Reflection | Mind Mapping

Isabel Pardal

Challenge       I work in a multinational pharma as an intern of talent acquisition area and one of my biggest challenge is to develop  our Internship Program to attract young talents for our opportunities. The project of developing a complex program  like this, involves many target internal areas in the company like Communication, Marketing, Talent Management and  Human Resources. So, to think about what we are going to promote for the students in the market, all of these parts  for the insights and decision-making must be involved. There is also a consulter supporting us in this project by  promoting and doing the recruitment and selection of the internship vacancies that show up in our company.  For the Internship Program´s development we have to study and decide some very essential points: Target public (who  we want to attract), market competition, visibility and attractiveness, benefits, design and content shown on the hot  site.      Selection      Thinking about the challenge of involving different areas for structuring the project, Mind mapping was chosen as a  Design Thinking tool, in this case. Mind mapping is a highly effective way of getting information in and out of our brain  and it is a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that literally "maps out" the ideas. In addition,  this tool of Design Thinking can be used for all the levels in a company with the goal to establish criteria for the what- if idea generation phase.    The use of the Mind Map allows a strategic view of all the processes and interconnected points of something, because  it is a visual tool, allowing the generation of more structured insights.       Application      As it was necessary to reach a consensus about many different topics, I had the idea of doing a Mind mapping with the  stakeholders involved in the project.  The structure of our Mind Mapping was with the main idea in the center  (development of the Internship Program) and the ideas that emerge radiate from the center through lines, symbols,  words, color and images.   In the first moment, we identify the strengths and opportunities to the development of the program, and it was very  important to direct the ideas and have a basis for decision-making.  The participants wrote, in very short phrases or  even single words, the insights in the map to have a more visual strategic of the ideas that was coming up. At this stage,  it was possible to understand the different views on competition, and how we can project our value in the market.    Also, understanding the general scenario to have more insights and organize them for the second time, the experiences  of each one generated very interesting ideas. After this, in the second half of the meeting, we define the ways to apply  and disclosure our Program. In this final step, we map and define the layout of our page on the consulter´s website that  promotes our internship vacancies, content that must be published, phases of the selection process, settlement of our  benefits and development plan to these young talents, always aiming at making our vacancies more attractive than our  market competitors.     The use of the tool was very effective and made us see the main points of attention and development of our project. In  addition, everyone was able to contribute with their ideas, which made the scope of development of the Internship  Program richer and more elaborate.      Insight       By applying the Mind mapping tool, we were able to have the contribution of all the stakeholders involved in the  process, promoting different perspectives about the theme and to have brilliant insights. This changed a lot my mindset  when it comes to solving complex problems that involve many key stakeholders, because it was possible to understand  that there are Design Thinking tools that support us in contextualizing the problem and elaborating ideas.

In addition, it was possible to identify development opportunities and better solutions to the problems encountered  through a strategic view. Another benefit is the feeling that everyone contributed to the solution, and reformulated the  idea that everyone has something creative to contribute. Not to mention how fun the process is and how it can be great  for building time.      Approach       The most important think that I learned with this course, was how efficient and collaborative teamwork can be, especially  when we reflect about the need to work with modern tools these days.   Now that I have a great knowledge about Design Thinking tools, of course, I will use them to solve the problems that  arise in my job.  Also this, one of the tools that I found super interesting and that I will use is storytelling. For example,  this tool would be very useful to publicize the company, what it does, values, culture, main strategic, etc., through real  stories that engage our audience.    Thanks a lot!

