Learning Leader

Conference Mapping

How do you make sure that a group of 11 leaders mobilise their learning from an intense two-day conference in two hours and also commit to action? Well, here's how I tried...

I was with a group of leaders, mostly from the Bristol area, at the Leadership Summit this year. The Summit included some great speakers and memorable sessions including Andrew Rugasaria from Uganda speaking on Trade not Aid, Jessica Jackley, founder of the excellent Kiva, and Gary Hamel to name but a few.

After the Conference I was asked to facilitate this two hour session in a small room in the Marriott, Schaumburg. These are the steps I took them through:

1. Clarified and agreed the objectives.
2. Asked for the first three sessions that were most memorable for them.
3. Arranging them into three groups I showed them a Mind Map template I had drawn on a flip sheet. It had the central theme (one of the sessions) and four branches radiating out:
4. 1. Key points
   2. Key quotes
   3. Interesting thoughts provoked (strong or logical association not necessary)
   4. Actions or responses we might take
5. Then I gave each group a different session a different coloured flip chart pen and they each did a mini-group Mind Map.
6. After a few minutes I got them to circulate the maps so that each group was working on a new  session.
7. One more iteration of this allowed all to contribute to all three Maps
8. Then I hung their handiwork up around the room and asked them for any emergent themes that come out for them across all the sessions. (I always find it amazing how different speakers even when not briefed can build on certain emergent themes in a good conference.) I listed these on a flip chart.
9. I moved every other delegate around the room so that people were now working in new groups. And we repeated steps 5-8.
10. There was time for one final round of Mind Mapping and delegates 'voted' for the last three sessions - and no, Tony Blair's session didn't make the cut! (Brits will understand, Americans will be bemused.)
11. Towards the end of the two hours, I allowed everyone to walk around all nine of the group Mind Maps, in a sort of gallery, just taking the time to review all their collective thoughts.
12. At the end, I closed by giving them a few moments to reflect and write down actions they would commit to, and the name of someone they would be accountable to and share with their committed actions. One of these actions, in true David Allen style, should be done day 1 back in the UK and should take no more than 20 minutes. And, as you can see, I documented all this work by camera for later distribution to the group as a permanent record.

All in all, this process worked well, given the richness of our experience, lack of IT in the room and the severe time constraint. I would do this again, but only for a group of about this size.

Beyond Crayons: Turning systems models into projects

My good friend Nick Duffill has done something interesting with my recent article on Outcome Relationship Models in his post Beyond Crayons: Turning systems models into projects.

In brief, what Nick has done has been to convert my example into his Funnel Timeline technique using MindManager. It’s interesting because for some, the systems thinking approach I presented in the Outcome Relationship Model (ORM) lacks enough structure and uni-directional flow. With the Project Funnel Timeline that Nick has perfected there is more structure, a clear centre of focus and a left-to-right flow.

I’m reminded of an experience I had in coaching one group in MSP a few months ago in London. We introduce the ORM as early as the afternoon of Day 1 of the learning programme and bring in the more linear Benefits Model in the morning of Day 4. (Benefits realisation is far too central a topic in managing programmes to reduce it to a single session.) Several in the group expressed dissatisfaction with ORM, complaining that their ‘result’ from the workshop looked too messy, confusing and unresolved. To my mind, these were the comments of left-hemisphere directed thinkers. There was real creativity in their work, but they wanted to resolve the tension to a linear plan too soon. One delegate even disliked the convention of ‘curvey’ lines, preferring more rigid straight lines(!).

When we made the ‘transformation’ of our ORM to the more structured, linear Benefits Model, where the entities are clearly classified, there was palpable relief among the group. Their desire for structure and linearity was appeased. We made a joke of it, but really, to explore creativity to any extent, we must allow R-directed thinking, as Daniel Pink would put it, to run its course for a little while.

