Reflection > “Mind Mapping”      Challenge    We’re a team of a dozen headhunters acting as solo-entrepreneurs with our own companies in the german  speaking market (Germany, Switzerland, Austria) working in a partnership model under one common company  brand. Since 25 years we’re serving corporate customers with recruitment services for permanent placements  of academic people in a direct search mode. We’ve grown the last 2 years by additional 4 partners in this  region and everyone used to work remotely from his home office on his own IT environment, personal data  and candidate databases, including our most relevant asset, the candidate’s CV.    Our challenge: We need to standardize the most important communication processes to support further  growth and keep our high quality standards by saving process time, so we decided: A kind of knowledge  management system needs to be selected. We want to see which partner is working on which projects; which  candidates are in which status at what customer and finally we need a central database of CV’s to be more  efficient and prepared for further growth by additional partners in the future.      Selection    Having experience of than 30 years of sales in the software market, I knew Visualization techniques and  Storytelling to describe use cases for B2B customers but in this case Mind Mapping would be the best approach  to collect ideas, must have’s and nice-to-have’s from all team members by a cloud-based tool like MindMeister,  A platform I used several times to collect ideas and structure them for preparing a decision. You can build  clusters of ideas, detecting priorities and re-sorting them in an intuitive manner.    The video lecture of week 3 called “Mind Mapping tool, 10 min” really supported my decision.      Application    We started within MindMeister by defining the first cluster of roles like

-  Partner (Key Accounter covering each a single of several corporate customers)

-  Researcher (Person who searches and delivers the candidate’s CV towards the partner)

-  Admin (Backoffice team who coordinates the region covering all backoffice processes)

-  External Partner (Freelancer who aren’t part of our permanent team but need also some data).

As a second cluster we defined which kind of data we use on a daily base like

-  Candidate’s CV with attachments, partly separate documents

-  Customer list

-  Project list

-  Project description with requirements etc.

A third cluster defined the processes when and which roles would need access to what data, so finally a kind of  business process flowchart could even be shown. In addition a fourth cluster defined the “nice-to-have”  requirements like mobile access, ownership of the candidate’s CV and other specifics.    The result has been a collection of clusters within the mindmap where all partners had put their input in and a  discussion about the priorities towards the requirements for a knowledge management system could start  quite effectively from that focal point of discussion – a central mindmap.      Insight & Approach    Giving access via a cloud-based mindmap to every stakeholder in our team really motivated them to add every  single idea they have into the requirement selection, so we maximited engagement in the team. And  changes/updates to this central mindmap triggered back an event towards everyone to look at these updates  proactively and find a decision about the relevant priorities of these changes.

Furthermore the collection of requirements via such mindmaps really reinforced all stakeholders in diving into  their key processes quite thoroughly so they won’t miss important (time saving) results after the planned  installation of such a new system. An additional advantage has been that these mindmaps are a catalogue of  requirements for suppliers of knowledge management systems we approached, so we can use them to prepare  a kind of storytelling towards such suppliers about what we really need as a company. After several meetings  with different vendors of such systems we decided that standard systems would have produced too much  overhead, so we finally decided to use very focused, cloud based single processes based on Dropbox, Google G- Suite and other tools.    Mindmapping really helped to rethink our whole requirements in a very fast and concentrated manner and  helped every stakeholder to have a joint understanding of the planned results, so we got transparency for the  whole team in all 3 countries. In the future I think of adding the Visualization tool as this helps to show the flow  of data and requests between the defined clusters of requirements which might be a static object.    So finally a combination of two tools might even help to get better or more complete results keeping the  adaptability high when further updates will be made.


Reflection > “ Mind Mapping ” Challenge We ’re a team of a dozen headhunters acting as solo - entrepreneurs with our own companies in the german speaking market ( Germany , Switzerland , Austria ) working in a partnership model under one common company brand . Since 25 years we ’re serving corporate customers with recruitment services for permanent placements of academic people in a direct search mode . We ’ve grown the last 2 years by additional 4 partners in this region and everyone used to work remotely from his home office on his own IT environment , personal data and candidate databases , including our most relevant asset , the candidate ’s CV . Our challenge : We need to standardize the most important communication processes to support further growth and keep our high quality standards by saving process time , so we decided : A kind of knowledge management system needs to be selected . We want to see which partner is working on which projects ; which candidates are in which status at what customer and finally we need a central database of CV ’s to be more efficient and prepared for further growth by additional partners in the future . Selection Having experience of than 30 years of sales in the software market , I knew Visualization techniques and Storytelling to describe use cases for B2B customers but in this case Mind Mapping would be the best approach to collect ideas , must have ’s and nice - to - have ’s from all team members by a cloud - based tool like MindMeister , A platform I used several times to collect ideas and structure them for preparing a decision . You can build clusters of ideas , detecting priorities and re - sorting them in an intuitive manner . The video lecture of week 3 called “ Mind Mapping tool , 10 min ” really supported my decision . Application We started within MindMeister by defining the first cluster of roles like - Partner ( Key Accounter covering each a single of several corporate customers ) - Researcher ( Person who searches and delivers the candidate ’s CV towards the partner ) - Admin ( Backoffice team who coordinates the region covering all backoffice processes ) - External Partner ( Freelancer who are n’t part of our permanent team but need also some data ) . As a second cluster we defined which kind of data we use on a daily base like - Candidate ’s CV with attachments , partly separate documents - Customer list - Project list - Project description with requirements etc . A third cluster defined the processes when and which roles would need access to what data , so finally a kind of business process flowchart could even be shown . In addition a fourth cluster defined the “ nice - to - have ” requirements like mobile access , ownership of the candidate ’s CV and other specifics . The result has been a collection of clusters within the mindmap where all partners had put their input in and a discussion about the priorities towards the requirements for a knowledge management system could start quite effectively from that focal point of discussion – a central mindmap . Insight & Approach Giving access via a cloud - based mindmap to every stakeholder in our team really motivated them to add every single idea they have into the requirement selection , so we maximited engagement in the team . And changes / updates to this central mindmap triggered back an event towards everyone to look at these updates proactively and find a decision about the relevant priorities of these changes . Furthermore the collection of requirements via such mindmaps really reinforced all stakeholders in diving into their key processes quite thoroughly so they wo n’t miss important ( time saving ) results after the planned installation of such a new system . An additional advantage has been that these mindmaps are a catalogue of requirements for suppliers of knowledge management systems we approached , so we can use them to prepare a kind of storytelling towards such suppliers about what we really need as a company . After several meetings with different vendors of such systems we decided that standard systems would have produced too much overhead , so we finally decided to use very focused , cloud based single processes based on Dropbox , Google G- Suite and other tools . Mindmapping really helped to rethink our whole requirements in a very fast and concentrated manner and helped every stakeholder to have a joint understanding of the planned results , so we got transparency for the whole team in all 3 countries . In the future I think of adding the Visualization tool as this helps to show the flow of data and requests between the defined clusters of requirements which might be a static object . So finally a combination of two tools might even help to get better or more complete results keeping the adaptability high when further updates will be made .