A case in point: I recently finished writing a new book, Up Your Impact: 52 Innovative Ways to Add Value to Your Work, which I will self-publish on May 1, 2012. Much of the content was initially written in Evernote, a flexible and portable note-taking app for the iPhone. Because the book contains over 50 strategies, I had a lot of content to keep track of. I needed to quickly know the status of each segment of my writing, so I could move it to the next stage. So I placed the bits and pieces of the book in appropriately-named folders in Evernote, so I could tell the status of each element just by virtue of the folder it was in. This arrangement worked very well.

As the project progressed, I found that I also needed to keep track of promotional ideas, bloggers with whom I wanted to share a pre-release copy of the book and much more. So I created folders to hold those ideas and bits of information. I then created the flow chart above as a reminder to myself of how I had organized my multi-faceted information capture system.

Note how the book content flows down the left side of the diagram, from a raw idea to dictated chunks of copy, to fully edited copy and finally the writing of action items for each of 52 strategies. On the right are the other elements I needed to track. They are all self-contained, so there is no “flow” that connects them together.

The biggest benefit of creating a visual representation of my book writing process was that it helped me to stay better organized. Once I got above a certain number of folders,  I started to ask myself, “Why did I create this folder? What does it contain?” Instead of opening it up and looking at a few entries to try to discern their status,  I could just get right to work, writing and editing each piece of the book – because I had a visual plan for it!

This diagram was created using SmartDraw 2012

“In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them.”

That prescient quote comes to us from Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. At the surface level, he is talking about the life of a creative person, who is faced with the challenge of figuring out what to create when he or she is faced with limitless possibilities in terms of information, materials and ideas.

But Austin’s quote also speaks to us about the need to use good judgment in deciding how much information we need to include in our mind maps, especially that will be shared with our colleagues, clients and other audiences. A complex mind map may overwhelm some people, as well as make it harder for us to work with. What’s more, a mind map that’s shared may contain much information that is only of passing interest to your audience, or should not be shared with them at all, because it’s proprietary.

A final benefit of reducing the number of topics in your mind map is that it makes it easier for you to think. Clutter gets in the way of creative thinking. Simplicity enhances it.

I can think of several ways to “leave out” content from your mind maps:

1. Delete all non-essential topics from your map.

2. Gather all of the background and proprietary information as children of one appropriately-named topic, and either filter it so it doesn’t appear in the map you output to another format (such as an image or PDF) or break it off into a separate, linked sub-map.

3. Clearly style the informational topics differently – such as by topic shape, color and font – to make readers of your map aware what is the essential information they must pay attention to, and what is merely background or supporting information.

The next time you create a mind map, give some thought to this key question: What should you leave out?

The image above is one of Austin Kleon’s “newspaper blackout poems” where he takes a news story and progressively blacks out words with a black marker to reveal a simple, often thought-provoking statement it contains, made up of random words from the article.

Did you know that you can track simple business processes using your mind mapping software? It’d easier to do than you may think. Here’s how to set one up in 7 easy steps, no matter what program you use:

1. Create a right-facing mind map. In this orientation, the timeline runs from top to bottom, as shown in the image above (click for a larger version of the entire map). Place the steps of your process in order, from top to bottom.

2. Add any sub-tasks to these top level steps. It’s best to break large tasks down into their elements, so you don’t get overwhelmed when it’s time to implement them.

3. Add task information, such as start and end dates, resources (in this case, who will be doing the work) and percentage complete. This will help to reinforce the idea that you’re looking at a timeline, with a natural flow from old to new, top to bottom.

4. Enhance your process map with supporting information, such as topic notes and attachments. This is your way to keep this information just one click away and reduce clutter in your  diagram.

5. Use a boundary to draw attention to the single most critical step in the process. If this doesn’t happen in a timely manner, the whole project is screwed.

6. If there are dependencies between process steps – in other words, step 1 must be completed before step 2 can begin – then add relationship lines to depict this (see image at right).

7. If you need to, utilize a floating topic to give your stakeholders any additional information – in this case, the people who will have roles in this project.

As you can see, the right-facing mind map is a very flexible tool for depicting what you need to get done.

This is a guest post from Jeffrey Ritter, founder of the Ritter Academy

Many executives use checklists to keep track of information they must not forget. They are essential for life-and-death situations. But there is a better way that is more in tune with the nature of today’s work. Here are 7 reasons mind maps are much more efficient and effective than checklists for busy executives.

