Working Smarter : Mind Maps

Five Ways to Jumpstart Your Organization’s Creative Process

Aaron Stannard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:14:50 GMT

Ideas make money, and thus we should make time for ideas. As valuable as brainstorming is, most of us don’t have the luxury of spending hour after hour sitting in meetings scrawling ideas down on scratchpads and whiteboards. Although we should always be in a creative, big-picture mindset on our own time, group brainstorming is extremely helpful and we should spend our creative time together in the most efficient manner possible.

Here are five ways you can jumpstart your organization’s creative process in order to get the best return on your team’s time:

Be clear about your objectives – Spouting out ideas purposelessly accomplishes little. You need to set some clear direction before you can direct your people’s energy towards some innovative end. Goals don’t have to be specific, but they need to be unambiguous. Here are some examples: develop new ways to improve a product, develop new concepts for future products, develop ideas for making customer communication more engaging, etc…
Be inclusive – Everyone has something different (and potentially valuable) to bring to the table. Should you invite the whole company into one meeting to brainstorm ideas for a new marketing campaign? Probably not, but it would be a good idea to invite some people from sales and some from the product research team who could offer perspectives about what current and potential customers are looking for.
Establish clear boundaries – The creative process involves two parts: the ideas people come up with as a group and the ideas people come up with while they are working on implementing the idea formed during the group meeting. Establish a clear boundary between those two things – when you’re discussing a new marketing campaign, the details of what graphics you’re going to use aren’t relevant until after you’ve agreed on a general concept for the campaign.
Organize your ideas – In addition to simply creating ideas, it’s important to organize and categorize them. For this there is no better tool than a mind map. I did a post a year ago which shows you step-by-step how to use mind maps to organize your ideas. The purpose of organizing your ideas is to take everything you produce during a brainstorming session and to start prioritizing and grouping everything so you can actually begin developing your ideas into products. Organizing your ideas also helps you construct a clearer, bigger picture from the sum of all of the component parts that you and your team develop during the brainstorming process. It’s a very simple exercise that gives a big return on investment.
Give your co-workers ownership of their work – Ideally you want your co-workers to extend the creative process from the brainstorming meeting all the way back to their desks, and the best way to do that is to give them ownership over their work. When people feel like they have a certain freedom to freely make decisions and make mistakes, they are enabled to try new things and new ideas.

Did I leave any out? Are there any other major ways to improve productivity? Let us know in the comments!

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Ideas Make Money. So Make Time for Ideas.

Rich — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:49:00 GMT

We all know that as a manager you are strapped with a finite amount of time to perform so many activities in a day, week, or month. In this unstable economy most managers are doubling their efforts due to a shrinking team and limited resources. As costly as it may seem, you as the manager need to make time to brainstorm with your team and innovate your products, services, offers, processes and everything else. Otherwise, the value of your product or service stagnates and inherently loses value in the eyes of your customers.

Here are some ways to make brainstorming productive and manageable for you and your team:

Consider all ideas, initially – In order to get to the good ideas you must sift and sort through a multitude of bad ideas in order to uncover a nugget of innovative gold. Most of the time that nugget of gold was not considered to be anything more than a pebble within the sifter when first discussed. Over time the idea was polished into something of value. If you and your team didn’t take the time to go through this process, then perhaps the idea would never be realized.

Allocate time for brainstorming – There is a time investment for nearly everything you do, so why is brainstorming treated differently? If you are concerned about spending too much time brainstorming then there are two simple ways to reduce the amount of time you and your team spend brainstorming. First, have your team do some homework in advance by coming up with some ideas to discuss ahead of time, instead of waiting until the meeting to brainstorm. This will allow the discussion to eliminate some ideas off the bat, and others to be focused for refinement.

Second, give your team members the tools to properly brainstorm. If you read the Working Smarter post back in February entitled, “Why Communicate Visually,” then you will remember that people think and communicate in various ways. Take this into consideration and provide the tools necessary that allows all of your team members to properly capture their ideas. Give them a tool that allows them to capture their ideas visually, such as mind maps. Below is a mind map that I created while I was brainstorming ideas for posts for this blog.

