Many managers, like it or not, have been interchangeable in the industrial era. Companies liked it that way. It’s what enabled them to scale. When they needed to move someone to run a department or business unit, all they needed was a “meat puppet,” a warm body trained up in “the way things work around here” who could be counted upon to follow orders and do a good job. Oh, and not to make trouble.

There’s only one problem: Those aren’t the skills that are in demand today’s rapidly moving knowledge age. Companies need independent thinkers, creative problem solvers, visionaries who will help them navigate through a decade of continuing uncertainty – rough sailing that doesn’t look like it’s going to ease up any time soon. People like this are in short supply – which means a big potential opportunity for you.

In other words, it’s an unparalleled time to differentiate yourself from your peers. You can do so, in part, by become an “information ninja,” who can quickly and gracefully “cut” through the morass of information headed toward you. With your ninja sword – mind mapping software – you can:

• Quickly organize your thinking and reach clarity quickly,
• Get to the root causes of problems and develop creative solutions
• Manage projects more efficiently than ever before
• Identify new opportunities that weren’t visible before
• Use it with your team reach consensus faster on key decisions.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to kick some butt!

In this new Mind Mapping Insider special report, I take a look at the special needs of managers and leaders, and how they can benefit from mind mapping software. This report covers 9 types of business mind maps and how managers can utilize them to be more organized, productive and effective, including:

• Business plan
• Strategic plan
• New business development
• Pitching ideas to others
• Marketing plan
• Sales plan
• Contract management
• Meeting planning
• Management dashboards

This report is only accessible to Mind Mapping Insider members. Why not make a resolution for the new year to become a more effective mind mapper – which will enable you to become a better planner, problem solver and manager?

Sign up today to join the growing group of MMI members who have made the decision to be more influential and creative in their jobs.

No kidding – this is the most concise, compelling overview of the challenges of doing business in these uncertain times that I have read  to date.

Here are some of the key thoughts from the article, along with my observations:

“Leaders of many of today’s more mature organizations don’t have the right mindset or practices to help their organizations survive. They grew up with management practices suited to a different age—one with higher barriers to entry, greater transaction costs, fewer capable competitors, growing and increasingly affluent markets and far less information. The environments they are facing now, however, are less predictable, more complicated and more volatile.”

The high degree of complexity and uncertainty that managers and leaders must deal with today requires better planning tools – tools that can help them to visualize complex sets of information, organize it quickly and effectively, extract important insights and ideas from it and utilize it to make better decisions. Mind mapping software is perfectly suited to these needs, which is why it enjoys increasing popularity in business today. I like to call it” the savvy executive’s secret weapon.”

“As uncertainty increases, companies are finding themselves facing what we call a high ratio of ‘uncertainty to knowledge.’ This is a problem because making decisions based on old assumptions often leads to unfortunate outcomes.”

I love this idea of the uncertainty/knowledge ratio, because it accurately describes a problem that most strategic level executives face today: There isn’t enough information to make accurate, informed decisions – or at least it isn’t easy to gather and analyze it. Mind mapping software can help executives to manage uncertainty by enabling them to visually map out the current challenge, identify missing information and help you to manage your “discovery” process, brainstorm and organize potential solutions, evaluate alternatives based on various criteria, select the best ones for implementation, and develop visually-oriented project plans for each of them. In short, mind mapping software helps to lower the uncertainty/knowledge ratio.

“Human beings have a tendency to embrace information reinforcing their pre-existing beliefs, while challenging or rejecting information that calls these beliefs into question.”

By enabling you to capture, organize and analyze information and knowledge, mind mapping software can help you to challenge your existing assumptions, determine the new realities of the current situation and make better decisions, based on a rigorous analysis of a more complete, balanced body of information and knowledge.

“We favor a “discovery-driven” approach that emphasizes searching for the right answers and reducing the assumption-to-knowledge ratio.”

As I’ve already explained, mind mapping software is invaluable for bringing order and efficiency to the discovery and analysis processes.

“Launching reinvention requires candid assessment of the core’s prospects and goals to orient the organization toward a compelling future.”

How do you envision future scenarios? They are mental “pictures” that envision your organization’s potential future states. As such, they are sometimes difficult to put into words in a meaningful and compelling way. Mind mapping can help, by enabling you to lay out a set of scenarios side by side and compare them.

