Business planning using Mind Maps |
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As we saw in the last video, there are a lot of areas of strategic planning where Mind Mapping gives you a strong strategic advantage, both in the planning process and also in explaining what the business is all about to investors, staff, and customers. When you get to the level of business planning, some of the same theories and techniques apply, and certainly the use of things like the SWOT analysis Mind Map is very valuable as you put together the shorter term business plans, but there are a lot of other things you can use Mind Maps for at the business planning level. There are several Mind Maps referred to in this video, which you can find at these locations: Business planning; annual review; business plan outline Running meetings using Mind Maps; Mind Mapped agenda One of the significant issues with more traditional business plans is that they tend to end up as long boring documents that few people read and even fewer understand, and therefore they are ignored by precisely the people who could benefit most by following them. By contrast, using Mind Maps for business plans allows you to create engaging, unique, memorable business plans. The color, shapes, images, and summarized nature of the Mind Maps makes them memorable and useful. When creating a business plan, we once again brainstorm the particular areas we are interested in at the time, but this time, everything is cross-checked with the company strategic plan to ensure consistency, and to make sure that the business plan is advancing the company in the direction of the long term goals. Just like the strategic plan in the previous video, you can create individual Mind Maps for each of the key areas of your business, and then produce a summary Mind Map which highlights the key points for use with clients and general staff, and you have the more detailed Mind Maps available to use with the staff who are employed in that particular area of the business. When using Mind Maps for planning, it is important to use the general planning principles, as shown on this Mind Map. The first step is brainstorming, where you start at the center of the Mind Map with the subject, then add branches for each main idea or objective, and then generate the ideas for the sub-branches as quickly as you can, without worrying about organizing them at this stage. The second stage is one of organization, culling and scoping, so that you have the main objectives at the first level, and then the supporting goals and objectives, and eventually down to whatever level of detail you need in the Mind Map. At this stage, you are comparing the things that you are putting on the Mind Map with the strategic plan, to make sure you are going in the right direction, and also looking at the feasibility and desirability of the ideas. Some ideas are not appropriate for the particular business plan being created, but may be worth keeping for later, and these ideas can be put into another Mind Map for later implementation. From the resulting Mind Map, you refine it until you get to an action plan for each area of the business, by confirming the objectives and making sure the tasks have been identified properly, and then prioritize and schedule them. The last, and most important part of the process is to make sure you have appropriate measures in place for tracking and feedback into future plans. These mechanisms can be built into the Mind Maps, so you record the feedback in the appropriate places on the Mind Map as the plan is put into action. Let’s look at one area of your business planning to give you some ideas of how it could be helped by the use of Mind Maps – let’s pick marketing plans. So you would start at the high level and perhaps draw in a Mind Map from your strategic plan and update it to match the needs of your current business plan, so we look at various aspects of the current market position, an overview of the market, do a SWOT analysis of the market, set your objectives, and then work out what strategies you are going to apply. From there, you might create a plan for use in your detailed planning, where you address specific issues. The example Mind Map gives pretty typical issues and structures, so you might like to download the Mind Map from NovaMind Connect and customize it for your needs, but of course at the same time, it is just an example which shows you the concept which you can apply across all areas of your business plan. So those things all relate to your business plan itself, but there are so many other areas of businesses where Mind Mapping can be used, that I thought I would mention some of them just to give you some ideas that you can work with and further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your work. Here are some ideas around using Mind Maps for meeting planning. Before the meeting, you can put together a Mind Map for the agenda and distribute it to the attendees. This is a good way of limiting the scope of the meeting and also showing on the Mind Map the objectives just the same way as you would for a project plan. Then during the meeting, when you have the Mind Map in front of you, it will help maintain focus and also pace the discussion because everyone can see how many topics still need to be covered. You can record the meeting minutes directly on the agenda Mind Map, recording the main points and action items as sub-branches below the items being discussed. Then at the end of the meeting, your Mind Map can be distributed as is for instant meeting minutes. There are example Mind Maps on NovaMind Connect which give some specific tips to get the most out of using Mind Maps for your Meetings. Another place where the clarity of Mind Maps can be very useful is for staff reviews. Goals can be identified, the meetings that were held during the period, the issues that were encountered, and how they were dealt with, what the employee learned, the expenses, and finally the major wins, so you can end on a positive note. Now if you go into a review period with the knowledge that this is the way you will be assessed, you can make sure that all areas are covered well when you are going about your daily business, and get a fantastic review. Hopefully this will have left you with lots of ideas and starting points for using Mind Maps in business planning and also general day to day running of businesses and doing your job better an more efficiently. Tags: Business Planning, Mind Maps, mindmapping, NovaMind Leave a Reply |
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