrating on core concepts and their supporting details.
• Elimination of redundancy: Steers clear of unnecessary repetition to maintain the summary's brevity.
• Logical organization: Arranges information logically to ensure a coherent flow of ideas.
• Objectivity: Presents information impartially, without injecting personal bias.
• No additional information: Confines itself to what the source explicitly states; refrains from adding extra details or assumptions.

Also read: How to Create Better Meeting Recap Emails

Objective summary examples

How can one successfully differentiate objective summaries from others? To gain a clearer understanding, consider this scenario: You've just watched an amazing film, and someone asks you to outline the plot without revealing any spoilers. Do you then launch into a detailed cinematic critique, exploring the emotional impact of the plot? Or do you stick to summarizing the storyline, saving the emotional analysis for later?

Much like narrating a movie plot, where you focus on the sequence of events, characters, and key moments, an objective summary is solely concerned with relaying essential information.

Here’s another illustration highlighting the key distinctions between objective and subjective summaries, specifically within the context of business meetings.

Example 1: Quarterly planning meeting

Alpha Corp recently conducted a quarterly planning session with its leadership teams to establish revenue targets and strategic priorities for 2024.

Subjective summary of the meeting:

The meeting's plan seems to pin its hopes on an untested new product line to achieve aggressive 25% growth targets in 2024, lacking clear contingency plans. Initiating European expansion also appears precarious if management doesn't emphasize cultural integration during recruitment.

While raising potentially valid points, this summary injects commentary and judgment with words like "aggressive" or "expansion also appears precarious." An objective summary would report key facts and decisions without such external analysis. Here's how:

Objective summary of the same meeting:

Alpha Corp's leadership established 2024 revenue growth targets of 25%, to be supported by a new Q3 product launch and an enlargement of their European sales team to boost market share. Furthermore, the leadership reviewed past objectives where performance fell short.

Example 2: Board acquisition approval meeting

A board meeting is convened to deliberate on the potential acquisition of a competitor for $2 million.

Subjective summary of the meeting:

The CEO appears determined to acquire the competitor, anticipating significant growth synergies, although some board members raised questions about the thoroughness of fit assessments and due diligence in validating projections. Full leadership consensus on deal risks seems uncertain.

Here’s the objective summary of the same meeting:

Objective summary of the meeting:

As per the discussion, the proposed acquisition is expected to yield a 12% sales increase from the new product line. According to meeting minutes, some members voiced concerns regarding due diligence and cultural compatibility factors. Further deal negotiations are scheduled for the upcoming fiscal quarter.

Do you notice the subtle distinction? In both instances, the objective summaries offer a neutral and factual account of the events and nothing more.

Related: 6 Tips to Improve Meeting Culture

How to write an objective summary

Learning to compose an objective summary requires practice in extracting key information from longer, more complex content. Adhere to these steps when crafting an objective summary:

Step 1: Thoroughly Engage with the Original Material

Accuracy starts with a complete understanding of the source, such as original meeting minutes or recordings. Slow down and meticulously read or listen to conversations, presentations, articles, books, or other materials, taking organized notes. For audio or video content, tools like DeepVo.ai can be invaluable, offering high-accuracy speech-to-text transcription to ensure you capture every detail. Make sure you comprehend:

• The primary topic and thesis statement.
• Key points and supporting facts/statistics.
• The overall organizational flow and structure.
• The tone and style of delivery.

Having an accurate mental framework is vital before attempting to summarize. Identify the hierarchical arrangement of ideas and details around a central thesis.

Step 2: Draft a Concise Opening Sentence Stating the Main Idea

Effective objective summaries immediately orient readers with the opening sentence. It should establish the topic and themes. So, review your notes and compose a succinct declarative statement encapsulating the central subject and key takeaway.

Example opening sentence: Last quarter's Beta Solutions earnings report shows a 2% year-over-year revenue decrease, continuing recent trends of sales underperformance.

Step 3: Include Only the Most Essential Supporting Details

Objective summaries are brief but incorporate important details that help clarify the main ideas. Consult your content notes and choose only vital supporting facts, statistics, or examples directly pertinent to the central statements.

