A longtime board member takes unreadable minutes and won't consider a change. Should I let it go?

No — reframe it. He rejected a tool, not the problem, and as Governance Committee chair, setting a minutes standard for every committee is already his job.

Let this go? No. But I'd pick a different fight than the one you just lost.

You led with the tool. He heard "you should use different software" and, predictably, reacted to the software, not the actual problem. That's an easy no for someone who "doesn't want any part of technology." You handed him an exit before he ever had to engage with the real issue.

The real issue isn't the tool. It's that your board's official record doesn't do the one thing it's supposed to do: tell someone later what was decided. That's true whether the minutes are typed by hand, dictated, or produced by any software on earth. Reframe the conversation around that standard, not the method.

Here's the useful part: he chairs the Governance Committee. That's not irony, that's leverage. A Governance Committee's job includes setting standards for how the board and its committees operate, and that should include what "good minutes" actually means, for every committee, not just the ones he personally sits on.

So don't make this about his minutes specifically. Make it about the board not having a documented standard at all. Ask: should the Governance Committee establish a basic minutes standard that applies across the board and all committees? That's squarely his job to lead, and it reframes the whole conversation. He's not being told his work is bad. He's being asked to do the thing his role already exists to do.

Once a standard exists, it applies to everyone equally, including him. Format, content, what belongs in the record and what doesn't, all of it. His minutes either meet the bar the board agreed to, or they don't. That's a much easier conversation than "please write differently," and it's one he's structurally positioned to lead rather than resist.

A few ways to bring this to life without reigniting the tech fight:

Start with the standard, not the solution. Bring a short, simple example of what board minutes should look like, motions, votes, decisions, brief context, nothing more. Get the board, including him, to agree on that as the baseline. Once everyone has signed off on what "good" looks like, his current minutes will visibly fall short of it. That's a far easier conversation than "please use different software."

Let the committee do this as its own initiative. If the Governance Committee formally takes this on, it's not you versus him. It's the board doing what governance committees are supposed to do.

Let someone else float the tool, later, if at all. In the meantime, see if another committee is willing to try it first. If one committee starts producing clean, consistent minutes with a fraction of the effort, that becomes the case, not an argument you have to make, but a result everyone can see for themselves. Once a standard exists, if his process still can't meet it while another committee's clearly does, the conversation about tools becomes about solving an agreed-upon problem, not persuading him to adopt something new. That's a very different pitch, and it might not even need to come from you.

One more thing: you don't need him to like the outcome. You need the board's official record to actually work. Those are different goals, and only one of them is yours to solve.

For the standard itself — what a board's official record actually has to contain: What Makes Minutes Legal?