Cense

Innovation to Impact

Mind Maps For Complex Projects

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A mind map is a powerful, simple organizing tool that features a lot of information on a single page. We use mind maps and other visual tools to communicate relationships between ideas, people, project components and topics with our clients and partners. We present a short introduction to how and why you might want to use mind maps in your work.

A mind map is a visual representation of a project that links actors and actions together. This article focuses on using mind maps, not creating them.

Below is an example from software provider Lucidspark (which is a tool for creating mindmaps) that illustrates what a mind map is and how it can connect ideas and actions together.

Visualizing our Relationships

A search of Google (or any other search engine) will find thousands of visual examples of what a mind map is. There are few ‘essentials’ for mind mapping, which is among its most attractive features.

A complex project is one where there are many things happening at the same time, at different time scales, and involving many interdependencies and actors. That’s just a way of saying: there’s a lot going on.

It doesn’t matter how you organize your mind map only that it is useful. That means it provides information that you can make decisions with and act on. If it does that, it’s a good mind map.

Once we have that in place, the mind map allows us to examine the relationships between the nodes and topics to assess their fit. The expression ‘getting on the same page‘ reflects an ability for all of those looking at the document to have a similar representation of what’s on that page. The mind map allows us to verify relationships between entities, determine gaps or inaccuracies, and explore different ways of connecting things together.

There may not be a single ‘master’ map that is better than all, but there may be a map that is more useful than others.

How to Use Mind Maps

When we use this with clients and partners on projects we aim for the following:

  • To examine the assumptions involved in the project
  • To explore alternative relationships of fit and see if the map is the best representation of what we are looking at
  • To guide the project and keep the topics on track
  • To provide a building block for connecting ideas together (in ways that weren’t done previously)
  • To map out a system of relationships
  • To use colour and visuals to surface feelings, thoughts, and other emotional aspects of the project that might influence the strategy or outcomes

By creating a visual representation we see the whole project and the relationship context. Relationships are the key in any complex system. When we visualize these relationships it allows us to see how the actions in one relationship can affect others. Visual maps can aid us in anticipating possible effects.

(Note: We don’t use the term ‘unintended effects’ – just effects because in complex systems it’s too hard to predict cause and effect with any degree of accuracy).

We continually refer back to our maps to help ensure we are accounting for all relationships of importance throughout the project and not just those that have the most amount of activity within them. It’s incredibly difficult to track this in our heads or in something like a spreadsheet or text document.

Mind maps can be great tools to visualize a lot of information and get you and your collaborators on the same page when it comes to understanding what is going on in a complex system and program. Try it out — they are easy to create and simple to use.

If you want to use this approach to visualizing your programs and using this to help you innovate, contact us – we’d love to hear from you.

Designing for Humans: Considerations for Innovators

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Over at our sister site Censemaking we wrapped up a series called Design for Humans. The focus of the series was on different considerations that we must make in the process of designing useful, impactful things for the world around us.

Strangely enough, we often don’t do a good job at designing for humans with our services and products. In the process of innovating, we make many assumptions about how the innovation will be received and the impact it will make.

There are reasons why real substantive change is actually very difficult to generate. Humans are difficult to work with and to influence and the more we can design for how humans actually live, think, work, and play the more likely our change-making efforts will yield positive results.

Deeper Research

One of the ways to do better design for humans is to conduct detailed research. This goes beyond a few focus groups or observations toward more fuller engagement with different audiences. Strangely, many of us actually don’t really know what we want. We think we know what we want or that we know how to articulate what we want.

Research in this context involves the time, care, and attention to who people see themselves and who they act as. This is about our imagined reality and our lived one. (The two intersect and diverge through our days and life).

Many of our purchases are based on decisions that involve aspiration, comfort, fear, convenience, ethics, and utility in different combinations. These are both our own and the ones that we adopt from others depending on our situation. Individual decisions are very often tied to collective ones. If we do not understand the different groups we are affiliated with or aspire toward being a part of, we lose much of what is known about what drives a decision.

If we do not take the time to understand who it is that we are speaking with or seeking to influence — their individual set of values, beliefs, and experiences — then we will create a ‘mass’ for a ‘mass market’ that is unlikely to be receptive.

Luck and Science

A great deal of impactful design is based on a dance between luck and science. Viral marketing campaigns are more brilliant in retrospect than in advance. As Tendayi Viki and Mitch Joel recently spoke about in their conversation on innovation, most great innovations look absurd in advance and clever in retrospect.

This means great design is about framing the ridiculous.

It also means ensuring that, practically speaking, we must consider the very way we humans think, feel, and live — which is often ridiculous to the outsider. Great campaigns and products tap into this.

They also are about luck. Designing for luck through great observation, research, testing (prototyping), and ongoing evaluation ensures that what we put into the world has the potential to succeed in making some positive difference, not necessarily that it will no matter how good it is.

Whether its luck, perception or something else we find ourselves recognizing that the gap between what we think is valuable and useful and what others think (or are willing to consider) is large. The Chasm illustrated above is real and rather than engage in a futile effort to design around it, we need to recognize that there are sharks in those waters.

That’s what they did in the film Jaws. When we design for that, we design for humans (and sharks).

If you’re looking to create something more human in your work and need help, contact us and we can help make sure you don’t get eaten by the sharks you’re swimming with.

Images by Business Illustrator used under license.