Click here for a full-sized version of this image.

Evaluate everything, even what isn’t broken – Boy, think of all the wonderful things that would have never been discovered or improved if everyone thought “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!” Just because something is working, doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. Managers need to challenge themselves, and challenge their teams to constantly evaluate everything all of the time to discover areas for potential improvement.

Give yourself and your team the ability, time, and tools to innovate by brainstorming. It is as critical as ever when you are strapped for time, not the other way around.

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Case Study: Studying Smarter with Mind Maps

Aaron Stannard — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:28:00 GMT

This post is authored by a fellow SmartDraw employee, Oscar Gonzalez-Millan.

During the day, I work full-time for SmartDraw.com as a member of the sales team. But at night, I work on pursuing my degree in law. The other day I was studying for my Civil Procedure midterm for law school and was having a hard time memorizing the information. The midterm covered three main topics: Subject Matter Jurisdiction, Personal Jurisdiction, and Venue.

As with most exams, there was a lot of material to memorize and it was also easy to get the rules mixed up. I studied from a four-page outline and after a couple of hours of reading the outline I realized I wasn’t making the most productive use of my time—I wasn’t really able to absorb the exam material. I decided that it might be worth using SmartDraw to draw a mind map and outline the subject matter in a way that might be easier for me to visualize and absorb.

Creating the mind map in SmartDraw was easy; I simply copied and pasted the information from my four-page outline into the mind map’s boxes. To my relief, the information was much easier for me to absorb after putting it into a mind map.

Before the mind map, I had to try to memorize the information from my outline, which looked like this:

1. Federal Question (two ways)

a. Arising under (28 U.S.C. 1331) - W/in the 4 corners of the well pleaded complaint, arises under fed law, US Const, treaties.

OR

b. Federal issue– 5 things needed: (1) necessary, (2) stated in the complaint, (3) actually disputed, (4) substantial, (5) must not disrupt the balance of power.

This outline is somewhat confusing and hard to absorb; no wonder I was having trouble. Things improved when I put this outline into mind map form, which looked like this:

As you can see, the information presented in the form of a mind map is easier to read than just going through lines of text. A feature that I found extremely helpful in the 2009 SmartDraw mind maps was the ability to hide and reveal boxes.

My mind map in its entirety actually looks like this:

That's a lot of information! Using SmartDraw 2009’s hide and reveal feature I was able to hide the boxes and go through each section at my leisure without being overwhelmed by all of the other information on this mind map. For example, I can start my studying with the three main subjects of civil procedure…

…and once I am ready to move on, I can simply expand the next box…

As you can see, using collapsible mind maps in SmartDraw 2009 can make studying for your class a lot easier, even for subjects as complicated as law.

I would recommend using the mind maps in SmartDraw 2009 to any student who wants to maximize their time and be more efficient when preparing for an exam. You can get started on your own mind map by downloading the SmartDraw 2009 free trial from http://www.smartdraw.com/downloads/

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Scheduling Tasks with Project Charts

Aaron Stannard — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:47:00 GMT

The first step to becoming a more efficient project manager is to decompose your project into small tasks using mind maps, an issue which we discussed last week. Today we’re going to address the second step in the process, which is setting the schedule for all tasks and deliverables using project charts (also known as Gantt charts.)

If you followed my last article on decomposing broad tasks into smaller ones (read it here) then you will recall the general message from that article which is that it’s much easier to construct accurate timelines and delivery dates for projects when you can sum your total required work time from a number of small tasks because it’s much, much easier to estimate an accurate duration for smaller tasks than broader tasks.

Two Core Areas of Scheduling

In this article I want to touch on the art of accurately prioritizing tasks. There are two core areas of a scheduling that must be settled upon before you can begin to move forward with a project:

Duration, the amount of time it takes to complete single tasks or groups of related task.
Sequence, the order in which tasks are executed.

We figured out how to determine duration in our last article by using mind maps to decompose broad tasks into specific tasks, and that’s the hardest part of scheduling. The next area (sequencing) is what we’re going to address in this article and there are additional areas of scheduling that we will address in subsequent articles, like resources and milestones.