Yes, I think both techniques have their merits, but let’s allow ourselves to live in the soft, divergent world of systems thinking a little while before we leap to resolving these causal links into more structured approaches. I believe this is particularly important when we are working towards the realisation of benefits and trying to model the dependencies between them, and with their enabling projects.

The Cancer Code

While I was away on vacation I finished reading a book sent to me by the co-author, Hobie Swan, called The Cancer Code. The book tells the heroic story of Mike Jetter’s battle with leukaemia told through his own eyes and those of his wife, Bettina.  

It was when he went into his first of several relapses with the prospect of another two months cooped up in a sterile isolation room that he decided to use his time to develop MindMan, later to become MindManager. During this process, Mike found he recovered more quickly, and left him and Bettina beginning to service a growing business.

As I read this, I was reminded of Viktor Frankl’s observations in Man’s Search for Meaning, how often human beings can prevail through tremendous challenges if they live for some transcendent purpose - something beyond their immediate suffering. In Mike Jetter’s case, he wanted to leave some kind of software legacy.

The book also reminded me how truly ground-breaking the MindManager software has become. I go back to it now with a fresh appetite.

Finally, I noted the references in the book to my friend Nick Duffill, and how Mike and Bettina describe him as ‘scary smart’. And so he is. But I hadn’t realised he had made such a significant contribution to the Mindjet story.

So thanks, Hobie. I appreciated reading this inspiring story, and I would recommend it to others. (To my colleagues at Pearce Mayfield: my copy goes into the Pearce Mayfield library!)

MindManager Web Viewer

Now I can announce something really cool. At the invitation of Hobie Swan of Mindjet, a few MindManager-using bloggers and me have been beta testing the MindManager Web Viewer.

Below is a thumbnail of a MindManager file that I have up-loaded to this post. With the help of Nick Duffill I have created this so that if you click on it, another window will open with an 'exploded' version of the map.

Sample 'When You Need Best Practice' map

However, if you browse this post in Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher and download the Mind Map viewer plug-in from Mindjet you will be prompted for permission to install the MindManager viewer control in your browser. Note you will need to enable the IE ‘Enable Active X’ settings:

• Automatic prompting for ActiveX controls:  Enable
• Download signed ActiveX control: Enable or Prompt
• Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins: Enable or Prompt

You should then see the MindManager file open up in the viewer.

You can then navigate, pan and zoom in the map and hyperlink from the map just like you can in MindManager itself.

Mindjet Map Viewer

Built by Mindjet LLC

Note that in my sample map, the branches in the viewer can be 'exploded' by clicking on the plus links on the Map.

The implications of this are significant. It means, first off, that MindManager maps can be shared in an HTML environment with hyperlinks to other files. The marketing people at Mindjet know what they are doing. Once people are using the viewer, they will want the full license to produce their own maps.

Well done, Mindjet, and thanks Hobie for inviting me to participate.

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.

 

Mind Maps in Training - Part 2

When it comes to learning and applying new knowledge, everybody is not the same. People learn in different ways. Usually people find management training so arid because they have been subject to a ‘one size fits all’ instructional design.

I was discussing this recently with a business partner who works with us in the Netherlands. As I was explaining mind mapping with him, I suggested that the most potent, most memorable mind maps for a class are in this order of priority:

· Those Mind Maps each person draws themselves

· Mind Maps developed in the class as a group

· Prepared Mind Maps discussed with the class and used as a revision aid.

In a learning context, Mind Maps appear to have currency and value for the learner to the degree to which they are dynamic. The dialogue the group makes in the genesis of a mind map mirrors or 'maps' the narrative of how they came to understand.

 

Let me illustrate this with an example I have come to use recently in explaining to people about the value and nature of the Resource Management Strategy as a management document within MSP. A description of this document is laid out in Appendix B of the MSP Guide, showing what the typical contents of this document. There is also a brief discussion of its importance in the chapter on Planning and Control in a programme.

However, as I develop the hand-drawn mind map (see picture) as part of a coaching discussion, people begin to 'see' patterns and themes, as well as links with other sources of information (such as the Programme Plan) that they would have missed if they had just studied the MSP Guide in isolation.

