83!

Part 2 from a recent session on problem solving:

For some reason which I simply can’t understand, corporates still don’t seem to value the potential of mind maps in business, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Most haven’t heard of it or trivialise it by saying - ‘Oh isn’t it that thing with colourful lines going all over the place that some people use for creativity?’

And yet, nothing else has helped me understand or present something in such an integrated, comprehensive and systemic way with a 360 degree view of the things.

Let me give you some examples from recent times.

Among so many other things, I use mind maps to capture need analysis, design training sessions, participant workbooks and integrate blank pre-structured mind maps in the workbooks. My training workbooks are not portrait like but landscape like in how they open for use.

In some of my sessions, I also get the participants to create their own unique, individualised workbooks by first teaching them the fundamentals of mind mapping and then encouraging them to capture the session notes using mind maps on either the usual A-4 size or the ideal A-3 size drawing books with sketch pens.

In the end I encourage them to compare notes. While the content I presented remains the same, the way they capture it in their workbooks turns out to be unique for each of them given the associations each one of them have for each of the concepts. And it is always such an interesting sight to watch them show off their unique notes to each other.

Let me now talk of another interesting experience I have had in the past few years.

In my sessions on problem solving, I encourage the participants to generate as many questions as they can on any one of the problems they are facing. I do this because when it comes to problems, questions are the answers.

Like Albert Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depends on the solution then I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.”

And for this I give them a pre-structured but empty mind map format to work with.

In doing this, I make it a game like experience where the only parameter of success is the number of questions each participant can come up with.

Recently a new record was set with 83 questions in 20 minutes!!

However, I also want to share this other picture in which another participant generated 29 questions but 21 of them started with Who and as you will read them, you will find quite a few insightful and interesting ones even though those questions are not listed in a strictly mind map format.

And often they have a Eureka moment as they get clarity on the problem and in the process they have also managed to identify the solution - all in a single place!

So here’s to more of mind mapping.