I’m going to use the example of shopping for a new SUV as our project for this article, since it’s a concise example. I’ll begin with a mind map which shows all of the tasks and subtasks that go into “shopping for a new SUV” project. Here it is:

Ok, so we have a good idea of the primary tasks that go into buying an SUV; first you do some research online, then you do some hands-on research, settle on a make and model, determine financing, determine insurance, and do some paperwork with the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles.) Usually there are some trade-in negotiations but I decided to skip that step in this example.

Alright, with those details out of the way we can get on to meat of the matter.

Getting a Grip on Task Sequencing

We already know how long it’s going to take to execute each individual task because we decomposed our tasks into small tasks to which we can easily assign reasonably accurate durations. Therefore the next step we need to take is to determine the sequence in which we execute tasks. What’s the process for figuring out sequencing?

The bad news is that there is no simple, universal process for sequencing the tasks in every single type of project because each kind of project has a degree of what I call “natural sequencing,” meaning that there are some tasks are dependent upon the results of others.

It is important that we determine exactly what these dependencies are. Let’s consider the natural sequence of my SUV-purchasing example:

Before we can register our car with the DMV we need to own the car.
Before we can insure our car we with an insurance provider we need to own the car.
Before we can purchase our car we need to have financing secured.
Before we can secure financing we need to have a clear idea on what car we want and we need to know what our price range is.
Before we know what car we want to purchase we need to test drive the different models and makes in order to make a smart purchasing decision.
Before we test drive various cars we need to know which makes and models that we’re interested in.

Based on the steps I’ve described you can recognize the natural dependencies involved in the process of buying a car. I’m going to convert my mind map to a Gantt chart and illustrate these dependencies.

I pared down my Gantt chart to contain just the broad tasks. Take a look at the start dates – task 2 doesn’t start until task 1 ends, task 3 doesn’t start until task 2 ends, and so forth. This is how you illustrate dependencies and it is these dependencies which determine the sequence of your tasks.

The Importance of Co-Tasks

We’ve identified and planned for all of the dependencies in our project thus far, but now we need to consider “co-tasks.” Co-tasks are tasks that can be done in parallel if resources are available, and the reason that these are significant is because co-tasks can shorten the total time needed to complete a project.

Let me illustrate the point by adding some co-tasks to my Gantt chart.

Consider tasks 1.1-1.4, the ones shaded in light blue; they are all sub-tasks of “Online Research.” All of those tasks can be executed in parallel with each other – if you’re researching cars online you’re going to be weight all of those factors at the same time.

So why is this important? Let me ask you a hypothetical question: how long would it take you to purchase a new car given that you could only work on one and only one task on any given day? The answer is 21 days given all of the durations that I’ve used in my example. Follow-up question: how long does it take you to purchase a new car if you can streamline co-tasks in parallel? The answer is 12 days.

The point is that if you can correctly identify opportunities for co-tasks then you can expedite the entire project as it allows you to hit multiple birds with a single stone.

By recognizing dependencies and co-tasks in your project you can plan your project much more efficiently by capitalizing on opportunities to hit multiple birds with a single stone and by making sure you complete your tasks in the proper order. Next time we’ll take a closer look at milestones and deliverables!

If you want to try building your own project charts with dependencies and co-tasks then you can download a free trial of SmartDraw.

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Decomposing Tasks with Mind Maps

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:36:00 GMT

Many projects are delivered late—one of the key reasons being that the tasks assigned to team members are too broad or vague. You might be asking yourself “what’s wrong with broad tasks?” As I answered in my most recent post, it’s very difficult to accurately determine a timeline for large or broad tasks.

Most projects are late largely because of these broad tasks and the estimated timeline from inception to delivery is typically unrealistically short. Thus, the solution is to decompose these broad tasks into a number of smaller subtasks. It’s easier to determine how long it will take you or your team to accomplish a smaller task as opposed to a larger one.

