Reflection: Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection    Mind mapping is a very great visual thinking tool to structure ideas and concepts  and allow a person to  think out of the box as ideas are trailed in a graphical way which will eventually help better analyze,  comprehend, synthesize, recall and generate new ideas.  I use this tool generally when I have multiple  indicators and players into one single project where grouping and categorizing idea is challenging which  makes planning the solution even harder.  It’s a good tool to have all related ideas in one place where its  very organized and relationships are very clear.  Its an easy tool that can be used by everyone and there  are multiple tool which are available online or can be easily drawn in a piece of paper.    Application    I have used mind mapping tool when we had a huge company merger of four entities.  The challenge  was to group and maintain all available assets and systems in order to plan for unify them for the new  entity.  Traditional ways of having all lists scattered wasn’t helping us in having the big picture of all  assets, therefore, when we applied them in a mind map it became very clear and we started adding  ideas on the resources and what is needed to unify them.  We have used a free online tool that allow  collaborative approach with employees from different merged entities.  This was very powerful and  contributed to managing the merging process effectively.    Insight & Approach    Well, I have been using this tool since I was studying at the college and during work for identifying all  relatives ideas that can contribute to an aimed goal.  I found this way very useful and easy to adapt by  almost everyone, therefore, I have circulated this approach to my colleagues at work and we usually  present our challenges and propose proper solutions using mind map tool.  Its even more useful and  elaborative when its done live with all team members writing on the same piece of paper, either digital  or physical, the most important thing is to engage more ideas as much as possible.

