NovaMind News

NovaMind will have a stand at the BETT show in London. Amongst the team manning the stand will be both NovaMind’s founder Gideon King and Cathy Schneider, NovaMind Marketing Manager for Europe, and we’d love the opportunity to talk with you, so if you are in the area of the Olympia stadium between the 13th and 16th of January, please do pop in and say hello.

We will be demonstrating NovaMind 5 technical preview for both Windows and Mac at the show, and we would be happy to be able to show you what’s coming. You can visit us at stand SW107.

Learn more about the BETT Show and register online for FREE

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Bonjour, je suis Cathy Schneider, Marketing Manager Europe chez NovaMind. Aujourd’hui, je souhaiterais vous présenter quelques nouvelles fonctionnalités de mise en page que vous pourrez retrouver très prochainement dans NovaMind 5

Un des problèmes majeurs avec les cartes heuristiques, ou autrement appelés Mind Maps, est quelles deviennent immenses très rapidement, et tous les logiciels existants ne règlent en rien ce problème.

Nous avons testé l’ensemble des logiciels de Mind Mapping présents sur le marché et vérifié si l’un d’eux offrait une bonne mise en page et évitait ce problème de perte de place. Devinez ce que nous avons découvert ? Oui, c’est exact, AUCUN d’entre-eux n’offrent une mise en page digne de ce nom. Je suis persuadée que si vous utilisez déjà un des ces logiciels vous êtes pénalisés par ce problème.

Alors qu’il devrait en fait s’agir d’un élément fondamental d’une application de Mind Mapping, n’est ce pas ?

Voici à quoi cela ressemble avec les autres logiciel de Mind Mapping (ici, il s’agit d’un produit concurrent, et si vous l’avez déjà utilisé, ou bien même un autre, vous avez expérimenté ce problème) – vous ajoutez des sujets, des sous-sujets et cela déplace considérablement les autres sujets, laissant de large espace inutilisé, comme ici…

Et cela s’accentue dès lors que vous avez plusieurs sujets et sous sujets qui se développent sur plusieurs niveaux, cela pousse l’ensemble et ressemble à ca.

Vous ajoutez un nouveau sujet, qui ne pourra en aucun être positionné prés d’un autre avec tout un ensemble de sous sujet qui ne pourront de toute façon pas s’entre mêler mais qui vous font gaspiller un espace considérable sur votre Mind Map

Chez NovaMind, nous nous sommes dit que nous ne pouvions laisser cette imperfection et nous avons décidé de vous proposer quelque chose de bien mieux que ca

Voici quelques unes des nouvelles fonctions de mise en page disponibles dans NovaMind 5

Cette vidéo est réalisé en utilisant une version Alpha de NovaMind 5, il se peut donc que ce vous voyez aujourd’hui diffère quelque peut avec la version qui sera commercialisée. Mais en regardant cette vidéo aujourd’hui, découvrez l’innovation et prenez connaissance des avantages de la toute nouvelle mise en page de NovaMind 5.

Il y a 4 types principaux d’objets dans vos Mind Maps :

• les sujets
• les bulles d’annotations
• les sujets flottants
• et les formes

Aujourd’hui, nous allons nous intéresser uniquement aux sujets. Pour NovaMind 5, nous avons travaillé sur l’un des principes majeurs, à savoir, garder l’ensemble de vos mind maps le plus compact possible et éviter une perte d’espace totalement inutilisable.

Vous pouvez noter, qu’avec NovaMind 5 si vous ajoutez des sous-sujets ici, les sujets eux-mêmes se positionnent de façon à ce que les lignes de connections s’effleurent sans jamais se toucher, seul l’espace nécessaire à séparer visuellement les sujets entre eux est utiliser.

Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque l’on écrit dans le sujet du dessous ?

Comme vous pouvez le voir, lorsque l’on modifie le sujet, l’écart se referme et lorsque l’on écrit, le sujet est déplacé de façon à utiliser le minimum d’espace nécessaire.

Cela est encore plus évident lorsque vous utilisez un sujet de forme ovale.

Si vous réduisez le sujet, les autres s’adaptent ensemble de façon à rester les plus compacts possibles.

Maintenant, si vous redimensionnez votre sujet, l’ensemble s’écarte automatiquement. Les autres logiciels de Mind Mapping ne vous permettent même pas de redimensionner vos sujets comme vous le souhaitez. NovaMind 5 le peut et vous donne la possibilité de les redimensionner élégamment.

Désormais, vos Mind Maps gardent automatiquement la dimension minimum et la plus compact possible sans que vous n’ayez à vous en préoccuper.

Maintenant, intéressons nous à un autre de vos besoins précédemment plébiscité ; avoir la possibilité de disposer vos sujets de haut en bas dans une arborescence. Voici comment nous y avons répondu…

Avant cela, je me permets de vous rappeler que nous utilisons une version Alpha pour cette vidéo et que l’aspect actuel sera certainement modifié avant la commercialisation, mais cela vous permet d’avoir un 1er aperçu sur cette fonctionnalité.

