In this latest Mind Mapping Insider special report, I explain the benefits of using mind mapping software to help you envision future scenarios. I also explain, step by step, how to create one, and how to customize it to meet your needs. Finally, I provide links to the scenario map I created for this report, in 4 map formats – MindManager, NovaMind, MindGenius and XMind.

Business is more uncertain than ever. “Business as usual” planning isn’t enough any more. To help you keep up with today’s challenges and to anticipate tomorrow’s opportunities, I urge you to become a member of the Mind Mapping Insider membership group. You’ll get access to one new report or resource each week, plus you’ll get access to an extensive archive of past reports, analyses, interviews and tools to help you become a master mind mapper.

There’s no obligation – why not try it out today?

Earlier this week, I watched an excerpt of a conference in which a number of well-known speakers were talking about the accelerating rate of change today, fueled by compounding developments in technology and science. At one point, the keynote speaker talked metaphorically about a fork in the road between “What If?” and “If Only” – the difference between embracing change and our opportunity to develop big ideas, versus putting our heads in the sand like ostriches, and then regretting we didn’t jump at these opportunities when they were first emerging. This really stuck with me, and I quickly mapped it on a Post-it note as a simple, right-facing visual map, with the two paths converging.

As I thought about these two paths over the next several days, it occurred to me that “What If?” is the path of bold exploration, of considering a wealth of futures and possibilities. It is the path of creativity, of dreaming up the Big Ideas that will help bring about a better future for ourselves and others.

The other path, “If Only,” is one of regrets, of possibilities never explored out of fear or simple inertia. It’s the path of opportunities overlooked and chances not taken. It is the way of the risk averse, of the person who has tremendous gifts and ideas, but habitually fails to utilize them – or lacks the drive and discipline needed to bring them to fruition.

Finally, I got to thinking this morning about the role of mind mapping software in this process. Among other things, it is a powerful tool for thinking about the future – for exploring what ifs and possibilities. You can use it to lay out potential future scenarios and map out their likely implications, such as:

• What if we had access to 100 times as much information as we do today?
• What if energy was so abundant, it was essentially free? What would that mean to our business?
• What if our supply chain could instantly react to changes in component availability, shipping delays and other factors beyond our control?

What is YOUR tool for thinking about the future of your career and your organization? Do you have one? I know what mine is!

Many business people use mind maps on the “back end” of their business – supporting internal operations and processes, such as project management, strategic planning and market research. But very few people are using these powerful tools on the “front end” of their business – with prospects, customers and clients.

Here are 8 ways you can use mind maps with these important external audiences:

1. Conduct a brainstorming session with them
2. Use it to present your research and recommendations to them
3. Use it to perform a situation or needs analysis with your client
4. Use it with them to conduct problem identification or root cause analysis
5. Use it for scenario planning, to help your client chart a profitable future course.
6. Use it to show the stages, activities, milestones and deliverables of a project management plan.
7. Use it to clarify the intangible aspects of a complex process, system or situation
8. Use it to surface and deal with any objections or negative perceptions of why something won’t work.

I hope this inspires you to use mind mapping with your customers or clients! Thanks to two consultant friends of mine, Gary Klaben and Paul Williams, for contributing to this list.

If you are utilizing it in a customer-facing role that hasn’t been listed here, please add your thoughts and experiences in the comments section of this post. I look forward to your insights!

Scenario planning is an excellent application of mind mapping, according to Tony Buzan and Chris Griffiths, co-authors of the new book, Mind Maps for Business: Revolutionise Your Business Thinking and Practice, because it gives you a rich, visual medium upon which you can map out future scenarios, identify potential risks and opportunities, and generate ideas to prepare for them.

To create a future scenario mind map, start with a central topic related to your area of strategic focus, and then add first-level branches entitled external forces, scenarios, patterns, strategies and signals. Next, let’s  take a closer look at each of these factors as we add details about them to our mind map:

External forces: What external forces may affect your business in the near future (e.g., changes in technology, regulations and the demographics of your customers)? Add them as sub-topics to the main topic, external forces. Next, add any relevant details about these changes to your map. Finally, prioritize them with icons or symbols, based upon which ones are most relevant to your organization.

Scenarios: For each of the major changes you predicted in external forces, explore 3 different future impact scenarios on your organization if they were to come to pass: best case, worst case and status quo. Highlight the scenarios that are most likely to affect your organization.

Patterns: Based upon the external forces and scenarios that you have mapped out, it should now be easier to see patterns emerging – common considerations that you ought to be aware of and prepare for, regardless of which future scenario actually occurs. Make a special note of these patterns on this map branch, to call attention to them.

Strategies: Use this branch to explore potential future strategies that your company may pursue, based upon the scenarios and patterns you have explored. This is one of the strengths of mind mapping, of course: Enabling you to compare and contrast different elements within your visual map, and identifying related pieces of information. This non-linear planning format also makes it easier to see “white space” opportunities – ideas that may exist in areas between or outside of your company’s current markets and industry segments. Highlight the most reasonable strategies you can follow for each scenario.

Signals: Identify the early warning signals – the things, if they should occur, that may give you an early indication that one of the scenarios you have explored is starting to unfold.

The future is unpredictable and frustratingly non-linear, of course. But working through some likely future scenarios in a visual mapping format can help you to think ahead and better prepare your organization for the future, no matter what form it takes.

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.

Last week, I asked you how you are utilizing mind mapping software to innovate. Here is a summary of what you had to say:

• Run brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas for products, services and business models
• Capture information about ideas, competitors, products, features and other data that can help you to asses the feasibility of each idea, as well as plan out the work in each project.
• Use mind maps to manage technology scouting projects and open innovation (collaborating with others outside your organization to drive innovative new products and services). They are ideal for capturing and managing a range of possible solutions and how they relate to the core problem you’re trying to solve.
• Map out customer expectations, which are a powerful way to come up with new ideas that will delight them.
• Use a set of thought-provoking, words, questions or other stimuli – such as BVITS or SCAMPER – as a catalyst for new ideas.
• Map out storyboards for your innovation initiatives.
• Add blank topics to your map, to spur your powerful subconscious mind into action.
• Use mind maps to do “what if” analysis on potential workflows, tactics, strategic scenarios and competitive positioning

No doubt about it – this is powerful stuff!