Mind Maps in Training - Part 3

In the previous two posts I have talked about the potency of Mind Maps in training and how dynamic mind maps – that is, ones actually drawn with learners – seems to be one of the most powerful ways of communicating management concepts with different types of adult learner.

Delegate after delegate attests to the benefits of using Mind Maps in our course ware. Some even claim to benefit from using them to organise their answers in written examinations.

Ultimately, I suppose, all management theory can be regarded as a mental grid against which the practitioner interprets reality. The power of mind maps is that they immediately portray these grids in a concrete, visual way.

Much of our training in project and programme management is around explaining the detail, rationale and practical application of management methods and methodology, such as PRINCE2 and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP). I am more and more convinced that a healthy way to approach such thinking is to regard these methods and frameworks of management as maps.

I like to quote a phrase use by Mahan Khalsa and others about using methods: "The Map is not the Territory". This means that the programme management framework of MSP (our 'map') does not look exactly like our detailed experience of a real programme (our 'territory'). It is not meant to. The map orients us in a complex, otherwise confusing, environment; it gives helps us identify landmarks and gives us control over the direction we strike out in; but it still remains a simplified abstraction of reality. The challenge of application is not to make reality conform to the abstraction. That just results in bureaucracy.

I had this conversation only this week with a senior manager engaging with a complex programme to rationalise ‘Arms Length Bodies’ working with the UK Department of Health. He is able to use MSP as a map and is finding some elements are highly and immediately relevant, some less so, and to give equal weighting to all elements would have been simply letting the MSP Framework dictate his agenda.

Recall

 

One important area that is often neglected in instructional design is recall. Such is the focus on clear communication of new information and concepts that the trainer often overlooks the need to help the learner manage their recall some time later.

There is some evidence that cognitive assimilation ('memory' to you and me) is not the issue. Research suggests that we never truly 'forget' most experiences; its just that we often seem to be unable to recall them.

Also it appears that recall works best by association, and that the brain has a facility to bring back stored data to consciousness when it is strongly associated with some key image, mnemonic or other word. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew this and developed whole memory techniques around this that are still used today.

 

So Mind Maps can be regarded as a visual metaphor of the radial, associative links between the brain's synapses. This is probably why it works so brilliantly.

We find that if we tour an individual or class through the branches of a Mind Map against a particular subject, it then becomes something each delegate can visualise. They discover that they can recall a surprising amount in this way.

 

Results

There is one very simple test of the effectiveness an investment in business training: results. Not exam results – they are good too, but business results.

When we interview our ‘graduates’ some time after the training event we get some encouraging feedback. Mind Maps are helping these managers orient themselves in a chaotic confusing business environment. Also they are finding these simple techniques – Mind Maps chief among them – work in multiple ways outside the training to help them get control and become more effective. Some now find themselves mind mapping meetings. Others now use the technique to compose difficult reports or proposals.

So, despite not teaching about Mind Mapping directly, this is one of the main elements some delegates find endures to get them results in business.

 

This is the end of this initial short series on ‘Mind Maps in Training’. Let me have your experiences and comments.

 

Comments

[Patrick Mayfield]

Thanks, John. I wasn't aware of this. It's encouraging, though.

[John Edmonds]

Patrick, you mention that "some [delegates] even claim to benefit from using [Mind Maps] to organise their answers in written examinations". One such delegate told me today that when he sat his PRINCE2 Practitioner examination with Pearce Mayfield a little while ago, the Mind Maps were his ONLY source of reference until well into the last hour of the exam, when he needed some detail from the manual. His subsequent pass seems to support what you have been saying...