Vous pouvez désormais aller de la droite vers la gauche comme ceci…

Vers le haut…

Mais nous voulions faire plus que cela et vous donner encore plus de flexibilité dans la mise en page, nous avons donc ajouté la possibilité de choisir également l’angle d’inclinaison que vous souhaitez. Regardons cela dans une autre Mind Map…

Bien sur, cela rend la mise en page de NovaMind 5 bien supérieur à n’importe quel autre logiciel de mind mapping actuellement disponible.

Nous avons souhaité allez encore plus loin, et ne pas avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page disponible uniquement depuis le sujet central de la Mind Map, mais également possible à partir de chacun des sujets, vous pouvez désormais faire ceci…

Dorénavant, vous avez une flexibilité encore inégalée par aucun autre programme de mind mapping, cela vous permet toutes les mises en page de mind maps, exactement comme vous les souhaitez.

Pour les deux mises en page les plus traditionnelles, à savoir horizontales et verticales, NovaMind 5 vous offre la mise en page la plus compact du marché. Nous vous offrons également la flexibilité de modifier vos sujets et sous sujets automatiquement sous l’angle voulu et de garder ainsi vos mind maps les plus compactes possible même inclinées.

…mais nous ne nous arrêtons pas la.

Nous vous proposons la fonction ultime. Il est absolument remarquable d’avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page, mais nous souhaitons souvent déplacer un sujet et le positionner a un endroit bien précis. Et que se passe-t-il ? Les différents sujets se chevauchent, et nous devons déplacer tous les autres sujets un a un.

Maintenant, vous pouvez positionner vos sujets ou bon vous semble, le logiciel garde le contrôle et adieu les chevauchements intempestifs.

Si maintenant je bouge mon sujet ici, les autres sujets quant à eux restent ou nous le souhaitions.

Si vous mettez un sujet au dessus d’un autre, il sera automatique déplacé.

Si vous ajoutez un sujet qui en pousse d’autres, ils seront automatiquement déplacés mais garderons leur liens avec les sujets-parents. Vous n’avez plus à vous soucier des chevauchements inopportuns.

Voici une des raisons pour laquelle nous sommes vraiment impatients de vous proposer NovaMind 5!

 

 NovaMind 5 topic layout (French): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It was recently announced that there would be integration between NovaMind and iThoughts, giving you the capability to exchange files between these two top of the range Mind Mapping applications.

This video shows you how easy it is to transfer MindMaps back and forth between NovaMind and iThoughts. The demonstration is done using NovaMind for Mac, but works equally well with NovaMind for Windows.

For further information about iThoughts, and to get your copy of NovaMind or iThoughs, please visit http://www.novamind.com/ithoughts

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Chuck Frey, author of the Mind Mapping Software Blog just posted his exclusive preview of NovaMind 5, entitled “Exclusive preview of NovaMind 5: New version offers a wealth of innovative new features”.

In his article, Chuck says that NovaMind “have always been innovators in this software genre, but they’ve outdone themselves this time, incorporating many new features and enhancements that are like nothing you’ve ever seen in mind mapping software before”.

When commenting about the new mind map layout engine in NovaMind 5, he said that it was efficient, maintaining a clean map layout while preventing topic overlaps and eliminating much wasted space. He also contrasted the freedom you have to place topics where you want them, with the rigidity of other Mind Mapping applications which have little or no control over topic placement.

He mentions some of the many new features in NovaMind 5 like multiple topic images on a single topic, and the more powerful shapes, which “enable you to add some unique visual enhancements to your maps”.

He talks about the new powerful plugin architecture of NovaMind 5, and the comments from developers working with the plugins, about how easy it is to interface with NovaMind.

To close the article, he comments “I appreciate the innovation and passion that Gideon and his team have poured into NovaMind during the last few years. The results are quite impressive, and continue to push the envelope as far as what’s possible with mind mapping software!”

To read the full article, please go to http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/exclusive-preview-of-novamind-5.

To find out more about the features of NovaMind 5, and watch videos about the new version, please visit http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php

NovaMind Software has just released a new video at http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php highlighting the problems with Mind Map layout present in all other Mind Mapping software currently available on the market, and the solution NovaMind has developed for the “space explosion” problem. One of the major problems with Mind Maps is that they get huge, pretty quickly. And all the software that’s out there at the moment makes it worse.

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind, says “I have tested just about every piece of Mind Mapping software out there to see if anyone had a good layout system to avoid the space explosion problem…NONE of them have a decent layout system. I’m sure that if you’ve used any of the Mind Mapping software currently out there, you have suffered from this [space explosion] problem.”

He goes on to suggest that the layout of the Mind Map should really be the fundamental building block of any Mind Mapping application.

In the video, he demonstrates the magnitude of the issues in other Mind Mapping applications, and then shows how NovaMind 5 has been designed to keep the Mind Maps compact at all times. This is true even when editing topics in such a way as they bump into other topics. The other topics are only moved by the minimum amount required to ensure that the topics don’t collide.

