Dustin Newport, MD of Mindjet (UK) describes how you can use your brain’s natural abilities to manage all the information you will ever need to use. Modern technology is now being applied to an age-old technique that helps the brain work in a more natural way, by linking related topics in a visual way around a central theme. Graphics are used to represent words, ideas or tasks and it can particularly be of benefit to consultants.
Wouldn’t you like to do more work in less time? Or maybe earn more money, but not have to work any harder? Of course you would. We all would. But how many different management tools, software packages, time management workshops and training courses do you have to wade through, before you find the “holy grail” of increased business productivity?
If you work for yourself or own a small business which provides your sole income each month, then trying to squeeze more and more activity and results into your time is a constant battle.
You get paid by your clients to think and find business solutions; you like to think you’re at the top of your game and bring best-of-breed solutions to everything that you do, but when it comes to solving your own business problems, you can’t seem to find one that fits in with what you want to achieve – there are just too many parts to your business plan to keep all the balls in the air at the same time.
If only you could add some memory to yourself, in the same way you can add memory to your PC to cope with the piles and piles of information you need to remember.
The answer could be nearer than you think and comes in the form of “business mapping” – a simple way of managing the information that you need more effectively than you could ever imagine, then understanding it, using it and regaining access to it over and over again, immediately whenever you need it.
A “mind map” will:
Give you an overview of your subject
Enable you to explore options/make choice
Help you to gather data
Encourage you to create new critical paths
Enable you to be extremely efficient
Be enjoyable to look at, read, muse over and remember
Attract and hold your eye/brain
Let you see the whole picture in context and the details at the same time
Sounds like another management fad, doesn’t it? But the way that mind mapping does all these things is not rocket science and in fact the theory behind it has been around for centuries.
Most note-taking follows a predictable pattern: lines and lines of text, interspersed with the odd list of bullet points or underlined subheading. But lists are linear and the brain doesn't always think in a linear way. Roger Sperry, Nobel Prize Winner in 1981, first showed that the brain is divided into two hemispheres and operates in a different way according to what is required of it. Although, this viewpoint has since been shown to be somewhat over-simplified, the basic concept still is valid.
Your mind thinks in terms of links, pictures, colours and patterns. It stands to reason that a map is much more effective than a list in organising your ideas and generating new ones. In fact, at the very back of your mind, you probably already have a vaguely-defined map of your business and where its heading, but you just haven’t got round to putting it down on paper yet.
As a consultant, you need to be good at four things:
1-Structured Problem Solving
2-Creating Effective Presentations
3-Writing Reports for the client
4-Delivering Presentations
Mind maps can be used for each of these actions and for any subject. For example, to provide a structured map of possible solutions to a problem.
1) AREAS OF CONCERN: create a numbered list of the 3 to 5 most important concerns your client mentioned, or your research revealed.
2) OBJECTIVES: create another numbered list, in the same sequence as the Areas of concern, listing the objectives of your recommended course of action.
3) BENEFITS: Use another numbered list describing the specific benefits your prospect will enjoy after the objectives have been achieved.
4) RECOMMENDATIONS: Describe the steps you will take to accomplish the client's objectives.
5) TIMELINE: create a timeline--based on immediate acceptance of the proposal--showing when the benefits will be achieved.
Creating and Presenting Effective Presentations: Software like MindManager Pro 6 has an improved Microsoft PowerPoint Export and Presentation Mode option. The Presentation Mode allows you to take an audience through your map with you in a PowerPoint-like tour, but if you need to, you can still export the map to a PowerPoint format. You can preview how your slides will look, re-organise the map, and instantly see how the slides will look with the changes before you export to PowerPoint. This saves time and frustration of bouncing back and forth between your presentations and getting bogged down in a formatting quagmire.
Writing Reports is an often tedious and frustrating business, but vital to demonstrating your understanding of the issues and the solutions you have come up with. Reports fail when they are too long, too detailed, and fail to address the central issues.
The answer is to create a standard report map that you can use over and over again as a basic infrastructure that will help you to convert your notes and analysis of the project into a concise report that sums it all up in a coherent way. Mind maps can be exported into Word documents that contain all the detail you need, while retaining the topic associations that show the relationships of all the sub-topics.
Mind mapping may not be appropriate for everything you do, especially when managing clients who are expecting a more traditional linear type of “deliverable”, but, however it works, it would be foolish to turn down an opportunity to join the millions of people who have already benefited from this simple information management tool.
For more information on business productivity and MindManager software, please see www.mindjet.co.uk
