Reflection - Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection:

As a board member of a non-profit student consultancy firm I was confronted with a strategic positioning  challenge. Historically, our organization linked students of the local University, who were eager to exhibit  their recently gained academic and theoretical knowledge into practice at local small and medium  enterprises (our clients) on a project base. The challenge was triggered since our key stakeholder/ partner,  the local University, decided to organize consultancy projects themselves instead of outsourcing this to a  semi-independent student entrepreneur organization. Since we were a spin-off of the local University our  very own existence was at stake unless we were able to reinvent our proposition. The only question was  ‘how’? We’ve always assumed that the main driver to do business with us for local small and medium  enterprises and the students themselves, was the fact that we were affiliated with the University. This  way the project scope included the strategic positioning of our non-profit student consultancy firm with  limited resources based on the added value to the several different stakeholders including a high urgency.  The goal was to unravel the intrinsic motivation of our current clients and students to do business with us  in order to reposition ourselves into the market and outsmart the new competition provided by the local  university (former key stakeholder). We expected to cluster the different stakeholders based upon their  motivation to do business with us.

Our challenge was to understand the current reality/ ‘as is’ of our organization by collecting high

amounts of data from several stakeholders and to look for patterns, insights etc. in order to develop  design criteria for the ‘what if’ of our organization. Therefore the mind mapping tool proved to be the  ideal tool to come up with creative solution since it would enable us to make a smooth transition from  the current situation to the future/ desired state of our organization.

Application:

After finishing a projects with our clients we invited both the students (who executed the project) and the  client, to participate in projective techniques to uncover their reason to work with our organization and  to share their experiences. In this way we were able to align our own organization on the current reality  since some of us stated that students were (since we were non-for profit) more important than our clients  and vice versa. In order to solve this puzzle we asked clients and students to post their experiences on the  sticky notes. After a break of 30 min we asked them to cluster their own experiences. Then the insights  were identified related to each cluster and connections between clusters where highlighted. This proved  to be one of the toughest parts of the exercise. After asking ‘so what?’ related to several clusters the true  meaning of the experience emerged. For example, the amount of freedom during the project indicated  by the students became: the amount independency compared to normal university assignments or usual  student jobs (e.g. call centers).

By this it became clear that the main driver for both the students and our clients was that our

organization existed of young student entrepreneurs who didn’t follow the University rules but were  willing to take risk and experience things outside the box. After having this insight the pivot between ‘what  is’ and ‘what if’ started focusing on the creation of the criteria which was in our case the fact that it should  be entrepreneurial. By thinking: ‘if anything was possible’ how would our organization look like, we  entered the next stage.

Insight & Approach:

By designing the new positioning of our organizations based upon the new design criteria (e.g.  entrepreneurial)  we were ultimately able to position our organization as the platform for ambitious and  entrepreneurial students, who want to organize consultancy projects for themselves. The mind mapping  tool showed how our different stakeholders were interlinked. Since our clients were looking for this exact  entrepreneurial spirit our organization ensured its long-term survival as a springboard for students  allowing them to put their theoretical knowledge into practice and triple the turnover in the first year.

This course made me understand the importance of mind mapping in creating design criteria

when being in the transition from the as is to what if. Especially, the ability to process high amounts of  data and cluster them struck me. Therefore I would definitely perform a min mapping exercise when being  in a similar situation. When I’ve done it before it would be aimed at looking for immediate solutions  instead. I would not have discover the specific application of mind mapping without the course and by  that misusing this very valuable tool.