He then goes on to demonstrate several other features of NovaMind 5 that are not available in any other Mind Mapping application, like the ability to alter the angle at which the topics are stacked, both for the Mind Map title, and at any level of the Mind Map, and the ability to move topics to wherever the user desires. This is coupled with a system that honors the position that other topics are in, except where they overlap, and even then, only moves them by the minimum amount necessary to avoid collision, and honors as far as possible, the relative positions of the topics.

Mr King says “These layout capabilities are just one part of NovaMind 5, which is already generating a huge amount of interest in the market. The layout system is one of the core foundations of the product, and is clearly superior to anything else available. It lets you get on with your brainstorming and task management, secure in the knowledge that NovaMind is keeping your topics in the best possible position for your needs. It’s the perfect combination of power, flexibility, and ease of use.”

The video, and more information about NovaMind 5 is available at http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind is used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mind Maps are an excellent tool for helping sufferers of ADHD / ADD because they allow you to jump around to different topics quickly and easily, organize information, focus on what is important, and explain your ideas to other people in terms that they can understand. I have just posted a brief article and Mind Map about ADHD and Mind Mapping at http://www.squidoo.com/adhd-mind-maps

Enjoy!

Last week, Chuck Frey posted an article on the Mind Mapping Software blog, entitled 8 little-known things you can do with NovaMind, which I recommend you read…and I thought I would give you some bonus ideas here too.

These apply to NovaMind 4 only (NovaMind 5 has a significantly improved user interface).

Here are your 6 bonus NovaMind Mind Mapping tips:

1. Sidebar Customization in Windows: Show the sidebar with the image library, adornments, notes etc by clicking on the relevant icon at the bottom right of the window. Resize the width to your preference. Hide it away by clicking the X in the top right corner of the panel.
2. Palette Options on Mac: Drag the palettes to reorder them, minimize them using the “-” button, flip them using the arrow icon at the top right of the palette to see the advanced options. In the Pro and Platinum editions, drag them off to become floating windows, stack them to connect them as a single floating window, click the “x” button to close the floating palette and return it to the palette panel. Hide the palette panel completely by using the minimize triangle at the top of the palettes panel.
3. Mac Toolbar: Hide the toolbar by clicking the lozenge shaped button at the top right of the window. Click it again to show the toolbar.
4. Template Chooser: If you don’t want to see the template chooser when starting NovaMind, you can turn it off in the Preferences. You can still create a Mind Map from a template by using the “File / New From Template” option.
5. More Images: If you have not downloaded the image libraries, go to the supporting files page for Windows or Mac and download and install them. The image libraries will give you a huge selection of images (1,400 for Express and Pro, and 2,300 for Platinum) that you can just drag on to your Mind Map.
6. Create your own Templates: (Pro and Platinum) Save your Mind Maps as Templates so you can easily reuse them – they will then show up in the template chooser when you create a new Mind Map from a template.

I hope this helps you get more out of NovaMind. Happy Mind Mapping!

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“Power Brainstorming: Great Ideas at Lightning Speed” by brainstorming expert Hazel Wagner draws on her wide range of experience as a mathematician, business owner, public speaker and consultant to Fortune 100 companies, to produce a book that covers everything required to conduct individual and group brainstorming sessions.

The book is aimed at anyone who owns, runs, or works in any business. It provides practical tips and examples that can be applied in any business to cut costs and open up new business opportunities. Existing products and services can be improved, processes streamlined, and new product lines and services added as a result of the brainstorming processes taught in this book.

Processes are taught in the book to super-charge the innovation of the company and instill a culture of effective brainstorming throughout the company.

In the current business environment it is critical to differentiate a company to stay ahead of the competition. The techniques taught in this book are specifically designed to provide the tools necessary to achieve and maintain that differentiation.

Illustrations are provided throughout the book to show how to implement the concepts, including a number of NovaMind mind maps. There are two parallel tracks in the book: Track 1 is filled with instructions and methods to make brainstorming sessions productive and fun, and gives so many choices that your brainstorming efforts will never get boring. Track 2 tells the story of a group of employees that begin brainstorming with a young novice facilitator. This team’s efforts start to catch the attention of the firm’s executives who want to learn how and why the methods have been so effective.

This combination of presentations makes for a book that is both thorough in its coverage of the topic and easy to implement in a practical way in the workplace.

The book is available as an eBook from http://www.novamind.com/mind-mapping-books/power-brainstorming.php

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind said “I was privileged to be involved in the development of the book, and am impressed with the thoroughness of the book and the practical advice that is provided. This is the kind of book that could be picked up by anyone and used to learn all you need to know about brainstorming quickly and effectively. The NovaMind Mind Maps included in the book are a great example of the power of Mind Mapping when used in conjunction with brainstorming.”

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind is used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

By anybody’s definition, Dr Joanna Martin would have to be defined as amazing.

