Mind Mapping

Challenge

I was assigned to a group within my organization to increase the well-being of my fellow  employees. My organization routinely sends out generic surveys to all of the employees in order  to measure the level of satisfaction in the organization. The results of these surveys always reveal  that the employees are unhappy. The survey did not provide any open ended questions or any  opportunities to provide individualized feedback. The majority of the responses indicated that the  main reasons for the dissatisfaction was due to the long hours and stressful nature of the work.  Managers decided that there was not enough personnel to change the work schedule so there was  nothing they could do about the long hours. In an attempt to mitigate the stress, a relaxation  room was created where the employees could utilize new massage chairs, or a mini putt-putt  course. However, follow up surveys indicated that employee happiness had not improved.

Selection

My group knew that we needed to gain a deeper understanding into why the employees were  unhappy. Another generic survey was not going to provide us with the information we needed.  We needed to have genuine conversations that would reveal the sources of dissatisfaction and  discover personalized ways to create happiness. We decided to get more personal with the  surveys and use Mind Mapping to identify common themes that could feasibly be addressed.  Mind mapping was an ideal application to use because it allowed us to organize a large volume  of information into more manageable themes. There was no way we could personally satisfy  hundreds of employees. However, Mind Mapping narrowed those hundreds of ‘wants’ into a  smaller, workable amount of concepts.

Application

Instead of sending out a mass email, each person from my group conducted an open ended,  question and answer session with one person from every department. We didn’t start with a list  of predetermined questions which allowed us to have meaningful, organic discussions.

The part where we applied Mind Mapping was when we reconvened after our one-on-one  conversations. We then took our notes from the conversations and organized the main points  under concepts. A couple of common themes were ideas like feeling isolated from other  employees or removed from the final product that is provided to customers, and not feeling like  they could separate themselves from work since many employees ate at their desk during lunch.  From there, we simulated what was referred to as an ‘art gallery’ in the lesson. We wrote each  theme on a large piece of paper. Underneath each theme we included ideas we thought could be  used for improvement. For the theme ‘isolation’ we added ideas such as, potlucks or weekend  barbecues. We also left room for any additional ideas. These pieces of paper were taped onto the  walls in the conference room. We then invited everyone in the organization to conduct a walk  through and leave their feedback.

Insight

The first thing we noticed was that the employees were eager to provide feedback. The second  was, while there were many employees who liked the idea of weekly potlucks or weekend  events, the majority of the comments involved wanting a more concrete purpose, and better  understanding of where they fit into the whole structure. My group had the preconceived idea  that the employees wanted time away from work, when the feedback indicated they needed more  meaning in their work. We realized that we were still trying to lead the conversations by  providing narrowly focused suggestions. We fell short of accomplishing Design Thinking  because we degraded the opportunity for innovation by creating possible solutions before we  really got to the root of the problem. Before we could implement any changes, we would have to  go back to the drawing board.

Approach

For the next iteration, we will have to flesh out the problem even further. I think we will have to  start at the beginning of the process with Visualization in order to really understand the  employees and try to find the root of the problem. I still believe that meaningful conversations  are a good way to get the employees engaged in the process and is the best way to discover  information. However, instead of being so work focused we need to be more person focused. We  will also have to be mindful of our own preconceived notions and try to avoid them in order to  find useful solutions. Once we do that successfully, I think that using the tool of Mind Mapping  again will yield promising results.