Systems Mapping Cautions

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A systems map is a useful means of visualizing connections between ideas, actors, institutions, and activities. Systems maps can be designed using many different conventions and methods, but the basics are the same. The point of mapping systems is to get a lot of information on a single page.

System maps can help generate insight into patterns that influence behaviour and outcomes. In short: they help us see things better.

A system map is also a potential trap. Maps can lead us into false beliefs about the subject of systems and what the real system is. It’s much like the Buddhist phrase about the finger pointing to the moon: we confuse the system map for the system itself.

Luke Craven, a designer and systems consultant, has remarked on the paradoxes found in system mapping. Among these paradoxes are the tendency toward generating a single, over-arching map. This article reminds us of many conventions we recommend in using system maps.

System Map Suggestions

  1. Diversity in Form. Systems Thinking has many different schools of thought and systems mapping often follows conventions generated from these schools. These forms or conventions are the visual languages of the system. For example, System Dynamics emphasizes causal loops and stocks-and-flows. Social Networks use nodes and links to represent a system.
  2. Awareness of Form. Merging forms together can be useful but must be done mindfully. When we deviate from a convention, we violate certain rules (while creating opportunities). A systems mapper needs to be aware of what is lost and gained when using multiple visual forms. Hybrid maps require coherence to be useful.
  3. Volume. Multiple maps using multiple forms can generate insights that can’t be found when using a singular approach. It’s important to create the time and space to generate multiple maps. Too often we find organizations fail to do this.
  4. Validation. Every map reflects the map-maker. Thus, the more map-makers involved the more the map reflects the diversity of the system and different realities. Show your maps – in any form – to others. Feedback is fuel for system diagrams.
  5. Continuation. A system map’s value changes over time. It’s important to recognize that as the context changes, so does the map’s utility. We recommend updating and revisiting a map over the life of the project.

Map-making can be a powerful way to learn, explore, and illuminate relationships and patterns in a system. It is because maps are so powerful that we must be cautious in making them.

Good map-making requires thoughtful consideration to what a map is and how it is to be used. When you have done this, you have a remarkable pathway for shaping change.

If you want to make system maps and see what they can do for your organization, contact us. We will help you chart a path toward insight and impact.

Surfacing Your Organization’s Identity

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Have you ever asked questions about your organization’s identity before?

Who are you?

What do you stand for?

What kind of things motivate you to action and direct your attention?

The answers to all of these questions shape what we do in our work. Organizations that have a clear sense of what they do, why they do it, and who they do it for tend to succeed. The reason? These organizations have greater alignment between purpose and strategy. In short: they have an identity.

Our identity — who we think we are — is a powerful guide for our behaviour. So how do we answer this question in our work?

Bulls Eye

A simple starting point for finding what matters and moves you is to use a Bull’s Eye diagram. A Bull’s Eye Diagram illustrates priorities through three layers of importance. All that is needed is a diagram of the ‘target’, sticky notes, and a space to organize the notes. The example below is done using the Mural tool and a pre-set template for ease of use..

A Bull’s Eye diagram can be used with individuals or groups. We often use this for a project when a client is struggling to identify what is both important and necessary for their work.

We also recommend that you use the Bull’s Eye diagram at the start of an engagement.

Once the items from the sticky notes are placed, it’s easier to see themes in the ‘data.’ This approach allows organizations to see what their members think are most important. It is the aggregate of these ideas that shape the culture of an organization and when you know what they are it’s easier to design with them.

With this knowledge in hand your organization can better design a purposeful strategy and make your identity aspirations a reality in practice.

We help organizations to design their culture for success. If you want help using this or other tools like it, contact us.

Perspective Taking Circles

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The power of perspective is one of the things that differentiates high output and impact innovators from others. It’s easy to get lucky or have good timing, but it’s another to create value when those things don’t happen.

One of the ways we do this is by engaging in some perspective-taking. This simple exercise and question set can help build some of the ‘thought muscles’ that can help encourage us to see, imagine, and engage things differently for creative benefit.

The Exercise

This works best when physically in the same space and can work online as well. What you need is to create a space where people can re-position themselves against a central object that can be almost anything except a ball (because it looks the same from every angle). Place your participants around the object with a comfortable space to sit or stand.

You can do this virtually using a dynamic space like Kumospace or some other virtual reality-like environment. It can also work using a board like Miro or Mural with some designed object in the middle, but it is more awkward.

The idea is that everyone has a chance to literally see things from a different point of view.

This can be done as an observation exercise but is more enhanced when it is combined with drawing. Asking people to draw what they see — no matter what kind of skills or abilities participants have with sketching — is a great means to engage people in thinking more deeply about their perspective.

Once individuals have had time to observe and reflect on what they see, the next step is to have everyone share their perspective. This is where drawings are useful as people can speak to what they drew as drawing focuses us on certain elements and provides a means to account for those perspectives. It also allows others to point to the drawing and make specific, not general comments.

It’s that specificity that is key to illuminating and articulating differences of perspective.

Uses

The role of this method is to reveal how where we sit in a system — even a small one of people interconnected around a shared experience of an object — can have remarkably different perceptions of the same thing in the same space.

It begins to build cultural practices around creating space for exploring and sharing perspectives within an organization and can serve as a base for better organizational design and learning.

It’s simple, engaging, and revealing in its method.