In her first year teaching and selling from the stage, she made $1.25 million, and became an internationally recognized speaker in UK, USA and Australia. In just under three years, she sold over $3.8 million worth of products, and consulted with businesses, making over $47 million in the process…all before her 30th birthday!

She has recently started using NovaMind, and now uses it every day for preparing her presentations. Here is what she has to say about it:

“Just wanted to let you know I bought your mindmap software the other day and am head over heels in love with it!

I am using it daily to plan content for teleseminars and trainings. And in the past where I wouldn’t even consider planning a workshop without postit notes, and a lot of wall space to stick them on (!), I can now happily plan with all my usual creativity, but on my baby laptop in the cafe, at 38,000ft, or in the office.

I love how it’s so easy to rearrange your thoughts once you’ve brain-dumped it all out!

Love it love it love it. I only wish I had got onto using NovaMind sooner. It’s awesome and I think every teacher, speaker and educator should use it.”

Dr Joanna Martin
Public speaking trainer
Director, Shift Enterprises
www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com

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Juan Gómez-Jurado uses NovaMind Mind Mapping software to write his books…and apparently it is working out rather well for him, seeing as he has sold over a million copies of his book “God’s Spy”, and has also received over half a million dollars for his last book.

He says that NovaMind is essential for his writing process, and is very much looking forward to NovaMind 5, which will be released in September/October. In his own words:

“For mind mapping my last novel, I used Novamind 4, and I want to thank you. Novamind 4 was amazing, esential throughout the whole process.

I’m starting to mindmap my next novel, and would love to do it on Novamind 5.

I’m gonna buy the update asap…Your software is so good that I received 500K$ for my last novel. That says it all!!

And I’m really eager of grabbing Novamind 5.”

Juan Gómez-Jurado
International best-selling author
(Including “God’s Spy”, which has sold over 1 million books)
www.juangomezjurado.com

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NovaMind 5 has been completely redesigned and rewritten using the latest and best technology on both Windows and Mac platforms.

NovaMind 5 makes use of advanced features such as hardware accelerated animations and multi-core processors to give you the most advanced mind mapping application available anywhere.

This video shows you some of the user interaction within NovaMind 5 for putting images on topics, and also gives you some information about the plugin system.

More information is available at the NovaMind 5 announcement page.

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 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After over 2 ½ years of research and development NovaMind are delighted to announce a revolutionary new Mind Mapping product: NovaMind 5, due to ship in September/October. Further information is available at http://clk.bz/p-novamind5

NovaMind founder, Gideon King said “We saw that none of the Mind Mapping products out there were addressing the fundamental needs of mind mappers, so starting in October 2006, we went right back to the basics. With the experience of having already had a successful Mind Mapping product in the market for over 5 years, and collecting feedback from users, and conducting surveys, we had all the information to be able to design something absolutely stunning – something that does what you expect and operates the way you want it to.”

Both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind 5 have been built from the ground up using the latest technologies to take advantage of hardware accelerated animations and graphics processing, multi-core processors and the latest user interface designs to give the best user experience possible.

Mr King says “Everything was up for intense scrutiny, from how the Mind Maps are formatted, and how they change when you edit the topics on your Mind Maps, right down to the structure of the individual topics and the user interaction with them on every level. We took nothing for granted. Our task was simply do whatever it took to create the best Mind Mapping software out there. Period.”

Included in NovaMind 5 is a wide range of new topic shapes, providing the opportunity to create more visually rich Mind Maps. The new design elements include things such as floating topics, attached shapes, callouts, and “FlexiLine” topics which can be shaped as desired, and have the text flowing smoothly along the line. This applies also for the link lines which are used to show secondary relationships between topics – these now have a choice of over 30 terminators for the start or end of the line to indicate the nature of the relationship, as well as the ability to scale the terminator to show the relative importance of the relationships. Text labels can flow along the lines or be attached to the line at any point along the line, and multiple labels can be used per line.

There is a wide range of new topic shapes available now, allowing you to create more visually rich Mind Maps.

One of the key differentiators of NovaMind 5 as compared with any other Mind Mapping application is the sophistication of the new layout engine which both arranges the elements of the Mind Map automatically, according to a range of layout styles, but at the same time allows user control of the positioning of the topics. This is completely unprecedented technology, and makes the whole process of working with Mind Maps a natural feel.

Another unique thing in NovaMind 5 is the theme and style system which make it easy to create fantastic looking Mind Maps using professionally designed themes, design your own themes, and reuse the styling of existing elemnents of a Mind Map.

Included are a number of new ways to automatically color topics on the Mind Map, starting from any topic, allowing the user to set the coloring up in one place and have all the descendant topics be automatically colored with the desired colors.

A plugin architecture is built in to both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind 5, allowing for the extension of the Mind Mapping experience by third parties.

Mr King says “this is just an overview of some of the new features of NovaMind 5. We’ll be releasing more detailed information closer to the release date. NovaMind 5 is clearly head and shoulders above any other Mind Mapping application currently available, and we’re very much looking foreward to releasing it.”

Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools says “In the 3+ years I have been reporting on the world of mind mapping tools and software, NovaMind have consistently been the innovators – the ones to watch who tend to come up with the cool yet practical capabilities that no one has thought of yet. NovaMind 5 promises to deliver yet another leap in what’s possible.”

For further information about NovaMind 5, see http://clk.bz/p-novamind5

About NovaMind

NovaMind is in use in over 90 countries and is available in 10 different languages. It is being used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

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Mind Maps are a great way of gathering and organizing material for books, articles, theses, and technical documentation – in fact, any sort of writing.

The example Mind Maps in this video are taken from the two books: Teacher’s Guide to Mind Mapping and Business Guide to Mind Mapping, and are therefore only available as downloads when you buy the books, but you will be able to understand the concepts from just viewing the video.

When I write books or articles, I start by creating a Mind Map of the outline for the book, with the concepts I want to cover as the top level branches, and then details as necessary so that I have enough information there so that I know what I want to cover. At this stage, it is more along the lines of a brainstorming session, as covered in the video about brainstorming. Sometimes, it also includes note taking and research, as covered in the video about note taking, where I will add branch notes with excerpts of the material, and hyperlinks to the source material on the branches.

I have heard from people who use NovaMind for writing novels and short stories they tell me that they create similar Mind Maps with the main points of the story lines, and sometimes create character profiles with the physical appearance, language patterns, character traits, and personal history and relationships all mind mapped out. There seems to be a lot of variation in the way novelists approach their writing, and seeing as I haven’t yet written any novels myself, all I can do is pass on these suggestions.

So at the end of this process, you have an outline of the story, book or article, but it’s not usually grouped and ordered in the way you want it for the finished work. So how I approach the organization process is that I graft the branches so that the main concepts and supporting concepts are arranged as branches and sub-branches.

This gives me an idea of the size of each area of information. At the same time, I’m thinking about the order of the information so it is presented in a logical progression and the information is being introduced in order, building on the previous information.

Now I group it into chapters, and for ease of understanding, I keep each chapter to about 7 main points, because people can on average hold 7 concepts in their short term memory at once, and that’s a comfortable number to work with. Sometimes I’ll go up to 9 main points where necessary, but try not to go beyond that because there is a high likelihood of inducing information overload in the reader.

This may sound like qute a few steps, but in fact this process is usually pretty quick, and you will have the outline and overall content organized in very short order.

The next step, if it’s a book rather than an article, is to use the New Map from Branch function to take each chapter and create a Mind Map for that chapter. If your overall Mind Map had detailed information on it, you would remove the detailed level information and just have the main points on that Mind Map so that you can use it as an overview of the book.

Now for each chapter, you have your approximately 7 main points, and you extend add as many child branches as you need to cover the main points, which will become your headings and subheadings in the text, and then add the body text to each branch.

Of course, being in Mind Map format, you are not constricted to write sequentially. You can add the body text in any order you like.

When you are ready, you can export the Mind Map document with all the chapter Mind Maps into Microsoft Word format, and all the branches and sub-branches will come out as outline levels within the document, and the branch notes will come out as body text, so you can easily apply MS Word styles to the document to format it nicely, and also you will be able to generate a table of contents from it directly.

But in doing this, you are losing the power of Mind Mapping for your readers, so what I do is spend a few minutes on the layout of the Mind Maps and then export them as PDF images and then embed them into the document, with the overall outline Mind Map at the start of the book as another form of table of contents, and then at the start of each chapter, I have the chapter Mind Map which shows people the main points that are covered in that chapter.

I try to make them visually interesting by having different background colors and different styles included in the Mind Maps, but at the same time, if there is something related across chapters, I’ll use the same image in both places so you have the visual connection. Our brains love color and flow, and having different shapes and colors makes them both visually appealing as well as memorable, while the structure makes the information content easily understood and remembered too.

If the book is the type where you want people to take notes, you can include a blank Mind Map at the end of each chapter with just the main branches there so people can make their own notes as they go.

Having the Mind Maps in the book means that when a reader returns to the book later, they will be able to just take a quick glance at the Mind Map and instantly recall the content.

So using Mind Maps can dramatically speed up the writing process and at the same time lead to a much higher quality of output, and completely avoid writers block, because you have the structure in place right from the start and can work on the content in any order, and if you get stuck at all, you can just use the techniques we covered in the brainstorming video for coming up with new ideas which get your thinking going again.

I just can’t imagine writing a book without using Mind Mapping now – it would just be so slow and tedious! So get stuck in to your next writing project using the power of Mind Mapping.

 

 Flash Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When I am talking to people about NovaMind, very often they ask what it is, and if I say that it’s Mind Mapping software, they say “ah, brainstorming!”, with a look of enlightenment on their faces. While brainstorming is not equal to Mind Mapping, brainstorming is a technique for generating ideas that dovetails in very nicely with Mind Mapping, so I usually agree with them…and then proceed to show them all the other things Mind Mapping is good for too.

