You can brainstorm and organize ideas using a mind map . It’s a powerful way to capture, organize thoughts to work with. In practice, we’re doing that all the time for personal purposes (e.g. shopping list) and professional objectives. Some examples of this type of exercise are taking notes, building an action plan, preparing the work breakdown structure (WBS) of a project or a root cause analysis. There are endless possibilities to apply mind mapping.
Collect the ideas with mind map
One of the guiding principals of brainstorming is to build on previous ideas. Our minds works that same way. When thinking of an object, person or matter, we automatically associate thousands of other thoughts to it. This is what people do when they add an item to an existing ones. By navigating through the map, participants are getting familiar with existing items. And at the same time, they are generating new associations and ideas. There is no constraint as to where ideas are added. It can be an additional branch or a new layer. The benefits of this technique include completeness, stakeholder buy in, and knowledge gained by the team.
Involve stakeholders
If you are organizing your own thoughts, you won’t need someone else’s inputs. However, you will have cases where your information is partial and incomplete. The best results are the ones that cover all aspects. The best way to achieve this is by including people with diverse perspectives. Participants should have diverse points of views through their background, organization, expertise, objectives or other relevant criteria.
There are other advantages to getting people involved. By navigating through the items, the team increases their knowledge and insight of the matter at hand. Through their contribution, their understanding and buy in is greater. This will likely lead to better results and save time on upcoming efforts.
Organize the ideas
As ideas are input by association of thoughts, they are likely to be duplicates, overlaps or more oddities. You’re likely to need to make changes before reaching a satisfactory result. To remedy this, there are several possibilities. You can move an item or a whole branch to a new location. In Goal Nabber, that’s a simple drag and drop. To make labels more comprehensible, you can modify them. If you are sure that an item or branch is no longer required, you can delete it.
Present as a mind map or fishbone diagram
Not everyone has the same affinity for all types of diagrams. Nor is one type of diagram suited for all purposes. It could also depend on the context. A fishbone diagram is well suited for a root cause analysis. A Mind map is easier to work with. A disk can provide a dimension of sections and sub section. To have the right format for the desired purpose, different types of diagrams / tools are available. You and your team can use the one they see as being the best fit.
Fully integrated with other Goal Nabber Features
As per all Goal Nabber features, the above outcome, either fully or partially, can be used in other Goal Nabber Huddles (or features). If you have a subscription, you will benefit of advanced functionalities to increase your productivity. For example, the background AI examines the context to provide meaningful suggestions. Or, functionalities that make it easier to integrate with many other applications. If you don’t have a subscription, you should compare the time you currently spend and could save, the cumulated cost of other tools to Goal Nabber. We’re so convinced it of the added value of Goal Nabber that we will offer one year for free when you show us why not.
Find out more
To find our more, we believe that the best way is to try yourself. You can do that by using Goal Nabber (click here). To know more about Goal Nabber, contact us and we will follow up.