Incorporating Mind Mapping – As a Last Resort

Final Assignment for Becky Shepherd

Challenge    One of my clients was a major Federal agency whose bureaucratic foundational  heartbeat, so to speak, is what they call the Task Management teams.  The term ‘task’  is used in this system as a blanket term for any and all documentation that goes up the  chain of command or external to the organization.  These documents range from brief  internal communications to official memorandum, program handbooks, and even  Congressional correspondence.  The current Task Management teams were  underutilized.  Given that they have the best seats in the house – visibility on all  proposed documents, signed documents, and upcoming issues – it was to the client’s  best interest to leverage their insights.  These Task Management teams saw  themselves as paper-pushers, and it was our job to help them reevaluate their  responsibilities, purpose, and their overarching mission to help them go from reactive  analysts to proactive strategists.    Selection    We began with our research phase, digging up old Task Management policies,  guidance documents, and even interviewing current and past Task Management  personnel.  Then we held numerous facilitated discussions where we put all current  Task Management personnel (stakeholders) in one conference room to learn about their  basic job tasks and prioritization.  After many meetings with no resolution or consensus  amongst the different teams, we decided that in order to branch out of the current “What  Is” or as we often heard in these sessions as “the way we’ve always done it” – to a new  realm of “What If” we would need to conduct a mind mapping exercise.    Application    In our mind mapping exercise, we included all Task Management team members from  the organization spanning three hierarchical tiers.  The stakeholders’ experience ranged  from approximately five years in their current task management role to merely three  months.  Our thought process was to incorporate the current personnel as much as  possible, in hopes that if they had a hand in the process, they would buy-in to our efforts  and feel compelled to change their behavior.    We pulled the research from our initial steps and asked all members to read the longer  documents prior to arrival.  We clarified that the intent of this session was to determine  all job competencies and responsibilities to then reach an ultimate job description or  ‘motto’ that everyone would agree on.  When participants arrived, we provided sticky  notes and markers to each stakeholder to jot down all ideas on the sticky notes, one  idea per note.  Then, the facilitator clustered the sticky notes on the white board based  on similarity.  The facilitator then posed the question to the group to label and

characterize each cluster.  We left the session with a handful of competencies that the  group agreed upon and we felt confident about the progression of our project.    Insight    Our mind mapping exercise was a very telling activity.  Notably, we learned that even  amongst teams of the same level in the organization, there were great differences in  expectations, responsibilities, and even employee morale.  We learned that there were  already some teams who held a mindset of being strategic influencers, and we then  leveraged their support throughout the project.  The mind mapping exercise provided us  with common job competencies and an overarching job description.  As we entered the  “What If” phase we were armed and ready to begin brainstorming the new job  responsibilities.    Approach    Admittedly, this project was conducted prior to learning this Design Thinking  methodology and exercises.  In hindsight, this mind mapping exercise would have been  stronger if a wider net of stakeholders was cast.  The agency has a strong culture of  respect for authority.  If we had incorporated some of the leadership of the organization  in this exercise alongside the Task Management team members, there likely would  have been greater buy-in and a wider range of “What If’ statements in the brainstorming  phase.    We viewed mind mapping as a last resort when it should have been included in our  project plan all along.  Now that I am well-versed in the Design Thinking practices, I look  forward to applying this innovative approach when tackling new challenges in ‘the  unknown.’

