The Mind Mapping Software Weblog

How to use mind mapping software to recession-proof your career

About a month ago, I asked the community of bloggers who cover mind mapping software to give me their perspectives on how this type of productivity tool can help you to recession-proof your career. My thought was that mind mapping software has the potential to help you to add more value to your employer – and therefore make you less likely to be laid off when their employer downsizes staff to weather a recession.

I didn’t get many responses, and so I just put this idea on the back burner. Apparently Vic Gee from the Mind Mapping Blog felt as strongly about this subject as I did, because he contacted me several times, asking if I ever did anything with his submission. So he went ahead and published it on his website, which you can read here or in the compilation of tips below.

Vic’s persistence has caused me to rethink my original decision. So here are my thoughts on utilizing mind mapping software to recession-proof one’s career:

Who gets laid off in a recession? To answer this question, let’s consider a ship as a metaphor for this scenario. On an ocean-faring vessel, what gets thrown overboard when seas get rough? Everything that's non-essential to the survival of the ship. So it is with corporations today. Recessions are a prime time for companies to trim "dead wood" - people whose skills are no longer current - because they can do so with relative impunity. One of the big areas where you can improve your skills is in creative problem solving. And a key tool for doing that is mind mapping.

Be an opportunity finder. A downturn is a prime time to identify new opportunities – cost-saving opportunities, new product line extensions, business processes that can be simplified and creative new business models - where others only see liabilities. Mind maps can help you to conduct this research, explore gray areas and "white space" opportunities. In particular, I recommend that you spend time using your software to brainstorm creative ways to generate revenues or cut costs – two areas that top management always appreciate help with in a recession.

Polish your reputation as a can-do problem solver. Understand your organization's short- and long-term strategic goals, and position yourself to meet those goals and provide creative solutions. As one executive once remarked (I don’t recall the source): "Be amazing, be remarkable, be brilliant, be the very best at what you do."

Alberto Martinez, Mind Mapping Everywhere Blog

By increasing my productivity, then I will be a recession-proof worker. If we define productivity as results divided by investment, then visual mapping techniques do help to reduce the amount of time needed to get results in many different ways.

One key question is how do visual mapping skills contribute to my productivity? Here are some of the ways that visual mapping helps me:

Gathering information data, and connecting them to provide new, different and fresher ideas. Because mind mapping software provides new methods to connect information, thoughts, notes and so on, it can help you to discover new paths to get the best solutions to your goals in a time-saving way. Many times, getting the best solution comes down to having the best information and the best tools to extract meaning from it.

Visual mapping techniques also provide extraordinary tools to improve your organization (defining tasks, deadlines and priorities). They provide this information in a ‘brain-friendly’ representation, so you get your whole brain working together to help you to solve problems and generate ideas. This can help you on your path to productivity.

Finally, visual mapping tools help to stimulate pre-analysis of information with  a clear strategic vision. For applications like strategic planning and business process mapping, mind mapping software can help you to determine a faster path to reach your goals, as well as help you to uncover ways to reduce your risks and maximize your profits.

Vic Gee, The Mind Mapping Blog

Surviving in a shrinking economy and nervous times is most often about being better than the next guy or gal. But it's not enough just to be better, if you are a cog in the machine, or even a bigger wheel, you need the higher levels to know that you're better. The fastest and most memorable way to get that message across is visually.

My advice to the real survivors is:

• Don't just know what you know, show what you know.
• Don't just know what you're planning, show what you're planning.
• Don't just know what you're doing, show what you're doing.

A well-organized mind map or series of maps can show all that quickly, and doesn't depend on the boss sitting down to read a report. As a consultant I've consistently found that the higher the level of a decision-maker is, the more often they want a diagram or some other visual encapsulation of a complex problem. They rarely want detail.

Once you have hooked senior management's interest visually, using mind mapping software to go to the next stage shows that it's not just a party trick. Showing that a mind map that kicked off a presentation is linked directly to data that tracks, for example, progress or costs can be truly impressive. One of the "dashboard" add-ins for popular mind mapping software can help you pull that one off and keep it up to date automatically.

Or a project's main mind map, or series of maps, can be linked directly to files of information. Direct, clickable links on the maps allow project team members to find information they need quickly, just where they'd expect it to be, because they've worked with the same mind maps as they were developed.

Finally, out of the many possibilities, here's another chance for you to shine. If you work in an environment where there are too many meetings, mind maps can keep a meeting focused, record next actions and decisions made as you go alone, as well as making the meetings more effective, and shorter, as a result.

You'll be remembered and appreciated for that!

The online mind map smackdown

During the last year and a half, a number of web-based tools for mind mapping have evolved quickly into competent business applications. Several of them are now approaching the functionality of desktop mind mapping software.

I've been planning to create a comparison chart that details how the offerings of each of the major developers of web-based mind mapping software tools compare, but just couldn't seem to get around to it - until recently. During a recent web search, I came across a chart produced by blogger Tiffany Brown that compared MindMeister, Mindomo, Mind42 and Comapping, and provided brief reviews of each of the programs. It was dated July 2007 - almost a year old, an eternity in Web 2.0 terms - and so I contacted Tiffany to see if I could use her chart as a jumping off point to an up-to-date comparison. She said yes!

