Reflection - Mind Maps

Challenge

I am currently working with a firm whose main focus is to spread awareness amongst the

youth about the Employability Gap and thereby aiming to reduce this gap by organizing

seminars and workshops in order to develop the skills required. Initially, we asked various

groups of interns who are currently studying in college to discuss and decide amongst

themselves as to what all needed to be included in these sessions. After a week of

discussion within the groups, all the groups were made to interact with one another and all

the points that they had jotted down seemed to be contradicting as a result of which no

conclusion or idea could be finalized upon. In order to make this activity more interesting and

in order to arrive at some conclusion we decided to use Mind maps.

Selection

Mind maps are a diagrammatic way of visually outlining the information which is important. It

is a graphical and colorful way of representing information, and providing an easy and

concise way of understanding a huge topic as well as various aspects of that topic. It

involves deeply thinking of every aspect of the topic and discussing it by drawing mindmaps

which is easy to understand for everyone in the discussion room. It basically captures what is

going on in your mind. Also, since this is a graphical way of representing the information it

tends to attract more attention and is easier to understand.    Application

As we had done earlier, we asked each intern to make a mindmap of their own which would

give details about who the target audience was , where the event should take place so that

maximum number of people are able to attend the workshops and seminars. Then each

group was made to finalize one mindmap amongst themselves which according to them was

most suitable. Once this was done, all the shortlisted mind maps were discussed and one

final mindmap was decided unanimously which gave the idea about the strategy that the

company needs to follow in order to attract maximum number of people and spread

awareness. The mindmap gave us a clear idea of who our target audience is, the locations

where we can attract maximum students, the amount of money they would be willing to pay

for the workshop and so on. As the mindmaps made were colorful and attractive the activity

proved to be interesting and fun and at the same time, we could reach a conclusion.

Insight    My learning through this exercise was that Mindmaps provide a clear understanding of the

problem and help to reach more robust conclusions. During the construction and discussion

of mindmaps, each person had a clear understanding of what they wanted, what information

was necessary and what was not required. Mind Mapping helped reach a conclusion via

healthy discussions and brainstorming.

This exercise very clearly showed that visual techniques provide a better understanding of

the problems and help analyze various solutions in order to decide which would be the best

approach for the problem. They help in keeping the people focused on the discussion and

people recollect the things which were shown to them visually rather than verbally or

textually.

Approach    What we as a firm, understood by using this tool was that Mindmap is the first step we

should include when we plan on discussing or brainstorming on any new topic. Graphically

discussing enables you to grab everyone’s attention and divert it wherever you want them to

concentrate on. But with mind mapping, we would also include storytelling as an option. We

will combine both and ask the people to first make a mindmap of the topic of discussion and

also have a proof of work in the form of a story for each element they have added in their

mind map.    Storytelling will help the person support his or her idea with a firm story which can connect to

the majority of the panel, this can be included in the final mindmap. Hence, mind map along

with storytelling can help keep the audience attentive and having a simplified set of points to

discuss along with a proof of work with a relatable story to support the point which was

added in their mind maps.     In our case, we can ask our interns to make mind maps for the upcoming workshops which

we have planned, mark the important information like target audience, ways of promotion for

the event and other information and back each information with a story of the previous

events that they have hosted or have been a part of.