Learning theory is rich in models and categories of learners. We keep things relatively simple, but it still takes us a long way in creating effective learning experiences for managers.

Using David Meier's Accelerated Learning model, we recognise four basic types of learner:

· Aural: well served by traditional lecturing, 'chalk-and-talk' type teaching. These types of learners sometimes feel cheated of content if there are not frequent aural explanations and if the courseware is ‘word-light’.

· Visual: people who doodle, think pictures, are more comfortable with illustrations of abstract concepts, processes and organisations

· Kinaesthetic: those who prefer 'hands on', tactile learning experiences, they tend to be activists, and so are well represented, we find, among senior management. The worst thing a trainer can do to this kind of learner is to make them sit behind a desk for long periods and ask them to listen.

· Intellectual: comfortable with abstract models, but must see the 'big picture' first. They have less tolerance for being drip-fed information that the other three groups.

Most of us have one preferred dominant style for learning, but also have secondary styles as well.

So our approach in designing training is to assume that all four types will be present, and that we need regularly to present learning that appeals to each type. It needs to be multi-modal.

Increasingly in the 21st century at least three of these types will no longer tolerate bullet-point based lecturing in management settings.

So we don't do 'Death by PowerPoint'.

However, most of us do have the Visual mode of learning as either our primary or secondary preferred style of learning. Mind Maps work well with this. The ‘Intellectuals’ value to the ‘holistic’.see-it-all-at-once-joined-up aspects of Mind Maps, the Kinaesthetics appreciate the narrative of dynamic Mind Maps and the Aurals really want to talk them through.

More later…

Mind Maps in Training - Part 1

Recently I was coaching a programme manager to take the MSP (Managing Successful Programmes) Practitioner Exam. He was sufficiently experienced and a clear communicator, but was concerned about properly ordering his thoughts under time-constrained exam conditions. How could he give the best of himself?

As we talked I studied him using an NLP technique, observing his eye movements when he reflected. I commented, "You are a visual learner, aren't you? You prefer to think in pictures. But the idea of putting down your thoughts in words is troubling you." He looked somewhat surprised and agreed that he definitely preferred to see matters laid out pictorially. So I introduced him to an approach where he could Mind Map his outline, so that he adequately scoped his answer, and yet did not forget important detail.

Since I was trained in the mid-90's by the Buzan Organization in Mind Mapping™ we have used Mind Maps in Pearce Mayfield extensively in our consultancy, training design as well as in helping people to learn new management approaches. So much so, that when I was asked to write recently on how we use Mind Maps in our training, I realised how much we take Mind Maps for granted; we don't talk about Mind Mapping specifically very much at all. We just use them as part of normal training.

A few years ago I wrote for Project Manager Today on the application of Mind Maps in project management. Now we see more and more evidence of this moving into mainstream practice using such excellent tools such as MindManager X5. (Incidentally, this was the tool I used to draft this series of posts.)

More later.

 

Beyond Crayons

My good friend and colleague, Nick Duffill, has launched his own web log under the name "Beyond Crayons".

Nick is a director of an innovative company call Gyronix that produces a nifty little add-on for the popular Mind Mapping software MindManager. called ResultsManager. ResultsManager helps people organise themselves and their projects using the David Allen "Getting Things Done" (GTD) approach, using MindManager. It is very clever.

Nick was Technical Editor of the recently-published "MindManager for Dummies", now available through Amazon. Nick kindly gave me a copy when we met recently when I was speaking on Project Mapping. I've been working my way through and heartedly recommend it as a book that opens up much potential of this powerful program.  For example, someone asked me yesterday after I spoke at OGC's Centres of Excellence 'Successful Delivery' conference about a book on Mind Mapping. When they told me they used MindManager, I recommended "MindManager for Dummies".

Check out Nick's web log, MindManager, ResultsManager and "MindManager for Dummies".