I first made a detailed set of features and performance criteria, drawn from a similar chart that I offer for desktop-based mind mapping software, and added in other capabilities that are unique to these web-based tools. I then sent the form to each developer, asking them to fill in the required data. Finally, I compiled their answers into a detailed side-by-side comparison chart, which is now available for you to download.

This detailed chart covers criteria such as:

• Overview (versions, pricing)
• Map formats supported
• Map level features
• Topic-level features
• Import options
• Export options
• Publishing options
• Collaboration
• Other features

This is the most comprehensive comparison of web-based mapping tools ever created. And it's yours by clicking here.

By the way, if you're interested in reading Tiffany's original report, my comparison chart contains a link to her blog post at the bottom of the last page.

Beyond hierarchies: A better paradigm for mind mapping?

Shelly Hayduk, writing in TheBrain Blog, recently posted an article that suggests that traditional hierarchical mind maps may not be the best way to present complex information and knowledge. She points out that almost all software interfaces today are limited to organizing information into hierarchies, where a piece of information can only be categorized into one place. A case in point: the traditional file manager view in Microsoft Windows, where the directory tree resembles an expandable and contractible outline.

Here's where things get a little controversial: While Shelly acknowledges that mind mapping software offers an improved information hierarchy, it shares the same limitation as the directory tree of your computer's filing system, because each topic can have only one parent. If you want to create a link from one topic to a branch that is distant from it, this is somewhat hard to represent visually, especially in a very large map.

In contrast, PersonalBrain, the desktop software developed by her employer, is designed to create complex connections between widely disparate topics. Each node in the visual map can have connections to numerous other topics, enabling you to display non-hierarchical relationships between pieces of information. As a result, Shelly says TheBrain can be used to display and manipulate maps consisting of several thousand nodes, while giving a more complete picture of each node's multitude of relationships.

Please note: This isn't meant to be a commercial for TheBrain, but to highlight the philosophical differences between TheBrain's approach to visual information management and that of "traditional" mind mapping software.

What do you think? Have you downloaded and evaluated PersonalBrain? What was your experience? How well does it do at helping you to visualize relationships between ideas in your maps? I look forward to your feedback.

Using mind mapping to clarify and strengthen your business

Gideon King, the founder of NovaMind, is a big fan of Squidoo, a free service that enables registered users to create resource pages on various subjects. But rather than create a set of links to cool mind mapping resources, Gideon has decided to take a different approach: to utilize this service to develop a series of articles about applications of mind mapping software.

This Squidoo "lens" on Using Mind Mapping to Clarify and Strengthen Your Business is a case in point. In it, Gideon explains how to use mind mapping software to create a company mission statement, how to set goals, plan your website and sell your ideas, all illustrated with brightly colored mind maps. They all recommend that you download and utilize a copy of NovaMind to create these maps, of course, but thankfully Gideon employs a "soft sell" approach. The bottom line is that he has created an informative article that many new mind mappers are likely to appreciate. He has also created lenses on How to Mind Map and Business Continuity.

CS Odessa announces plans for ConceptDraw Office visual project management program

CS Odessa, the developer of ConceptDraw MINDMAP, has announced that it plans to launch a new software program called ConceptDraw Office that will seamlessly integrate the capabilities of ConceptDraw (for business diagramming), ConceptDraw Project (for project management) and ConceptDraw MINDAP into one powerful visual documentation tool.

"The key innovation behind ConceptDraw Office is that for any particular project scenario there is an appropriate visual representation for the respective information. Sample usage scenarios include brainstorming project ideas using a whiteboard-like view, organizing results into highly informative mind maps, and transforming data into detailed project plans and Gantt charts," the company explained in a news release dated May 6th.

ConceptDraw Office appears to be designed to provide project managers with an end-to-end solution - covering everything from brainstorming the front end of a new project (utilizing the brainstorming mode from ConceptDraw MINDMAP), developing detailed project plans (again in mind map mode), and producing GANTT charts and Work Breakdown Structures. Project monitoring and progress tools will include project resource usage reports, a visual project dashboard and other reports, task lists and task status reports (presented in map mode), plus a project summary report.

Other programs enable you to manage part of this "birth to death" project process, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has offered an end-to-end, visually oriented project suite like ConceptDraw Office. It will be priced at US$499.

Click here to learn more about ConceptDraw Office, and here to view screenshots of this new productivity tool.

Developer adapts Labyrinth open source map app for Nokia N800

One of the beauties of open source software is that any programmer can take its existing source code and add to it - or "branch" it off in exciting new directions. Eugene Antimirov recently reported in his blog that he has created a version of Labyrinth (an open source mind mapping app written in Python) that is adapted for the Nokia N800, a clamshell style cell phone/PDA, utilizing its Maemo open source operating system. He reports that it's still in "alpha" stage (not ready for prime time, probably still a bit buggy).

For more information about Labyrinth, please visit its web page.

Thanks to Kevin Tofel from the jkOnTheRun blog for uncovering this little gem.