Don’t believe me? Let’s try an experiment that everyone can relate to: moving from one home to another. Consider these two groups of questions:

How long will it take you to pack up all of your belongings, move them into your car, unload them into your new house, and unpack them?
How long will it take you to do the following:
1. Pack up all of the dishes, silverware and cookware in the kitchen?
2. Pack up all of the delicate China and glassware?
3. Pack up the five-piece dining set?
4. Move the China cabinet into the car and unload it back at the new house?

I’m not going to list every possible task that would go into packing up your belongings and moving them into a new house, but you get the idea: it’s almost impossible to give an accurate answer to the first group of questions, whereas it’s much more feasible to provide some reasonable answers for the second set. You can use the sum of all of the times required for each small task to determine how long it will take you and your team to accomplish a much larger task. And that’s what this article is all about.

The Right Tool for the Job: Mind Maps

Let’s stick with this “move out, move in” example for now. In order to efficiently decompose our two big tasks, “moving out of House A” and “moving into House B,” I’m going to use a mind map. For the sake of brevity I’m going to limit my example to just the packing portion of the move-out project.

Here’s how we get started:

We begin by considering all of the rooms in House A as separate groups of tasks, which is reflected on the mind map above. That’s just the first step. Now we need to begin thinking about each room individually. Let’s examine the master bedroom:

So we’ve subdivided the master bedroom into four subtasks, which I can then divide further:

Now we’re getting down to individual items in the master bedroom—this is progress; rather than having to estimate how long it’s going to take us to pack up the entire master bedroom in one blind guess, we now have an idea of what individual items are going to need to be packed. However, we still need another level of decomposition; each item on this list requires a certain amount of effort to be properly packed so we must take into account the steps needed to pack each item.

Now we’re going to use a mind map to break down how to pack each item, and from this next level of decomposition we can guarantee a much more accurate timeframe for the total move-out project. We’re going to start by decomposing all of the tasks that go into packing up a king-sized bed, which is arguably the most awkward thing in the house to pack.

Here we have the key components to the bed; now let’s add some specific packing tasks to each of these components:

And one more level of decomposition:

Now we have very specific tasks instead of broad ones and we can estimate very accurately how long it will take us to take apart this bed.

Next Step: Assign Some Durations to Your Specific Tasks

I exported my above mind map to outline format since it’s a bit easier to make this next point clear. Given how specific these tasks are, it becomes trivial for us to produce a very accurate timeframe for unpacking the king-sized bed in our master bedroom. Let’s assign some durations to these specific tasks based on our prior experience:

The Mattress
- Remove Linens
  - Remove Pillows [ < 1 minute]
  - Remove Sheets [ 2 minutes ]
  - Load into car [ 2 minutes ]
- Remove Mattress Cover
  - Place mattress cover into car [Can be done at the same time as linens]
- Remove Mattress from Bed Frame
  - Place in hallway for movers [4 minutes]
Bed Frame
- Push the bed away from the wall [2 minutes]
- Remove Headboard
  - Unscrew from back of bed frame [6-10 minutes depending on tools available]
  - ii. Store screws and washers in toolbox [1 minute]
  - iii. Place in hallway for movers [1 minute]
- Place in hallway for movers [3 minutes]

I’ve added durations for all of the simplest tasks and now I can simply sum those durations to determine how long it will take to pack the entire king-sized bed: 22-26 minutes, which is accurate based on my personal experience. If you repeated this exercise (it only took a few minutes) for every room in the house you would be able to build a very accurate assessment of how long it would take you to move out.

Although we used the rather common example of moving out of one house and into another, this technique can be applied to any project to help construct a much more accurate timeframe for completing a project. Next time we’ll show you how to convert this mind map into a Gantt chart to help plan the order in which tasks need to be executed.

If you want to try decomposing your own project’s tasks down into simpler ones using mind maps then you can download a free trial of SmartDraw.

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How to Plan Presentations Using Mind Maps

Aaron Stannard — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:39:00 GMT

If any of you read Dumb Little Man, a popular productivity blog, you might have read my guest blog entry on Wednesday entitled "5 Steps to Planning an Effective Presentation." One of the points that I touched on in that article was how mind maps are a simple, yet effective tool for planning presentations.

