MIND MAPPING    Challenge  I own an internal communications agency in Bueno Aires. Our main activity is to advise  companies on how to communicate and relate with their employees, and also how to  create a corporate culture that works for them.   My challenge starts with a new client’s internal communications and culture plan (let’s  call the client G). This client had been carrying out several initiatives for some time.  They were contests, events, meetings, marathons, publications, etc.   They wanted to get more strategical and this happened while they were welcoming a  new CEO with a completely different view of culture. So, we had to see what was there  (which initiatives, activities), which value each initiative had, consider the new CEO  view and organize a plan with some criteria.   With the last agency, G didn’t feel quite involved in the communications and strategy  plan so I wanted this experience to be different.     Selection  I chose mind mapping because this technique would help me establish some criteria  around the amount of activities the client had. And that would make it easier to group  them in clusters and eventually have a clear view of what was coherent and which  things were odd one outs.     Application  I decided to work on the culture and communications plan of G with clients  representatives and part of my team. We gathered in a meeting room with a white  cardboard and a bunch of sticky notes.   I told G’s representatives to start naming initiatives in the sticky notes and put them in  the cardboard. They didn’t have a document that listed all these so we were  remembering them and trying to complete as much as we could.   Since the client wasn’t used to do anything like this, I started writing initiatives myself  in the sticky notes to lead the way and make them copy me.   Once we gathered a big group I invited everyone to think why did we communicate in  the company, why do we do what we do every day, what value do we want to create.  And we started writing key concepts directly on the cardboard.   After that we analyzed every sticky note in order to see if those initiatives had not only  something in common but also if they were related in any way to the concepts we had  written down before. And also noticing how each one of them added value to these.  In the end we found a pattern, a criteria; we organized the initiatives in a coherent  way, modified some of them to make them fit, threw away a couple and added some  new ones. And gave birth to a new culture and internal communications plan!    Insight  With this tool I found a dynamic, easy, fun and strategic way to have a team work  experience with my client and discover what we had in order to transform it into  something valuable and presentable.   I found myself changing my point of view during the process about what I thought the  plan should look like in the end. That complexity in the view also left a positive

impression in me about design thinking in general, as an excellent path to discover  different kinds of truth.    Approach  It was my first time doing such a thing and it worked very well. The client was  surprised, had fun in the process and was satisfied with the result. I would use mind  mapping again. Probably I would work a little bit more in encouraging the client to  participate more actively from the beginning. Clients are used to receive the plan  already developed and it took some time to realize this was a team work.   I guess my anxiety made me start writing down myself to make them follow me but  next time I think I would hold that and let them do it from the start, even if it takes a  minute until they react.

