Be a Better Manager - Organize Your Ideas with Mind Maps

Published 5 May 8 4:0 AM | Aaron

Every new day presents a new set of problems to be solved; I work as a web developer and as a marketer thus I have to a wide range of problems, projects, and concerns that I have to attend to. Before I get started solving a new problem I take the time to get my thoughts organized, prioritize concerns, and help formulate an attack plan.

How do I organize my thoughts? I use a Mind Map.

How I Use Mind Maps

I wrote a post on my personal blog about "How I Use Mind Maps to Organize Online Marketing Messages" a while back; in this post I'm going to write about how I use Mind Maps in general.

Let's say that my task for the day is to start brainstorming a few ideas for new sales messages. Here's how I'd go about doing it.

1. Start With The Core Issues

The first thing I'd do is identify the core issue (new sales messages) and then branch out into a handful of general topics.

 

Now that I have a few basic topics to get me started, I'll move onto the next step and explore each of these topics a bit further.

2. Flesh Out the Topics

I always take my first few topics and expand flesh them out, like how I have below:

 

So that's one instance of expansion. By the time I'm done fleshing out my ideas my mind map might look something like this:

 

As you may have noticed, I even added a fourth topic during the course of my fleshing-out.

3. Prioritize, Categorize, and Share If Necessary

After I finish my initial Mind Map I'll sit around and stew on a few of my ideas, pick out some favorites, and then I'll prioritize them and categorize them. Typically I illustrate this by adding color to the different sub-topics.

 

I also find that adding color to the Mind Map makes it more presentable if I have to include it in a PowerPoint presentation or share it with anyone else.

4. Start Working

Now that I've got an idea of four different types of sales messages that I can work on, I can actually... start working on them! How you organize your work is up to you (I use a Gantt Chart for large projects, which is something that I will cover subsequently on The SmartDraw Blog,) but at least now you've got your thoughts together and you know what to work on.

Diagramming Software for Mind Maps

We obviously use our own product, SmartDraw, to draw Mind Maps. If you'd like to learn how to use SmartDraw to draw Mind Maps, you can watch this screencast which shows you how to quickly and easily produce presentation-quality Mind Maps with SmartDraw in a matter of minutes.

If you'd like to play around with the example that I used in this blog entry then you can download a free trial of SmartDraw and open the attached SmartDraw file below.

[Example] Mind Map - Organize Your Thoughts - Demonstration.sdr

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Comments

# Heather Shaw said on May 16, 2008 6:39 AM:

The mindmap facility is also very useful when used in team meetings to capture information for strategic planning.  I've seen it used to capture the output from a brainstorming session focused on discussing key problems or priorities for work plans. The mind map was used to identify and note key points raised when brain storming and the mind map was then projected onto a screen for the team to see and revise.

The mindmap was saved electronically and was part of the record of what happened at the meeting, leading to an action plan of key priorities.

This was a good way instead of using flip chart paper and pen and resulted in time saving because you didn't have to transfer info from a flip chart to then type it up.

The visual look of this mind map is very professional, which I think adds to it.

# Aaron said on May 16, 2008 8:43 AM:

Hey Heather,

I guess I overlooked the simplest reason why Mind Maps are better than the alternative - the fact that they're easier to revise and you don't have to retype them after  your strategic meeting!

Both of those traits will save the person recording the brainstorming session a lot of minor annoyances associated with transcription, having done it the old fashioned way myself when I was in student organizations in college.

And yes, Mind Maps are certainly more interesting to look at than bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation.

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