I've written before about using mind maps to organize my thoughts, and using them to organize what you're going to say in a presentation is more of the same.

Why Spending 5 Minutes Outlining Your Presentation is Worth It

As I said in the DLM article, you can be the most charismatic presenter in the world with the world's most well-designed PowerPoint slides, but if you don't have

a clear idea of what your objectives are,
a clear idea of what you're going to say,
and a plan to achieve those objectives using your content

then you're going to be just as ineffective as that guy who does nothing but plaster bulleted lists all over his slides.

Mind maps are easy and simple - it takes five minutes to draw one. If you're going to invest a lot of effort into giving a presentation, why not spend a few minutes planning your presentation with a mind map?

I had to give a big, scary marketing proposal last week here at SmartDraw - you know what I did? I started with a mind map; I used it to outline my goals and the content I wanted to cover. But where was my plan? I used a flowchart to storyboard my presentation, and I'll telling you about that experience next week on Working Smarter.

How to Do It

I'm going to use a mock-up marketing presentation as my example.

1. Start with the Goals and Main Pieces of Information

I start my mind map with five nodes, one of which is the goals and the other is the background. Every presentation has to have goals: that's non-negotiable. Presentations aren't supposed to be corporate performance art - they're meant to communicate a common message to an audience. Your goals define what you want your audience to get out of it. Do you want them to make a decision, to learn something, or what?

The next important part of the outline is the background; a presentation is just like any good story - you need to have some context.

The background for this marketing presentation might consist of what the company has tried before, what's worked, what hasn't, where the market is going, what our customers are saying, etc... The background basically takes old information and uses it as a basis for all of the new information that you're going to present later.

The other three bubbles (Targeting Strategy, Outreach Strategy, and Content Strategy) consist of the new information that I'm going to present.

2. Flesh Out Everything

The next thing consist of simply fleshing out everything: the goals, the background, the new information, and everything else. Pretty simple. I didn't go all-out on some of the details because I wanted you all to be able to read the text, but you get the idea.

3. Color Code Areas of Emphasis

Some aspects of the presentation are more important than the others, like the goals. I use color just to make the most crucial elements stand out - that way I can take those points into more consideration when I storyboard my presentation.

Ideally you want everyone to remember everything, but realistically you have to pick a few key areas of emphasis and really hit those points home. Here's what I did for my mock marketing presentation:

And that's pretty much it - I have everything I need to start storyboarding my presentation. I know what content I want to cover, I know what I want to accomplish, and I know what parts of my presentation are more important. The best part? It only takes a few minutes to draw the mind map.

Want even more information on using mind maps to plan presentations?

Here's some additional information for your consideration if you want to learn more about using mind maps to plan presentations:

Screencast: Planning Effective Presentations Using Mind Maps

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:08:00 GMT

In this screencast by Kenneth Roberts you will learn how to quickly plan an effective presentations using Mind Maps. If you'd like to read our complementary PDF "Working Smarter with Mind Maps for Presentation Planning" then download it here.

This SmartDraw screencast requires Adobe Flash Player 9.

If you have any troubling viewing our screencasts, upgrade your Flash player to the latest version here.

Download a free trial of SmartDraw here.

Mind Maps - For Communication or Organization?

Aaron Stannard — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:02:00 GMT

I started a conversation over on the SmartDraw forums yesterday about this topic: are mind maps primarily an organization tool or a communication tool?

I use mind maps constantly; basically whenever I need to organize my thoughts, I use a mind map. I use them almost exclusively as an organizational tool.

Have you ever tried using a mind map in a PowerPoint presentation? I've tried to include them before in some of my strategic meetings here at SmartDraw and they just seem incredibly awkward for presenting in front of a group of people.

For instance, how do you sequence a mind map using PowerPoint's animation engine? How do you order the elements? My inability to effectively weave a mind map into a PowerPoint presentation is what ultimately prompted me to ask this question.

So I'd like to pose this question to all of the Working Smarter readers out there: do you use mind maps primarily for communication or organization? How?

