Mind Mapping

Challenge

Two years ago, I joined a company as head of purchasing. Defining process for request for quotations,  selecting best suppliers and developing them, building strategies per category to support the business  were priorities for my team and I. To follow suppliers’ performance, we defined five performance  pillars: Compliance/CSR, Quality, Service level, Competitiveness and Innovation. Till now, we focused  on the four first pillars as it was necessary to set and put in place strong basics to strengthen our SRM  in a first step. The purpose was also to give time to our colleagues from other departments (quality,  logistics…) to better understand them and learn how to contribute to them; as theses five pillars were  implemented before, in the company. Now, it is time to go further and to develop innovation with our  suppliers and to identify some new potential projects that could answer to our clients ‘expectations  and contribute even more to our company performance.

Selection

To help us being efficient and creative, mind mapping is a very interesting tool. It will be the first time  that we used it within my team. The goal is to use it collectively with our colleagues from different  departments to have their inputs.

Application

To prepare the mind mapping, collecting data, carry out interviews, reading articles about innovation  linked to our activity (or not) are needed upstream.   Interviews with our colleagues from the marketing and from sales will be key:  to understand our  clients’ expectations about products innovation and to have information concerning our competitors  with benchmarks.   For the mind mapping session, participants will be some colleagues from the marketing, design, sales,  quality, production, purchasing and some volunteers interested in the subject (10-12 people). The aim  is to have different ideas and point of views - to keep a broad approach. It should take 2 hours. On the  walls of the meeting room, I will put the data collected during the interviews (brand strategy, clients’  profiles and expectations, competitors’ products, top sales products, portfolio analysis, products  pictures…).   After a quick introduction to remind the goal of this mind mapping (“what is products innovation for  our clients, what are their expectations and what can we propose?”), participants will be able to read  and discover the different data during 30min, by themselves and individually. I will ask them to note  any item that could generate new ideas, and items that are less interesting. Then, they will share by  group of 5-6 people using a paperboard (30min). Each member will present his notes to the others,  and the team will gather observations linked to the same theme by doing clusters. Finally, both teams  will share with the other and it will be time to understand what the observations really imply. It will be  useful to often ask: “so what?” We will go on until insights emerge for each clusters (1 hour). The  connections between clusters will be also discussed and represented. Thanks to this first mind  mapping, 4-5 main design criteria could be identified.   Then, interviews with our suppliers will complete and enrich our reflection.  Identifying what they can  propose in terms of products or production process and what are their strategy and roadmap for  innovation will be very helpful.   To challenge our design criteria and go on with the project, a next step could be organizing a brainstorm  with our suppliers and with internal stakeholders!

Insight & Approach  Mind mapping is new for my team and I, so it will be exciting to test and use this new tool.   Organizing a mind mapping will be an opportunity to gather people from different departments, to  have their input and to talk about innovation and how it can contribute to our company business.   Doing the mind mapping collaboratively will strengthen adhesion to the project during the next phases  and our group cohesion.   It will also enable us to understand all the data we have, more deeply and efficiently. Thus, our  discussions with our suppliers will be more relevant concerning innovation topic.   It will help us to organize our work and the next steps of the projects (brainstorms, learning  launches…).   I am sure that my team and I will learn a lot. Adding other insights and feedbacks is too early for the  moment, as I did not experiment mind mapping already.   Once the first mind mapping is done, I think I will be able to use it for other purposes and improve the  way I am managing it.

