Reflection - Mind Mapping

Challenge  One program at my organization aims at assisting clients to find full-time employment. This includes job  search training, resume writing and interview skills preparation, as well as active marketing to potential  employers.  These services are outsourced to external providers.   Program outcome is based on the  number of clients with a job offer by end of the service window. In 2016, unemployment rate in my city is  low.  However, program outcome did not see a corresponding increase for higher employment rate.      Selection  Mind Mapping was chosen for two key reasons.  First, Mind Mapping is a tool to look for patterns and  insights.  Management team, frontline staff, and external stakeholders have different perspective and  thus various speculations on the cause.  There is also labour market research data, client survey data, as  well as ethnographic research by customer experience department of my workplace.   Mind Mapping  allowed all stakeholders to review available information and developed common understand of the  challenge the program is facing.  Second, the “yard sale” format noted in Week 3 lecture assisted the team  to define design requirements.  Specifically, lack of client participation (e.g. client did not attend interview)  was often cited as a source for poor outcome.  Mind Mapping was used to facilitate finding insights on  the reason(s) behind lack of client participation.

Application

A working group comprised of management, frontline staff representatives, and external stakeholders  attended a 2-hour meeting. They were assigned to different tables, so diverse perspectives are  represented at each table.  To better manage meeting time, attendees were given some background  material prior to the meeting. They were asked to review them and come prepared for in-depth  discussions.  At the meeting, a brief review of the material was given, and then they shared their insights  with other people at the table.  Key themes emerged from the discussion: clients in this program are at  different stages of readiness of change, current available services do not meet some clients’ needs, and  program structure does not reflect changing labour market trend of gig economy and contract work.

Insights of using the tool

Even though employment outcome is a complex issue, Mind Mapping is a powerful tool to systematically  bring the team from “what-is” to “what-if.” Often we jump to solution too quickly without fully  understand the issue.  Due to lack of complete understanding of the issue, the “solution” is more like a  band aid to the wound on the surface. Short term “solution” will not bring about sustained change.

Another insight I gained is that Design Thinking has broad range of application, especially in my industry  – healthcare.  In my training, patient-centred care is emphasized and is widely adopted at bedside  practice.  I believe there is a collective challenge to fully realized patient-centred care in program design,  and Design Thinking offers the roadmap to achieve this goal.

Approach

Next time when I am tasked with revamping of a program, I will still use Mind Mapping to facilitate writing  design requirements.  However, I will consider changing these three aspects:

1. Instead of facilitating the “yard-sale”/Mind Mapping meeting, I will find an external consultant or  someone from another department.  This way, I can fully immersed in and contribute to the Mind  Mapping process.

2.  As Design Thinking is still a new concept in my industry, instead of jumping into the Mind Mapping  meeting, I will introduce the concept of Design Thinking as well as the visual representation of the four  stages (“what is”, “what if”, “what wows”, and “what works”) at the kickoff meeting of the project, and  also briefly at the Mind Mapping meeting.  This will lay the groundwork for the future activities.

3. Certain personality thrive in group discussion and ideas written on the board often came from those.   Further, discussion may be cut short due to time constraint. To better engage the quieter people and to  ensure all valuable insights are captured, I will ask participants to discuss at the table but each of them  needs to leave their set of responses behind.