“Once management acknowledges that the core business is in trouble, the next challenge is to determine which projects, initiatives and other activities can drive the company’s growth ambitions. This often leads to decisions to invest less in enhancing the core business and more in new, rapid-growth segments. The more specific a company can be about which kinds of initiatives will support its future strategy, the more momentum it can create.”

Mind mapping software enables you to visualize trade-offs between a number of growth opportunities, identifying and codifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you to craft a more accurate future vision for the organization’s long-term sustainability.

“Document and test your fundamental assumptions. As the overall business environment changes and the stability of core businesses becomes less certain, managers need to be willing to take a few steps back and reassess. It could be that things they thought they ‘knew’ about their business are actually assumptions that may or may not still correspond with reality. “

Documenting assumptions can be done easily with mind mapping software. In fact, some strategists believe it’s an ideal tool to bring unseen assumptions to light, so they can be accurately assessed.

Michael Deutsch of Mindjet loved reading your responses, too, but he pointed out to me that most of your answers were focused on individual uses of mind mapping software. He would like to know:

• What the essential value of mind mapping software – in a team setting?
• How does the ability to collaborate with mind mapping software add value to your business?

Please share your thoughts in the comments area below. I look forward once again to your insightful commentary!

Comprehensive idea management: Mind mapping software enables you to not only generate and organize ideas, thoughts and actions, but also implement them. Many tools excel at one part of a business process, but few have excellent utility from the birth to the of a project like mind mapping software does.

Managing information and knowledge from multiple sources: Several of you talked about how your job requires you to capture, process and track requests and activities from multiple sources, making decisions on what bits of information are important and which ones are not. Mind mapping software excels at this!

Clarity out of confusion: When you’re dealing with a complex challenge, mind mapping software can help you to see connections between bits and pieces of it, and ultimately help you to simplify your understanding of it. In this day and age, that’s powerful!

Distribution of information: Mind mapping software not only allows you to collect, distill and make decisions on information for a wide variety of sources, it also helps you to redistribute tasks and other information to your team members and promote a shared understanding of the overall project as well as the details for which they are responsible.

More effective problem solving: Mind mapping software, because of its visual nature, enables you to build a more accurate of the underlying structure of a complex problem. This, in turn, enables you to respond to the actual problem, not just the symptoms. As the old saying goes, “a problem well-defined is half solved.”

An iterative approach: One reader talked about how mind mapping software allows him to develop an accurate “picture” of a complex situation or problem in an iterative process. That is, rather than build an entire map in one sitting, you can partially complete it one day, then return to it the following day with additional information and insights. At this point, you may be able to see gaps in your information, which you must request from others. That information, in turn, can be added to the map in successive days. Thus, a complex problem or challenge can be broken down, analyzed and understood over a period of time.

The forest and the trees: Several people commented on how mind mapping software enables them to get a high-level overview of all of their projects and tasks, yet in a few mouse clicks they can dive down into very specific detail. That’s hard to do with most other types of business tools!

Thanks to everyone who contributed. Even though I have immersed myself in the tools and best practices of visual mapping, your comments illuminated several areas that I haven’t really given much thought to lately – but will definitely do so in the days and weeks ahead!

I have selected 6 people to receive licensed copies of MindManager 8, as part of the contest I was running. They are: Rafael Varon, Eric Benson, Christene Martell, Hanna Phan, Mark Allen and Mark Halbe. I will be contacting each of you via e-mail with your license key and download instructions. Congratulations!

Here is a summary of the major themes:

Survivors are handling a bigger workload: As firms around the world hunker down to survive the global recession, many are reducing head count – which means the survivors are often doing the work of 2 to 3 people. Several of you mentioned how it would be impossible to manage the flow of information and projects without mind mapping – as well as to capture the knowledge of your departing colleagues.

“Prior to people leaving, I used mind maps to efficiently and effectively capture their knowledge and also plan my schedule for acquiring the knowledge and skills from my co-workers. Since they have left, I have used a single mind map in MindManager to stay on top of my increased workload, through prioritizing, linking to email messages, adding key information in notes. Perhaps most importantly, the colors, styles and images available have enabled me to raise my mood,” explains Ian Bolton.