So, enough of the background – all the Mind Maps shown in this video are available at:

http://www.novamind.com/connect/nm_documents/315

The video mentions the Suggesterator™, which is a free plugin for NovaMind which you can download for Windows from http://www.novamind.com/download/windows-support.php and for Mac from http://www.novamind.com/download/mac-support.php

The video also mentions iBlueSky Mind Mapping for iPhone and iPod touch – you can find out more information about this here: http://www.novamind.com/ibluesky/

And without further introduction, here is the video:

Brainstorming is a great way of solving problems and coming up with new ideas. It allows you to examine the problems from outside the boundaries of normal thinking, and understand the issues and root causes, and come up with alternative solutions. Brainstorming can also be used for impact analysis and decision making, as I have mentioned in other videos.

In the project management context, you can brainstorm from the objectives and goals down to the tasks to explore new ideas, possibilities and alternatives. It gives us a much more understandable and complete plan than what you would get if you just stuck to task level planning.

Brainstorming can be great for team building where you have shared discussions, and also for individual ideation, and has the benefits of improving initiative and innovation within an organization or individually, as well as improving quality and profitability, efficiency and morale.

The basic concept behind brainstorming is to capture ideas as quickly as possible so that you get past the judgment that you typically use to assess ideas before recording them, and instead we want to capture the ideas as they occur assuming no money, time, resource or any other constraint, and without judgment, building on ideas as you think of them as well as pushing yourself to think in new directions. The concept is that out of quantity comes quality – there will be great ideas in amongst the many ideas you throw out there.

As you think of the ideas, you record the keywords on branches – at the moment, you don’t care where you put the branches, because you can graft them elsewhere later, but if it isn’t slowing you down, you might like to do some high level grouping by putting some of the main branches in place and adding related ideas as sub-branches. In order to keep up with the recording of ideas, in NovaMind you have the BranchStorm™ system which you can turn on in the Windows version of NovaMind by right-clicking while you are editing text, and turning it on in the context menu, and if you are using the Mac version, you can show the tool palette from the Window menu and then click on the lightning bolt icon to turn on BranchStorm™. With BranchStorm™, you just press return after each idea, and the sub-branches are automatically created and you can keep typing.

Sometimes when you are brainstorming, you will get stuck and run out of ideas completely or you may just think that there should be more ideas related to an idea you have on the map already, but you can’t think of what it might be at the time, so let’s look at some ways of getting unstuck.

Firstly, if you think there should be more ideas related to an existing branch, or additional concepts to come from the title of the Mind Map, add blank branches to your Mind Map, because your subconscious mind hates to leave things unfinished, and will go looking for ideas to fill the empty branches. You can also take a break, and go away and either do something else or go for a walk. Doing something else lets your subconscious mind work on the problem and come up with answers when it is not under pressure. Repetitive activities like walking are particularly good for letting the thoughts surface. If you have iBlueSky on the iPhone or iPod Touch, take it with you and you can mind map your thoughts as you go. You might find that a change of scenery like going to the park or going down by the sea may lead to a different sort of inspiration where you come up with different ideas. Even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should make sure that you take something with you which will allow you to record ideas as you think of them rather than trying to remember them until you get back to the office.

Very often when we are thinking about a topic, we get stuck in a groove where there is a well worn track in our thinking and it is very hard to come up with new ideas. This is where the Suggesterator™ comes into play, and you can select a number of ideas related to the selected branch, and add them as sub-branches. Note that the Suggesterator™ is a free extension to NovaMind which you will need to download and install. At the top of the list are words that are linguistically reasonably closely related to the word on the selected branch, and as you get down the list, the ideas are more “off the wall” to take your thinking in completely new directions. This helps break the train of thinking and introduce completely new ideas.

Another idea is to look at similar problems in different domains and seeing if you can apply solutions that worked in that domain to the idea you are brainstorming about.

You can also ask the question “How would others solve/approach this?”. This is particularly useful when you take the point of view of other parties involved in the problem or impacted by the solution.

You can ask questions like:

• Who?
• What?
• Why?
• When?
• Where?
• How often?
• Who does this impact?

…to encourage yourself to look at the problem from a different perspective.

And finally, ask the question: “If there was another solution, what would it be?”. This is an idea that comes from Neuro-linguistics, and brings your imagination into play. It’s like saying, “I know that there is no other option, but just for a moment, imagine that there was another option, if there was another option, what would it be?”. And almost every time, your imagination kicks in and supplies another idea, and then once that door that was closing off ideas has opened up, it’s often like floodgates opening up and you start coming up with dozens more ideas.

Now, when you have recorded enough ideas, you need to reorganize them by grouping them so that you start with the overall concepts and then organize the ideas as sub-branches so that you can see the the big picture and the details. Where there are important ideas, make sure they are highlighted with adornments or images or by color etc, and also if there are ideas that are related to more than one group, you can show the secondary associations by the link lines.

Now let’s just drill down a bit and have a look at some important points for both brainstorming by yourself and in a group.

