Design Thinking Reflection – MIND MAPPING

Challenge & Selection

Looking at the various tools on the Design Thinking Toolbox, the one that I found use for right away was  the Mind Mapping from Module 3. The tool and the principles were presented in the ‘Mind Mapping  Tool’ video lecture from Week 3 – Idea Generation.

I work in a large international organization, and my job is to develop and implement new

standardized commercial excellence tools and processes across a group of 4 different countries. To be  successful in both designing and implementing these tools and process it is necessary to collect a lot of  data about current market conditions and current organizational practices – and it is vital to be able to  distil all this data into actionable insights – and this is where Mind Maps become useful. Using the Mind  Map methodology allows me to get input and feedback from people on which insights can be extracted  from the data collected – and by including people in the insight process, and it allows me to secure that  the included people, through their active participation, feel a sense of ownership of the project outcome  as well. These advantages are why I have chosen to focus on this tool in this assignment – as well as why  I chose to use the tool on the challenge presented below.

The specific challenge, that I will be applying the Mind Maps tool to, is a project I lead to

implement a new CRM system to the sales force in the 4 countries. The new system will be implemented  for 100 sales reps in a business-to-business industry, in total selling 8 different brands of beauty  products to 7.000 small to medium size customers. The sales reps are spread across the 4 countries,  which have different market structures and speak 4 different languages, though internally in the  organization the used common language is English. System-wise the current overall situation is that the  sales reps use 2 different order taking tools (so there is no true CRM system being used at the moment).  A key success factor for this project is not just to set up the best system, but also to make sure that the  sales reps buy-in to the project.

Application

I applied the Mind Map tool to the CRM project after having collected the necessary information  regarding the what-is situation in the local markets and local teams. The way I used the Mind Map tool  was to organize a workshop at a joint sales conference, which all the sales reps attended. My objective  with the workshop was firstly to have the sales reps come with their feedback and insights as to what  would be the key characteristics of an ideal new CRM system, and secondly I wanted the sales reps to be  informed about the project and feel involved, so that they would feel a certain sense of co-ownership of  the project.

I had set aside 2 hours for the workshop, and I started with a short introduction to the

objectives of the project and the workshop, as well as a presentation that served as a guided tour of the  information that had been gathered prior to the meeting. I then split the sales reps into 5 teams of 20  people each, and gave each group a set of post-its with one piece of collected information on each (as  well as some blanks for information that had not yet been gathered). Each team then had 45 minutes to

first identify the good and relevant pieces of information and then – using the post-it’s on a wall –  clustering together the relevant pieces of information. The final task of each team was then to identify  at least one key insight for each cluster that would be relevant for the new CRM system to take into  account. Finally, the 5 groups were brought back together to present their insights so that everyone had  an opportunity to come with their feedback and ideas based on the insights. In the end of the workshop,  I walked had a list of 25 key insights, and for each 1 to 2 design ideas to be used for the CRM system.

Insight & Approach

I think a key insight that this approach has given me is just how many insights can be discovered by just  allowing people to discuss the information collected. It never seizes to amaze me how rich and divers  and outcome can be created by teams with people from various backgrounds and experiences. The  scope and the depth of the insights that came out of this workshop as well as the practical design ideas  that these insights provided have been the foundation of the work that has been done on developing  the CRM system since then.

A key lesson from this experiences of the CRM workshop was that to get really valuable insights

take time. Most insights don’t just pop up out of nowhere – rather they come about in an iterative way  though discussions of the information gathered and though playing around with the numbers. With this  in mind, for next time I will adjust my approach to make sure even more time is set aside for the key  insight-discovering discussions done by the teams.

