Design Thinking: Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

I am working as management consultant helping global companies in mastering challenges imposed by  digital transformation. Besides of consulting my company also conducts events with industry and  technology thought leaders, business partners, clients, and prospects to share the latest trends and  insights to engage in a mutual discussion and to further strengthen client engagement.

My company intends to conduct an event which we have given the working title "Smart Manufacturing  Summit" targeting the automotive and manufacturing industry. My boss asked me to develop a concept  for this one-day summit including a proposed date, location, ideas for agenda highlights, potential  session types (like keynote, presentation, panel, workshop, etc.), and ideas for speakers. As consultant, I  am used to work in teams, and I am a firm believer of the collective intelligence of teams in achieving  superior results. As the event is supposed to take place in September 2018, preparations had to be  launched in spring 2020.

To make this assignment even more challenging, the currently ongoing "Corona crisis" prevented us  from conducting a physical workshop with representatives of colleagues, client and business partners as  most of us have to stay at home exercising social distancing to prevent spreading of the Covid-19 virus.  In consequence, I had do come up with a format applicable to a remote session while simultaneously  stimulating creativity and engaging participants to provide their input and feedback to further develop  and improve the summit concept.

As I am a big fan of Mind Mapping it was obvious for me trying to apply Mind Mapping also to this  challenge with the objective to collect feedback and input, structure ideas and stimulate collective  creativity based on already provided information.

Application

In an endeavor to adapt the Mind Mapping technique to a virtual session, I had to modified the 'yard  sale' approach presented by Prof. Marian Moore in the course video as follows: I initially put down my  ideas on the structural elements of the summit like proposed event date, location, agenda topics,  session formats and speakers in a Mind Map using the software Mind Manager 2020 for visualization.  This approach facilitated the structuring of available bits and pieces.

I selected a representative sample of colleagues, clients and business partners (in total 8) that I already  have worked with as sparring partner before. I invited each participant to a 1:1 Skype session and asked  for their intuition and feedback. As suggested by Prof. Marian Moore, I focused on explaining the whole  concept to the participants rather than details. To trigger the participant's reaction, I asked of what  attracts them most in the overall event concept. Furthermore, I asked for what they would believe  would work and what not and which additional ideas and suggestions they have. After the Skype session  I sent out the Mind Map as PowerPoint and asked participants to put on sticky notes with text  boxes/comments to the Mind Map containing their feedback and new ideas and asked the participants  to return the commented PowerPoint for aggregation.

Then, I created a consolidated Mind Map containing all input, feedback and ideas suggested by the  participants and shared the collective result in a joint Skype session with all participants.

Like in a joint physical session we reviewed all provided sticky notes (i.e., comments, feedback and new  ideas) where each participant commented on his/her contribution. The joint discussion not only gave  feedback to all participants on the input provided by other participants, but also generated new ideas. I  noted them down with differently colored sticky notes in the PowerPoint during the session to ensure  full transparency to all participants. In consequence, we were able to derive further insights from the  collectively provided input and feedback and to carve-out of whether generated ideas found consensus  and qualify for including them into the summit concept.

Insight & Approach

Mind Mapping again turned out to be of great value in structuring and reviewing ideas. While I  previously focused on applying Mind Mapping as structuring technique for myself, this exercise focused  on applying Mind Mapping as 'yard sale' as suggested by Prof. Marian Moore in a setting of conducting a  virtual workshop with remote participants.

I perceived this setting as challenging for the following reasons: First, due to the lack of a physical room  with displayed content, I had to present ideas online while trying to figure out what attracts participants  by asking them related questions in 1:1 Skype meetings. A physical setting however would have allowed  to observe participants to see on what attracts and strikes them of the provided input. Second, the step  of participants making sticky notes was done remotely by the participants preventing the observation of  them. Third, the important step of jointly reviewing comments made by participants on sticky notes had  to take place with help of a joint Skype session preventing physical interaction of the participants like  walking in the room, collective re-arranging and grouping of sticky notes and ideas on a board. However,  the joint Skype session with all participants explaining their thoughts and ideas was perceived as really  helpful as the joint discussion of individual findings even generated new ideas.

Regarding optimizing the approach of a virtual Mind Mapping 'yard sale', I would recommend to further  stimulate discussion and interaction between the workshop participants. This could be done e.g., by  replacing the initially conducted 1:1 Skype sessions by a joint Skype session.

This course inspired me in applying Mind Mapping in a new and previously unexplored way due to the  current ongoing "Corona crisis" preventing to conduct physical workshops. While a physical workshop  would have most likely generated superior results, I was surprised to learn that even the virtual setting  worked comparably well and helped me significantly in further developing and strengthening the  summit's concept.