Glen Dolan shares how he is using mind mapping to maximize the efficiency and flexibility of his company’s workers:

“I have been using mind mapping to figure out ways of cross training people and making them more versatile. Using mind maps as a primary teaching aid has helped employees’ comprehension and retention. I have also been using mind mapping to prepare tests for people to take after cross training is complete.”

Inevitably, as people get laid off, some of the remaining employees need some retraining in order to take on the responsibilities of those who have departed. Also, as companies become more lean, they must be able to cover for one another (through cross-training) if someone gets sick or if other special needs arise.

Another trend that has been developing for some time, but which has become accelerated by the recession, is the demise of the administrative assistant. As a result, mid- to high-level executives are experiencing information overload and over-work like never before, as Mark H. so eloquently explains:

“I’m a baby boomer that actually depends on his computers to accomplish the overwhelming flood of new responsibilities being forced on productive people. I’ve watch executives the same age as myself avoid the change and push away technology. I’m the old guy in the office that really uses his computer. My associates just complain. Ten years ago, I had a secretary and an assistant. Now I have a laptop and a Blackberry. If you’re like me this transition slowly took all my spare time and eliminated the people we were training to assume our responsibilities as we move up the ladder. There are two kinds of people in the work place now. Those like me who grasp new technologies and those who refuse to do so. I see mind mapping as the next logical step for me.”

In other words, we all had more support staff in the past to help us with gathering, distilling and distributing information and knowledge. Not any more. It’s a new world at work, and we need better tools (i.e., mind mapping software) that can help us to keep up!

Anticipating change, and preparing for the future: Bert Olbrich wisely points out that during a recession, change tends to happen in fits and starts, as companies thrash about, trying to develop new business models and ways to survive the new realities of their markets.

“The pace of change has accelerated. Assessments and planning needs to be updated in shorter intervals to anticipate the future and adjust present decisions. The final outcome of the recession journey is not clear yet. Important skills are fast-forward thinking, anticipation and innovation, and Mindmapping is the method of the hour,” he advises.

Pierre Rheaume views change as an inherently visual challenge:

“Very soon in my career, I realized that words and text weren’t the best tools to design, share and manage a vision of change. I began to map a project of transformation on one page using images, colors, structures and very significant words… I’ve developed what I call an “image-concept” to communicate and explain management concepts like quality management, innovation management, strategic communication, risk management, team work, technology developments and so on.,” he said.

Innovating is easy when you have a lot of resources. But when resources are pared to the bone, what can you do? Eric Benson was faced with the need to complete current projects and revamp his firm’s core service – with no additional resources. Mind mapping proved to be a powerful ally:

“Out came the markers, the graph/butcher paper and the voice recorder to map relationships between projects, schedule changes so they wouldn’t clobber one another, and make sure I didn’t overlook areas I could improve or remove. Then, as I finish out areas, I transfer online and poll our team for feedback. It’s a lifesaver,” he explains.

Creativity is key, and mind mapping helps you to see opportunities: Numerous respondents said they were using mind mapping software to handle the micro-level tasks as well as macro-level planning, minimizing wasted time and maximizing efficiency. Several people also said their mind maps are helping them to see new opportunities and generate profitable new ideas:

“In these ugly economic times, the more creative you get, the more likely you are to satisfy your customer and still turn a profit,” says Duane Dalian.

Leila Oliva shared how she is using the “SCAMPER” creativity method and metaphors in her mind maps to generate and capture ideas. And Christene Martell tells us how she is using mind mapping to reinvent her business:

“I’m having to reinvent my business, (and) any sloppiness in (my business) model can no longer be absorbed as the market tightens. The shifting is taking a lot of deep self reflection, with ideas and insights emerging in fits and spurts. I was drowning in post-it notes, yellow pads and assorted slips of paper. Mind mapping gives me a way to see the organic growth of concepts and understand the larger patterns that are emerging.”

Seeing patterns and deeply exploring concepts are two keys to developing breakthrough ideas.

Mind mapping is a flexible research tool: Howard Veit uses his mind mapping software in a unique way: As part of the research he does, he conducts numerous interviews. He uses a mind map to develop a wide range of interview questions, which he prints out and displays on a single page in front of himself during the interview.

“That allows me to jump around the questions depending upon the course that the interview takes,” he reveals. That’s a great idea!

Conclusion

The full set of comments contains much more great tips and insights. I strongly encourage you to read them.