Here are my arguments for either:

How Mind Maps are Used for Organization

Used to direct the flow of brainstorming
Used for fleshing out ideas
Used to plan tasks for projects
Used to determine content for presentations, websites, etc...
Used to connect ideas

All of these uses are derivatives of mind maps' primary organizational function, which is to add a degree of direction to the brainstorming process.

How Mind Maps are Used for Communication

First a quick definition per the Encyclopedia of Business Graphic's entry for mind maps:

"Mind maps are also good when collaborating on projects with team members because they lend coherence to ideas that might seem otherwise unrelated."

Using mind maps for presentation might not be the best use given that they seemingly lend themselves to collaboration, which is much more interactive and hands on.

Regardless, what do you think?

Edit: Quick FYI, you can now follow Working Smarter on Twitter or check out our photos on Flickr. Enjoy!

Four Techniques I Use to be a Better Manager

Paul — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:00:00 GMT

When I founded SmartDraw.com I was a software developer not a manager. Not that this mattered much because the only person I needed to manage at the time was me!

As the company grew, management was "thrust upon me", and I learned four techniques I still use to manage people and projects effectively.

1. I Organize my Thoughts with a Mind Map

I'm a visual thinker (as you might imagine) and I use a mind map at the start of any new project I am working on to organize my thoughts and ideas.

A mind map is a visual outline. Using SmartDraw of course, I just dump out my ideas onto the page and then re-arrange them into logical groups. I use SmartDraw's keyboard shortcuts and automatic formatting I find this even easier to do than using Word to make a traditional text outline. Here's an example of one of my mind maps.

Watch my screen cast on drawing mind maps with SmartDraw too.

2. I Organize my People with Organization Charts and Team Charts

There are two ways we are organized at SmartDraw: into a traditional reporting hierarchy and into teams for specific projects. I use the traditional top-down org chart for the former and a team chart for the latter.

Your company organization chart is actually a device for showing positions and their responsibilities rather than people. Sometimes in a small company one person may be the "incumbent" for more than one position. I have written about this in a previous post.

A team chart is an effective way of making sure everyone working on a project knows what part of it they, and the other members of the team, are responsible for and what's expected of them. Just because it's clear in your mind doesn't mean it's clear in the rest of the team members' minds.

Watch my accompanying screencast "How to Draw Organizational Charts and Team Charts with SmartDraw."

3. I Organize my Operations with Processes

As my business grew it soon became evident that we needed to formally define the way we did routine things so that the result was the same each time and we could train new people more easily. Whether it was something technical, like the way we built software releases, or something simple like the way we shipped product, we needed to define a process that was followed each time.

I use flowcharts to define our processes. With SmartDraw 2008 that we released in September, this is so easy I can actually revise the chart on the fly as I think it through.

Watch me do this in my screencast "How to Map Your Business Processes with SmartDraw."

4. I Organize my Work with a Project Chart

In my experience the biggest reason projects are completed late (and over budget) is because all of the steps involved were not considered up front. Managers specify tasks that are big and vague like "Create Website". A big task like this is actually made up of many small tasks and can take months. You cannot properly estimate how long a task like "create website" is actually going to take without breaking it down into smaller more specific tasks.

My rule is that if any task takes more than three days it's too broad and needs to be broken down into smaller tasks. As I go through this process I always think of new things that I need to do and that add time to my initial estimate. Something that sounds simple is often not so, once you get down to the nitty-gritty.

I use a mind map to start the process of identifying all of the tasks. I break big tasks into smaller tasks. The natural outline format of a mind map is perfect for this. Then I convert my mind map into the traditional project chart (or Gantt chart) format an assign a time to complete each one. SmartDraw makes this particularly easy because it does it automatically and lets me go back and forth between the two views with a single mouse click.

Watch my screencast, "Managing Projects with SmartDraw" to see this in action.

All of these techniques help me keep multiple projects on-track, and the people working on them informed and on the same page. For more details read the companion PDF from our Working Smarter series: Four Ways to be a Better Manager.