South Wales gets lesson in mind maps

The first in a series of South Wales events to be held jointly with the Institute of Quality Assurance was a great success. Chris Lewis of Illumine Training presented a seminar that attracted

His "fast-paced, highly interactive and at times humorous session" focused on mind mapping and the benefits to be gained from applying this technique to a whole range of key business disciplines.

Lewis's first challenge to the audience was to come up with as many uses for the paper clip in 6o seconds as they could. Despite one or two encouraging attempts, nearly everyone present failed to muster more than five.

Lewis demonstrated that the reason for this failure to innovate was simple: the audience was concentrating their thoughts in the logical and analytical centres of the brain, and ignoring the well of creativity that exists in their minds.

Another quick exercise demonstrated that our most effective memories are held in picture form, rather than in long lists of sentences that have been assimilated.

"How can we be effective in business when we concentrate on producing reports, project plans, minutes and so on that are, in effect, long lists of sentences?" he asked.

By definition, key ideas, thoughts and prospective actions can be quickly lost to the memory, he said.

Lewis told the audience that the answer to this is to produce a combination of pictures and key words, which is the technique of "mind mapping".

The audience quickly picked up the technique through a number of exercises and Lewis concluded with a quick test to compare memory recall from a mind map to that of a list of bullet points. The result was conclusive: the mind map scored a comprehensive victory.

The event clearly demonstrated flaws in conventional business techniques that focus on the logical and analytical. Paul Griffiths, the branch's press relations officer, noted that "while conventional methods of project planning, risk assessment and reporting will always be with us, if mind mapping were used in combination with these techniques, it would provide a very powerful tool.

"In addition, it would enable the project team to maintain their focus on the key objectives, without becoming sidetracked by other minor issues."