Reflection - Mind Mapping

Challenge       As a business intelligence analyst I get consulted on many diverse subjects.  I was brought in to help with  a process that revolved around the updating of freight carrier rates.  This happens on a frequent basis,  involves many stakeholders and has a considerable amount of manual work involved in it.    Selection     I felt that before we could begin to solve the challenge we needed to understand the scope of the  current process.  I selected the mind mapping tool to help everyone understand the “as is” of the  challenge so that we had a common starting point.    Application      To start the session I showed the eight stakeholders a set of six slides with word puzzles on them.  The  puzzles represent words or phrases.  The idea was to encourage creative, out of the box thinking.      Example:  The answer to the puzzle is the phrase Grace under pressure.

I created a gallery of the current process.  On one wall of a conference room I displayed the flow of the  process with documents, representations of the people and a summary of each step.  I also showed how  these steps interact with each other.      I gave everyone thirty minutes to view the wall and take notes on post-its.  Then another thirty minutes  to discuss their thoughts in groups of four.  I advised them no thought what too crazy or outlandish.  If it  comes to mind, write it down, that crazy thought may inspire someone.    Next we moved to having participants place their post-its on our gallery flow wall.  We clustered them  as groupings emerged.  Ensuring that all notes were captured even if they were placed to the edges.   We moved the clusters to better show the flow of the ideas.    I photographed all of the steps and collected all of the post-its.      We fully captured the “as is” and were ready to explore “to be” solutions.    Insight     The mind mapping exercise allowed my stakeholders to see how each part of the process played out.  It  gave them a chance to see aspects of the process that they were previously unaware of.

PRESSURE

GRACE

The biggest revelations were the impact of their efforts on people downstream and understanding the  perspectives of people upstream.  Everyone finished the session with a better understanding of where  we were and what the scope of the challenge before us is.    Approach     I think the mind mapping session was very productive and the insight gained into our current process  was useful.  The free form nature of the tool allows more interaction of questioning than I think a “at  the table” discussion would be.  Sometimes people get territorial or protective of their part of a process  in a more formal setting.    In the future I would not include the puzzles at the beginning.  While this was fun it did not seem to add  to the overall outcome of the mind mapping exercise.