The power of checklists

In The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, the NYT bestseller by Atul Gawande, the author effectively shows the surprising power of the ordinary checklist at enabling surgeons and other professionals to manage the increasing complexity of doing their work.  His engaging analysis emphasizes that any professional, despite effective training and practical experience, struggles to do everything right.

For surgeons, overlooking even routine tasks can have deadly consequences.  The checklist, Gawande observes, enables a professional to avoid two categories of errors: errors of ignorance (not knowing a particular step or procedure is required) and errors of ineptitude (failing to perform a known step or procedure).  Beginning with a 90 second checklist for a simple surgical room procedure that has reduced fatalities by 30%, Gawande examined a range of professional fields – disaster response, investment banking, skyscraper construction and business—and concluded that checklists not only drive the avoidance of errors, but provokes the professional to also focus on the times when the defined linear process needs to be varied in order to achieve the correct results.

Regardless of the professional discipline, Gawande concludes that the complexity of life, amplified by the impact of technology, requires the structure that a checklist can provide.  “We may admit that errors and oversights occur—even devastating ones. But we [surgeons] believe our jobs are too complicated to reduce to a checklist.”  His direct approach – that a checklist helps us to “get the stupid stuff right” – remains a compelling call to action for even the most educated professionals to think differently about how to implement tools that support them in performing their work.

But checklists aren’t enough for 21st century knowledge work

A checklist isn’t the only tool that can enable professionals to manage complexity, exercise, discipline, and avoid errors of ineptitude. In fact, I submit that checklists are a 20th century relic that are increasingly out of step with the needs of today’s work, despite Gawande’s convincing arguments for using them. In my experience, mind mapping is a much more effective technique.

I began working with mind mapping in 2004.  It was immediately clear to me—a lawyer who had an enormous whiteboard on my office wall—that mapping worked even better as a professional tool. Mind maps enabled me to literally see and unfold the increasing complexity of all of the legal and technology variables that were confronting both me and my clients in building and managing information systems and complex processes (privacy compliance, e-commerce, website functionality, network security, and e-discovery).

Even then, checklists – a very common project management tool for lawyers—were proving inadequate to meet my needs and those of my clients to see the full picture and enable the team to move ahead on the project working, quite literally, on the same page.

7 ways mind maps kick butt compared to checklists

As I have gained experience in using mind maps to grow my business during the last 8 years, I have discovered 7 ways in which mind maps are vastly superior to old-fashioned checklists:

1.  Mind maps enable you to identify and act on decision options that have multiple choices.

Checklists tend to force binary decisions – such as “yes/no”, “armed /unarmed” and “confirmed/unconfirmed.” While that type of structure is important in linear processes, mind maps enable you to provide multiple decision options that are much more appropriate for today’s type of work.  In addition, checklists have limited branching or decision-tree functionality.  Many types of information discovery and research applications require a more flexible approach, which mind mapping enables.

2.  Mind maps show context and structure, as well as the relationships among different variables and topics that must be included in a process.

Each of us, to a different extent, remembers and recalls what we learn and the information we need to use, in visual form.  We routinely share information in visual form, using blackboards or whiteboards, for example.  Presenting process information in a visual format improves recall and improves our ability to communicate this information to others.  After all, isn’t that the reason we often draw solutions on the back of paper napkins?  Being able to remember better and share and communicate better means fewer mistakes.

3. Mind maps enable the individual checklists of all of your team members to be viewed together—and filtered, split up and delivered to each team member when appropriate.

Checklists enable consensus action only.  A pilot and co-pilot must both agree a task is completed, a surgeon and a nurse must both confirm a clamp is properly presented, and so on.  But even if you add a column for responsibility to a checklist to handle more complex projects, it’s challenging to see the responsibilities of each member and the relationships between them. Mind mapping software can present complex task data and relationships in an easy-to-understand, compact visual format.

4. Software-produced Mind maps are more useful as a shared project resource.

Software-produced mind maps can incorporate shapes, colors, font sizes, font colors, images, icons, markers and filters to create a visually effective resource.  Even the basic checklist comes alive when presented in this non-linear format.  The result is that all of the stakeholders in your project can engage it differently. People focus, they examine and test the relationships among the topics in a mind map.  In doing so, they subtly begin to “own” its content and offer corrections, enhancements, additions and suggest changes.  That is much deeper engagement than any checklist!

5. Mind maps unfold complexity to a level appropriate for each person.

On any project, different participants and stakeholders have different views.  Senior management may only require a “global view”—the 20,000 foot fly-over of the planned process.  But the worker bees need a more detailed analysis to ensure the process is properly executed at the task level.  Nearly every checklist I have seen for a complex project defies the ability to provide different views.