Do not attempt to cover every piece of information or strictly follow the original content's structure. Specific details should logically build upon one another to concisely affirm the main message. Use your best judgment to discern what information is crucial and what is not.

Step 4: Use Transitional Phrases to Connect Ideas

Writing with transitions establishes logical connections between details and concepts, enhancing flow and clarity for readers.

Useful examples include:

• Furthermore, the report indicates...
• In contrast, the text suggests...
• Contrary to X's viewpoint...
• Elaborating on this point...

Sprinkling in some transitional phrases helps guide readers in understanding the relationships between the individual details you select for inclusion.

Step 5: Maintain an Impartial Tone Matching the Original Piece

Objective summaries deliberately exclude external commentary, so word choice and tone should align with the original document and avoid revealing embedded perspectives. Employing neutral language is a common strategy for preserving impartiality.

Step 6: Close with a Final Sentence Reinforcing the Central Themes

Conclude with a sentence that explicitly connects to the primary topic and takeaways without introducing new details. Effortlessly reinforce key points for the readers.

Example closing: The speaker asserts that leadership adjustments may be required for Alpha Corp to rebuild its brand reputation with consumers following recent difficulties.

Step 7: Review, Refine, and Uphold Objectivity Standards

With your draft objective summary complete, transition into revision mode, assessing the following:

• Fact-check details for accuracy.
• Exclude all subjective language.
• Tighten wording and remove unnecessary content.
• Eliminate evaluative judgments.

Refine and polish your objective summary to convey the essence without any biases. Set your finished summary aside for a period, then revisit it with fresh eyes to spot areas for further enhancement.

Also read: How to Improve Meeting Outcomes?

Objectively Summarize Meetings and Discussions with DeepVo.ai

Creating objective summaries, especially for live meetings, lectures, or extensive audio/video discussions, can be challenging and time-consuming. Fortunately, there's a way to streamline this: DeepVo.ai!

Instead of manually taking notes, engage fully in conversations and let DeepVo.ai handle the recording, transcription, and summarization of your interactions. First, leverage DeepVo.ai’s high-accuracy speech-to-text (up to 99.5% accuracy across 100+ languages) to get a precise transcript. Then, its AI-powered summarization can generate concise overviews in seconds. These automated summaries objectively extract key decisions, action items, and crucial takeaways, so you don’t have to listen to entire recordings or sift through lengthy transcripts.

You can even customize these AI summaries with templates tailored to your specific needs. For instance, a sales manager can create summaries to extract customer pain points, business requirements, number of seats needed, and features of interest. Similarly, an HR manager can use custom notes to assess a candidate's cultural fit. Beyond text summaries, DeepVo.ai can also generate intelligent mind maps, offering a structured visual representation of the content, which is great for understanding complex information hierarchies and can be easily exported.

DeepVo.ai accelerates the sharing of post-meeting information, allowing teams to concentrate on their tasks rather than summarizing past discussions. Its free-to-use platform also ensures end-to-end encryption for your data security. Ready to enhance your summarization process? Try DeepVo.ai for free!

FAQs

How long should an objective summary be?
An objective summary should ideally be between 5% and 15% of the original content's length. It should typically be a maximum of 1-3 paragraphs. Summaries exceeding one page often become too diluted. Remember, only salient facts!

What are the components of an objective summary?
The three core components of an objective summary are:

1. Central Idea/Thesis Statement: Clearly articulate the main concept or topic.
2. Key supporting facts: Present the factual details directly relating to the central topic.
3. Impartial tone/voice: Maintain a neutral voice, restating source information without external judgments.

Is it acceptable to directly quote portions of text verbatim from the full piece in my objective summary?
Avoid over-quoting, even short passages verbatim, as excessive use of quotes can disrupt an objective summary's flow and originality. If you find it necessary to include quotes, use brief verbatim excerpts sparingly.

Final thoughts

Precision meets a neutral perspective in objective summaries. Learning how to take a large volume of complicated information and summarize it clearly and accurately is an extremely useful skill. Adhering to the guidelines outlined above will help you improve your summarization abilities efficiently. And if you need to automate this process for your meetings and audio content, consider using a tool like DeepVo.ai, with its advanced speech-to-text, AI summary, and mind mapping features.

Are you ready to master writing objective summaries?