Design Thinking by using Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is one of the best tools for exploring and organizing a concept for which there  is a lot of data, both structured and unstructured. I am 22 years old and have just joined the  corporate world, so I might not have a lot of corporate or business insights, but can  extrapolate what I had learned from my days at the University.    Challenge  I work at a pharmaceutical company, which manufactures drugs for cancer. Due to the  COVID situation, there has been a shift in the work culture. The employee-friendly vibe has  turned into a prison inmate scenario. The entire company staff is divided into 3 divisions.  Manufacturing, Quality Assurance & R&D. The lunch halls are closed. Alternative eating  halls are set up. Chairs are placed with a 1.5-meter gap between them. While I and probably  every employee of the company understands that these are measures taken to tackle the  COVID situation, nobody denies that the environment has turned pale, with no interactions,  no laughter, no common lunches, and ultimately decreasing the working interest.    Selecting Mind Mapping  Mind mapping, as I have stated is what I believe to be a great asset for anyone in a thinking  process, and more so important when trying to innovate to solve problems. It can bring  together abstract data points, key parameters that seem to be separate, into one umbrella of  the problem, that is aimed to be solved. It does not require an artistic skillset, but a simple  understanding of how the elements connect to one other entity.  One recent concept that I came across is the concept of bidirectional linking. The app called  Roam Research popularized it recently and I have become a fan ever since. I believe that  mind mapping can take a concept from that, which is, if three entities A, B, C are present,  and A is connected to C and B is connected to C, navigating from either of the 3 is possible  and the context of all three is mentioned in all the three of them. This might seem abstract  but will help to broaden the repertoire of employee experiences.    Application  The HR was tasked with this monumental task of identifying and improving the work culture  of the employees during the COVID times. The situation is was complicated by the fact that  the HRs work from home. Thus a novel method of getting into the shoes of the employees  was needed.   The HR recruited 5 personnel from the Manufacturing, 5 from Quality Assurance, and 5 from  the R&D as made them as TFHR, which stands for Temporary Field Human Resources.  These TFHRs have an additional role. They monitor the daily life of their department in the  company. Note points of interest, the avenues of boredom and neglect. They also talk to  their peers and collect their experiences.  The data that was collected was sent to the HR personnel in-charge of the departments.  They consolidate the information into nodes of a mind map, keeping the work environment  as its parent node. Every department gets a sub-parent node and each division inside the  department gets itself a sub-sub-parent node, with the employee feedback on the final nodal  level. A pattern started to emerge.

The production department employees were experiencing the worst of them all, followed by  the Quality Assurance, and then the R&D. The words used to describe the work environment  gradually went from OKAY to LONELY from R&D to Production. This is because the  production department employees max of 2 people at a time in a facility room. And the only  time they get to be with their friends is during the lunch breaks and snack breaks. The  condition of interaction improved gradually up to the R&D department.     Insight  The problem was not with the COVID. It was with how the workplace was organized across  the departments. The departments, even though separate, are nothing so for the employees.  One data among what was collected from the employees is the list of friends they usually  have lunch with. Most of them answered with names from other departments. The mindmap  was easily able to connect the dots, by the concept of bidirectional linking.  Thus it was evident that to improve the work environment and to improve the situation during  COVID times, some radical measures had to be taken. The HR is still in talks about the  specifics of what can be implemented, but the following are two of the suggestions in the  drawing board  Once a week is declared as the sticky note day. A huge pin-it board wall (movable) was  placed in the lunch area, where employees from one department can write messages in  sticky notes to other employees in a particular department (each department will have its  specific wall) indexed with their name and facility of work. These boards to be moved the  consecutive day to the respective departments to be as a message to the other department  friends. Even though there are phones and the internet, this idea seemed to bring a sense of  joy and suspense to the employees.  Plan number two was to play songs at the lunch hall. This eliminated the inmate feel the  distantly placed chairs brought to the lunch halls. Songs can be selected by the employees  who eat there by a foot pedal that connected to the song selector.     Approach  I personally believe that mind mapping is the best tool for this type of design thinking case.  Next time, I would broaden the ethnographic diversity and also taking into consideration of  employee’s place of stay and marital status and living conditions (alone or with friends).  Though this wasn’t the NEXT BIG THING to be solved in innovation, it is much more  important to the employee’s well-being, and I am happy to be a part of it. Design thinking can  be the difference between an idea forever stuck on the drawing board and it seeing the light  of day, however small or big the idea is, the change it brings to the lives of people benefitting  from it, is all the satisfaction that is needed.