The most critical thing is to define the problem or topic clearly first. Have a look at the problem solving video to remind yourself of the four cartesian quadrants of problem definition by asking the questions:

• What is the problem?
• What is it not?
• We have this problem because…
• We don’t have a solution because…

And apply these thoughts to the topic you are examining.

Also define your desired outcome, so you know when you have achieved your objective.

Now start with the subject as the Mind Map title, and imagine that you have your “inner advisor” giving you the ideas and solutions, using the techniques we have already mentioned. Start adding top level branches and then children branches as required, without judgment or limitation, and not worrying about organization.

Stop when you have either run out of ideas and have exhausted the ideas we just mentioned for getting unstuck, or when you have collected enough ideas.

It is only after you have collected the ideas that you evaluate and organize them, and in the process you sometimes need to expand the best ideas to give more concrete detail.

Now when you are mind mapping in a group, you need some structures and methods in place to make sure that the whole process goes smoothly.

You should appoint a recorder, a session leader, and everyone else is the “panel”. You don’t want a huge group – groups of more than 10-15 people can get quite difficult to manage, and it may be best to split into different groups and then combine the ideas later, or consider different aspects of the topic.

Now the next point is very important: there have been at least 25 studies done since 1958 which all show that if you try to brainstorm with an entire group without individual brainstorming first, you end up with fewer and lower quality ideas. So, first go through the definition of the topic and the intended outcome with the participants to make sure you are on the same page, and then do the individual brainstorming and return to share ideas, making sure that you give everyone a fair say. As the ideas are mentioned and recorded on the overall Mind Map, there are going to be ideas relating to those topics come up from other participants, and these should be recorded without judgment or constraints, and also without elaboration – you just want the keywords. Then the process of grouping, culling, and elaboration is much the same as for individual brainstorming.

With this structure in place, and using these techniques, you will be able to brainstorm ideas and solutions either individually or in a group, and come up with better solutions and ideas.

 

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Mind Mapping is a powerful tool for all forms of planning, and we have already seen how we can use it for project planning, but let’s extend that to talk specifically about strategic planning.

This video references a number of Mind Maps that you can download from NovaMind Connect, so here are the specific links so you can download the Mind Maps:

Strategic planning: why do it?, SWOT analysis, Strategic plans: what do they contain?

Business continuity planning, response and recovery

Strategic planning can seem like a hassle when you just want to get on and run the business, but there are a lot of reasons for creating strategic plans, as you can see here:

• they are very important for setting the long term direction of the company so you know what the company will look like in 5 or 10 years
• they form a framework for decision making when you are doing your business planning
• they are a framework for your operational planning and help you set your priorities, product lines, levels of service, and identify your target market
• they enable you to very clearly explain the business to employees, contractors, stakeholders in the business, strategic partners, and customers
• they allow you to get a clear picture of the difference between your current position and where you want to be long term, and therefore stimulate change in the right direction
• and they form a basis for accountability of both the staff (especially senior staff) and the plans you make at lower levels, like business and marketing plans.

So what should the strategic plans contain? Here is a list of some of the main items:

• the vision of where the company is going in the medium to long term
• the mission of the company – what it is all about
• the values of the company, explaining why you exist
• your specific objectives as a company
• what strategies you will use to achieve your objectives
• and the goals along the way, so you can plan to meet those goals and be able to measure your progress

For your strategic plan, you could start with a Mind Map with the main headings as in the example in the video and add sub-branches for each element, but you would probably end up with a huge Mind Map, so what I would suggest is that you download this Mind Map from NovaMind Connect, and for each of the top level branches, decide what is important for you and adjust the second level branches to suit your needs, and then for each top level branch, use the “new map from branch” option to create a new Mind Map for each of them, and then brainstorm the details under what have now become the first level branches of the detail maps.

One important part of the strategic planning process is doing a SWOT analysis, where you identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your business. Using more traditional methods of doing SWOT analysis, you just consider all the strengths first, and then all the weaknesses and so on. One of the advantages of doing this using Mind Maps is that you can be open to use brainstorming techniques where you come up with ideas that relate to all four areas in any order, and you can attach them to the Mind Map as branches at the appropriate place as you think of them.

We do have a SWOT template built in to NovaMind so you can create a Mind Map based on that template, but there’s also this extended SWOT analysis template available on NovaMind Connect, which may help direct your thinking in appropriate directions for strategic and business planning.

When you have gone through the strategic planning process and identified the detailed vision, mission, values, objectives, strategies and goals, it is often useful to feed the main points back to an overall strategic plan Mind Map which you can then make into a poster for your office, and can also include with a company prospectus or bids for contracts etc. This helps everyone within the company or associated with the company in any way understand what the company is all about, and where they fit in to the accomplishment of those objectives.

Another specific strategic thing to consider is business continuity planning. Using a Mind Map such as this, again the brainstorming structure of Mind Maps comes in handy to take these ideas and build out a picture of the risks that your business faces, and then build a risk mitigation plan.