Admittedly, process management tools do enable you to scale detail by “rolling-up” dates and deadlines, but even then, the visual presentation is largely linear, text-based and challenging to comprehend. By collapsing one or more levels of a mind map, you can easily provide a bigger-picture view to senior executives AND a detailed view to those people who are doing the work – all from the same visual document!

6. Mind maps can reveal why a process or task needs to be done.

Checklists demand compliance, and rarely if ever explain the “why” behind tasks and process steps. Mind maps can contain links to supporting information – in the form of attached documents, hypertext links and even the content of individual e-mail messages. These resources can provide project team members with the critical underlying “why” of processes, tasks or questions – without causing a lot of visual “clutter” in the process. Mind maps also give team members the ability to question specific steps, and make annotations, adaptations, comments or additions to the map. After all, this is what the training and experience of a professional represent – the ability to change direction intelligently.

7. Mind maps enable users to dynamically capture performance-related data and evidence.

As live data files, mind maps enable team members to input notes, findings, highlight inconsistencies, create reminders and capture facts with a variety of tools.  All of that can then be exported into other formats and resources, such as text documents and spreadsheets, quickly and easily. Checklists tend to only record that the act described has, or has not, been performed.

Jeffrey Ritter is recognized as a pioneer in shaping the legal rules for cyberspace. He helps companies, lawyers and investigators do a better job of evaluating, building, and improving their digital assets via a mind map-based tool called RitterMaps. He is also the founder of the Ritter Academy, which teaches his visually-oriented e-discovery methods to legal professionals.

1. Your mind maps are confusing

Your maps contain way too much information, poorly organized – the functional equivalent of a bowl of spaghetti.You haven’t given a lot of thought to how much information from your original mind map really needs to be shared with them. Did they really need to see all of that background information on why you recommended the ACME acquisition? Probably not.

The lesson: Remember that the people you’re sharing your mind maps with are like you – terminally busy. They must be able to “get” your mind map in 10 seconds or less, or chances are they will dismiss it. “I can’t understand it. I don’t have the time to understand it. Next!”

2. Your mind maps are visually boring

You decided, for the sake of expediency, to create your latest map using your program’s default settings – which are mind-numbingly monochromatic. Black text. Black shapes. Black lines. Zzzzzz…

The lesson: If you want people to notice your mind maps, then you need to add a bit of visual pizzazz to them. Use colors (text, lines and topic shapes) to add visual interest. Add appropriate icons/symbols and images to add meaning and context to your maps. But don’t go overboard – if you do, you’ll be wasting a lot of time tweaking them, with little improvement in their effectiveness. Think about what you really want your target audience to notice – and then use your program’s formatting tools to deliberately draw attention to it.

3. The content of your mind maps isn’t relevant to them

Even if your mind map is well-organized and has beautiful visual presentation, none of that will matter if its content isn’t relevant to the people with whom you’re sharing it. Busy executives must ruthlessly filter all of the information that’s coming at them. If they view your mind map and they don’t see anything they need to care about, they will dismiss it – and your opportunity to influence them will be lost.

The lesson: Filter the contents of your maps, so they only contains the information that is immediately relevant to the people with whom you’re sharing them. As I suggested in reason #2, format your map to naturally draw the viewer’s eyes to the most important information. You can do that in a variety of ways, including colored map topics, text size and format, and by placing a boundary around the most important topic and its children.

4. The people you’ve shared your mind maps with are in “map shock”

This condition occurs when you share mind maps with linear thinkers (the folks who like their words in neatly formatted paragraphs and their numbers in flawless rows and columns), without preparing them for what they’re seeing and why you’re presenting it in this way. You’ve just dumped a large, complex visual map on them, and their eyes are glazing over. Like a cornered animal, they’re getting ready to make a break for it, and silently vowing never to look at another mind map.

The lesson: Ease these Luddites into the world of mind mapping. Start out by providing them with a conventional text-based report, with one or two mind maps incorporated as supporting elements. Get them used to seeing visual maps as a legitimate way to present certain types of information. That way, they’re more likely to accept a mind map by itself in the future.

5. You’re evangelizing too much

Mind mappers tend to be a passionate bunch. They have seen the light. They’re much more productive and creative. And they want to tell everyone who will listen all about it. Worse yet, they mind map EVERYTHING, including grocery lists. They have become evangelists. When that happens, coworkers instinctively roll their eyes and shut down mentally, because they realize you’re on your soapbox again. They sense that mind maps are not a panacea. They don’t solve every business problem.

