Reflection-Mind Mapping

Challenge  As a member of the leadership team within my organization, I am responsible for not only for the daily  operations that keep business running, but finding new ways for us to be effective, efficient, and more  productive. This involves constantly asking “what else?” when it comes to how we do business and serve  our members. Recently, I found that a large portion of our member base seemed to be coming to us  with similar issues around changes to our credit card product. This put me right into solve mode initially,  but I realized that this was an opportunity for me to dip a toe into my new knowledge of Design Thinking  and find a more innovative solution to a problem that was not yet fully explored or articulated.

Selection and Application   I chose the Mind Mapping tool as it is a concept that I can easily employ myself and share with my  fellow leaders without them having full knowledge of Design Thinking. The concept of creating an art  gallery or yard sale to present many pieces of data to a group of stakeholders is such a simple but  effective process.

To begin, I set the stage with proper expectations with my team and explain what is hoped to be gained.  I printed member surveys along with the demographics associated with each. I included branch  locations that these came from for reference as well. The gallery process was laid out very clearly in the  last video if Module 3, so much so that I was able to put together a “gallery” for my team to tour in a  very short period. Based on the feedback received on this alone, I found that most of my peers found  this to be a much more engaging way of reviewing large amounts of data.

Insight  By applying the Mind Mapping tool, I found that clustering common insights and connections in large  groups of data is intuitive behavior for most. Having several stakeholders involved allows for lots of good  dialogue that often led to more insights. By setting the expectations up front, we were able to have  many dynamic discussions in the small break out groups that discussed common findings.  I am currently  working with the team to translate these insights into design criteria in order to move forward.

Approach  I was once a firm believer in collecting historical data, huge reports full of graphs and statistics and more  to create a business plan for anything that needed “solving.”  That’s now a thing of the past. As a first- time user of this Design Thinking concept, I can now shift my mindset so that I don’t rush to solve and  instead take the time to learn.

