Mind mapping tool

Challenge:

I was recruited as a team lead or an Ass. Group leader while being a postdoc. Our group works in the  field of cancer research where we culture them in the lab, analyze them, identify drugs that inhibit  cancer growth and also identify possible ways to prevent metastasis in the future. We handle many  projects and the scope of the project includes technicians, who do routine laboratory work, interns  who work on short-term projects, PhDs who work on their doctoral theses on various topics and the  IT department which helps us with the maintenance of data, data protection, and security. The Idea  of any working group is to work as an effective team. The group I joined was more individuals than a  team, low on resources, no smooth flow of information, no communication, directionless and less  productive. The challenges included bringing them together as a team, optimizing resources to  increase project productivity, improve communication and streamline data management.

Selection:

Since the group was at “What is” stage, I used the Mind mapping tool to streamline the whole  process of project activities in the group. Briefly, Mind mapping is a design tool which looks for  patterns and insights in the whole process or a large data that is available and as explained in Week  3 of the “Mind mapping tool” lecture.

Application:

I first gathered the information on all the projects our group handled and spoke to the team  members one-on-one. I listed out the methods, the experiments and the tools they used for the  projects and the aims of their projects. I discussed my assessment and possibilities with my peers  and later spoke to all of the group members and discussed my findings with them.

There were 3 major areas identified for optimization 1. Resource management 2. Communication  and 3. Standardizing operation procedures. Under resource management, I divided experimental  methods into 2 categories, 1. Core methods: these are necessary for all the projects and is the  backbone of our group’s projects and everyone has to learn and 2. Individual: these are project  specific methods used for the projects of individual team members where they gain expertise and  will be the point of contacts for any help if need be.  For communicating the progress of each other’s  projects effectively, I, as an acting group leader, introduced biannual progress reports and weekly  data clubs where specific problems hindering an experiment are discussed. Finally, for standardizing  the experimental procedures, we decided to write down all the experimental protocols, optimize  them together, save them electronically and use these protocols for future experiments.

Insight:

By applying the mind mapping tool. I could identify the key functional areas that were the core  issues affecting the productivity of our group. By identifying the core experiments and training  everyone in these we can avoid losing samples when the primary technician handling the  experiment is unavailable and therefore prevent any effect on the projects. With individual  experiment we now know the expertise of a person and therefore can approach the person for  expert advice when needed. The progress reports and data clubs will help the projects with  suggestions, ideas to improve the projects and in problem-solving when stuck. Standardizing the  experimental procedures will help avoid any bias when performing the experiments and also present

a working method to all the team members old and new members easily available making the team  an effectively functioning team.

Approach:

For any team to work effectively, it is always important to identify the pillars that make any team or  a project effective and viable in this instance it was core and specialized areas, the flow of  information (communication) and bringing uniformity to experimental approaches (SOPs). For such  approaches, the mind mapping tool is a very good tool, defining the “What is” before transitioning  to  “What if”.