The lesson: Be openly pragmatic in your use of mind maps in your department or among members of your work team. Let them know it’s one of many tools in your executive toolbox. It’s not a panacea for every business situation.

If you need help producing more persuasive and impactful mind maps and strategies for sharing them with others effectively, why not consider joining the Mind Mapping Insider membership program?

How can you differentiate your blog content from the torrent of background noise? How can you capture the attention of the people you want to influence? One way is to use proven formulas for writing headlines.

John Morrow has written for many years for CopyBlogger, one of the most popular marketing websites on the planet. He has taken the best of what he learned to create a free report called 52 Headline Hacks: A “Cheat Sheet” for Writing Blog Posts That Go Viral. I downloaded it and read it, and was so impressed that I created a blog post that summarizes all 52 attention-getting headline styles in a single mind map (click here or on the map image to download a PDF of the full mind map, showing all 52 headline styles).

Jon’s excellent e-book provides some additional tips and examples of each headline style. So I encourage you to visit the Headline Hacks website to download his e-book. As the writer of two blogs, I’ve read many lists of recommended blog post topics, but this one offers some ideas even I hadn’t seen before. If you write content that is published online, I highly recommend this report!

Seth Godin writes extensively about this unseen monster, which he calls the Lizard Brain. It’s what keeps you from living out our dreams, from achieving your goals, from shipping your Big Idea – carrying it out into the world where the rest of us can benefit from it.

The prospect of laying out a plan for your project, tracking all of the details and completing them in a reasonable amount of time scares the hell out of most people. What if everyone criticizes or unmercifully shoots down your Big Idea? Let’s be honest: It’s much easier to procrastinate. It seems safer that way.

Seth Godin on Big Ideas vs. fear

“Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you’re exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself,” Godin explains. “It’s no wonder we’re afraid to ship. It’s not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it’s certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure. Since you’re going to ship anyway, then, the question is: why bother indulging your fear?”

Why, indeed?

What if:

• You had a tool that gave you a way to get your thinking out of your overwhelmed brain and onto a computer screen?
• You could name your fears, set them aside and then start breaking down the overwhelming Really Big Project into its component parts?
• You could capture the tasks, resources, deadlines and even the challenges you’re likely to face and how you’ll overcome each one of them?
• You could create an action plan to take your Big Idea from the Land of “Someday I’ll” to reality?

That would be amazing. Then you’d have no excuse but to face your fear head on, press ahead and ship your product or service into a waiting world.

But you do have such a tool at your disposal – it’s called mind mapping software.

Your assignment

So what are you waiting for? During the remaining time between the Christmas and New Years holidays, why not map out your Big Idea and a plan to bring it to fruition?

(P.S. If you’re serious about shipping your Big Idea in 2012, then I encourage you to check out this program I offer that will help you to get there.)

One of the key strategies for innovation and business development today is to look beyond your core business for adjacent markets, technologies or areas of focus where you can expand without severely taxing the resources of your organization. Tools like mind mapping and business diagramming can help you to visualize these adjacencies and to make informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue.

The diagram above depicts the Mind Mapping Software Blog as the center of my content universe. However, I realized several years ago that there’s much going on in the adjoining topics that may also be of value to you, flavors of visual thinking such as business diagramming, infographics and sketching. My core business continues to be focused on mind mapping software. But I have “zoomed out” to include some additional topics within the broader category of visual thinking, which adds a new dimension of value to my blog.

How to apply this idea to your business

Imagine how you could apply this principle of adjacencies to your own business. What is the core part of your business, the part upon which you currently depend for the bulk of your revenue? How could you expand your scope to include related products or markets that your customers also need? How could you provide them with a more comprehensive solution?

Whether you’re a blogger, consultant, accountant or manufacturer, the same principles apply: take off your blinders and look at the “bigger frame” that surrounds your business. What else should he be exploring? As you explore these potential opportunities, you may uncover connections and synergies that you didn’t even realize existed that could add significant value to your business.

The above diagram was created using SmartDraw, but you could just as easily replicate it using any mind mapping software. Simply place your core business as the central topic. If your business has multiple divisions or product lines, create first-level topics for each of them. Then add adjacent areas that may be relevant to each product line or division as child topics.

The reason I created a diagram rather than a mind map is because it enables me to do some clever things to add further meaning and relevance using formatting and color:

• A larger potential market can be depicted by a larger circle.
• Color can be used to designate markets that are most attractive to you. For example, I’ve used green to indicate those that I should begin exploring immediately, yellow for those that may have some future potential and red for those that aren’t a good strategic fit for my blog.
• You could use different topic shapes to designate different types of opportunities.
• You could depict the regions for your core business and adjacent business opportunities as nested rectangles rather than circles.

