Sarah Calixto

Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

There is currently a significant opportunity in the Oil and Gas industry for clear cost reduction driven by  innovative ideas.  The industry has gone through several cycles of ups and downs as is the standard  pattern but the current downturn is compounded not only by the current COVID-19 pandemic driving a  significant reduction in demand but also by the price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that delayed  the OPEC+ reduction in production output.  Other methods for Continuous Improvement by themselves  will not drive deep enough understanding on any other untapped opportunities to drive this cost  reductions in an innovative way.  The scope includes a set of clients that are willing to be transparent in  the discussions to ensure we can define mutual value and implementation of solutions that will not only  create value for the company but maintain viability of both companies as we come out of the current  challenging business environment.  Initial exploration was done at the top levels of both companies to  define the guiding principles and focus areas for the collaboration by means of interviews.

After the interviews with the top leaders of the organizations and with a clear understanding of the  focus areas the approach was to hold a workshop with the identified stakeholders to discover all the  available information and establish areas of current activities and processes that are not working and  others that may have potential and can be further explored within the identified focus area.  This  workshop resulted in significant amount quantitative and qualitative data.  With such amount of data,  the next more obvious step was to establish some patterns and insights that would lead to creative  solutions.  Therefore, we selected the Mind Mapping tool.

Application

For our mind mapping workshop, we identified an additional set of stakeholders that hold key  knowledge of the various functions that might be impacted by any actions taken as part of the solutions  as well as key subject matter experts.  The workshop was done virtually using Mural and through zoom.   Participants from both the client and us were in attendance. The first step was to provide an overview of  the earlier activities that yielded the data that they will be reviewing and acting on and presentation of  the data. At this point we assigned 20 minutes to become familiar with the data and start exploring  whether they see any specific information that might be similar in nature that potentially have a similar  theme.  The data is spread in color coded post its that we asked the workshop participants to then start  moving into sets of data that could have a similar theme.  This resulted in seven buckets of similar  categories.  Next as a team we discussed and identified a main topic for each of the buckets of  information and assign a specific theme.  Upon further team discussion, we identified that two of the  data sets could then be merged and assigned a larger theme reducing the clusters to 6. At this point, we  took the opportunity to use the quantitative data associated with the specific themes and established  the top three priorities to further explore based on the highest potential impact if solutions are  implemented.

Using the top 3 categories we then did the exercise called “How might we….” Which is the last step of  mind mapping to define the design criteria statements.  The method of defining the how might we

Sarah Calixto

statements is aligned with the design criteria statements, in which if anything were possible what  criteria would our new design meet?  The first step was to assign each workshop participant to develop  individually in post-it’s a statement for each of the three categories identified.  Once everyone had  captured the “How might we” statements, the team was given the opportunity to review all the  statements developed.  Next we voted as a team on the main statement that more completely  establishes the intent of the insights obtained from the data.  These were then carried forward to  identify solutions.

Insight & Approach

What I have learned from conducting this activity is that collaboration is critical and having the  representatives from both client and us together with the clear understanding of transparency and  innovation allowed us to uncover great opportunities.  The discussions to define the real themes yield  areas of focus that we alone would not have even sought to investigate as an opportunity.  Looking at  the themes and insights resulting from the activity from both perspectives in collaboration allowed us to  identify areas where in some cases we were not fully aware of the collaborative opportunity.  With  regards to the statements, taking in consideration if anything was possible also allowed us to set higher  ambitions that could lead to breakthrough solutions.  The participants commented of how they enjoyed  the discussions and the statement starters was a new approach for them to use as well.

In the future, I think there is value of having the full set of stakeholders and subject matter experts  involved earlier in the process so that they can also contribute to the data with their specific experiences  and insights.  Also, with regards to the statement starters there is also an opportunity that instead of  selecting the best, we can also combine them into a more comprehensive if needed.