Use your imagination!

The key is to clearly visualize what your core business is and then thoughtfully – and visually – consider what business you’re REALLY in – the larger context within which you could potentially do business. This could be framed by a broader understanding of your customers’ total needs or perhaps in anticipation of what people may want, even if they don’t know what that is (Apple’s business philosophy).

Good luck exploring YOUR adjacencies!

It’s time to set goals in preparation for the new year. If you’re like most people, you take whatever you accomplished this year and will increment it upward by X percent. But what if you had a way to dream bigger dreams for 2012, to set ambitious goals that would help you to get much closer to your ideal future? Here’s a simple, two-step visual method for doing just that:

1. Envision your ideal future state
2. Work backward from there to the present, “reverse engineering” the steps you need to take to get there

That’s it! Yes, it’s simple. But it works like a charm. Some of history’s greatest thinkers and business leaders have used this method to achieve phenomenal success: Henry Ford, who envisioned a car that would be inexpensive enough for the average working man to afford, or Steve Jobs, who envisioned “insanely great” products and then pushed his people and suppliers to extraordinary lengths to bring his ideas to life.

Like mind mapping, this goal-setting technique is non-linear. It forces your brain to leap out of its well-worn, comfortable, incremental paths of thinking and take a creative leap into the future. It forces you to ask yourself, “What could I accomplish or bring about if there were no limitations?” Once you know what the end goal is, you can work on identifying any barriers or limitations and making plans to eliminate or sidestep them.

So what are you waiting for? Dream big for 2012!

This diagram was created using SmartDraw 2012. To download the .SDR file used to create it, please click here.

Providing your customers with an outstanding experience includes every touch point you have with them before, during and after the sale. Increasingly, it means giving them compelling stories they can tell in their social channels and elsewhere.

Here are five excellent techniques you can use to beat your competition, in part by envisioning a better customer experience. Naturally, I recommend capturing the ideas you generate from these exercises in mind maps. They will help you to stay organized, and may also reveal additional patterns and opportunities that you weren’t previously aware of.

If you’re a member of the Mind Mapping Insiders membership group, you can download map templates for each exercise, in MindManager, MindGenius, NovaMind, iMindMap and XMind files formats. If you’re not a member, these links won’t be visible to you – perhaps now is the time to join!

1. Do a SWOT analysis for your company and each of your competitors

SWOT maps help you to visualize your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once you’ve identified these strong and weak areas, your goal is to brainstorm ways to to maximize and leverage your strengths, while at the same time minimizing your weaknessess. In addition to creating one for your organization, I recommend you also create them for each of your major competitors. Look for weak spots or under-served areas of opportunity where you can leverage an advantage.

2. Do a product and service analysis

Map out your products and all of the services you provide to your customers. Spend some time brainstorming about other products or services you could sell to them – either those that you produce or that you could gain access to via joint ventures. The goal is to provide a more complete solution to your customers’ needs. At the same time, use this opportunity to identify any products or services that aren’t providing enough customer value. Either strengthen them or eliminate them. You don’t need them being a drain on your resources.

3. Brainstorm around customer needs

Spend time brainstorming what you think your customers’ biggest needs are. Record them in a mind map. Then talk to several key customers and ask them these key questions. Record their answers in your map. Make them a different color than your own perceptions of their needs. That will help you to see just how close to or off the mark you were. Finally, create a new map to capture ideas for new or improved products or services to meet the key needs you have identified.

4. Who else has solved this customer problem?

Do some research on how other industries have solved the challenges your customers face. Capture any that are even remotely relevant or interesting in a mind map. Then think about ways in which you could adapt their approaches to solve your customers’ problems in an elegant way or otherwise prove greater value to them.

5. What’s your unique selling proposition?

Brainstorm your unique selling proposition, or USP – that singular combination of capabilities and strengths that makes your organization better than anyone else at meeting your customers’ needs. How can you do more, serve better and provide a better outcome for your customers? What makes you a better investment than any other potential supplier? Build your vision for your USP in a mind map.

Conclusion

Remember, beating your conpetitors is all about meeting the needs of your key customers better than anyone else – both those they have articulated as well as any unspoken ones that you can infer from what they have told you.

Run your own game – don’t imitate, because commoditization tends to lead to razor-thin or non-existent profit margins. Instead, innovate – not just in terms of products, but also services, business models, distribution, marketing and your supply chain. Good luck!