Then at the other end of the spectrum, you have the response and recovery plan and here we can use the same techniques we used for project planning and management, to ensure that everyone understands the objectives, their roles and responsibilities, and how to effect a speedy recovery from any disaster. It is at times like that, that you need to have the clear and efficient communication that is provided by Mind Maps.

So as you can see, using Mind Maps for strategic planning helps make sure all aspects of the plan are dealt with properly, in a way that everyone can understand what the strategic direction of the company is, and how you are going to achieve it.

Now the next obvious thing to be doing with Mind Maps is business planning, so we will cover that in the next video.

 

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NovaMind Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of NovaMind for Windows in Spanish and French. This means that the Windows version of NovaMind is available in English, Japanese, German, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Hebrew, French and Spanish.

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind Mind Mapping software said “We are happy to have the opportunity to support our growing international family of users with Mind Mapping software they can use in their own language. While it is possible to create Mind Maps in any language using NovaMind, it is easier for users when they have the user interface available in their own language.”

The Mac version of NovaMind is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, and is used widely around the world.

Mr King says “Last time I checked, which was about 3 years ago, NovaMind was already in use in at least 88 different countries. I strongly believe in the power and usefulness of Mind Mapping, so it is very pleasing to be able to help people around the world by providing software to improve their productivity and effectiveness.”

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

NovaMind Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of iBlueSky integration. This allows creation of Mind Maps in iBlueSky on the iPhone or iPod Touch, which can be sent by email to anyone on the iPhone contact list, and opened directly in NovaMind for further editing and refinement.

Having iBlueSky Mind Mapping software available in your pocket on iPhone or iPod touch means that the user has at their fingertips (literally) the ability to:

• create to-do lists whilst in the moment so as to avoid forgetting anything
• take notes in meetings where there is no laptop available
• jot down ideas as they arise, and organize them
• be productive anywhere and everywhere, in those spare moments waiting in line etc.
• solve problems and make decisions using Mind Mapping techniques, at any time
• brainstorm in places where it would be impractical to take a laptop
• summarize and memorize information no matter where you are

For further information about iBlueSky and NovaMind integration, please see http://www.novamind.com/ibluesky/

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind said “We are very excited about the possibilities that this integration of NovaMind and iBlueSky brings. Late last year we surveyed our customers, and one of the most common requests for new capabilities was for integration between the Mac and Windows versions of NovaMind and an iPhone Mind Mapping solution. We feel very fortunate to have been able to develop a very close working relationship with Tenero Software, the developers of the top Mind Mapping application for the iPhone.”

At the moment, the communication is one way, but Andrew Ebling, founder of Tenero Software says “by the end of January, we should have both directions working via our import/export web service”.

There are many benefits of being able to transfer Mind Maps to NovaMind, because NovaMind allows the user to:

• Use different branch shapes and styles, and add images and adornments to branches
• Have full control over the color of the branches
• Add notes and hyperlinks to the branches
• Add task and resource information
• Give presentations directly from Mind Maps
• Export to other programs such as MS Word, Powerpoint, MS Project and Merlin
• …and have all the capabilities of NovaMind to create stunning looking and powerful Mind Maps

“We believe that the benefits for both the iBlueSky and NovaMind users are huge, and are just really glad to have the opportunity to be able to provide this amount of value to them” says Mr King.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

In these days of information overload, the compact way of representing ideas that is embodied in Mind Mapping is essential. You can summarize a huge amount of information in a very compact space. For us to be able to cope, we need efficient knowledge generation, management, and use.

Watch this video to find out all about knowledge management. Actually more than just knowledge management – we’ll examine how knowledge is created, what it is, and how you can use it.

We are fed with a huge amount of data all the time, and we are pretty good at sorting through the incoming data and applying our understanding of the relationships between the different pieces of data and its meaning to us, so we can turn the data into information. In this process, we delete, distort, and filter the data to fit our understanding of the world. The raw data is turned into something that is summarized, described and defined in terms that fit with the information we already know.

This massively reduces the amount of material we need to deal with, and also helps us process new data as it comes along, but still we are overwhelmed with the amount of information. We need to turn the information into knowledge, so we generalize the information and look for overall patterns that fit with our current knowledge. Knowledge allows us to have the concept of how things work, so we can develop strategies and methods that we know from experience will work. We will also be able to more easily process information because we know the patterns that we expect the information to fall into, and are able to recognize those patterns with new information.

Now if we purely operate from the level of Knowledge, we are able to implement strategies that are effective at dealing with issues, but we will not be very good at creativity or invention of new solutions.

So beyond knowledge there is what we can call Wisdom or Understanding. In order to go from knowledge to wisdom, we need to understand the principles behind the patterns we see, and the reasons that the strategies work. We recognize meta-patterns in the knowledge – patterns that define the patterns we observe. Once we recognize those reasons, it builds a framework of “truth” around our perception of reality, so we are able to form hypotheses as to what the principles are, and test them to form principles and archetypes that we can use to drive creativity, invention and coming up with new paradigms which either fit with the truth of our reality or challenge it in new ways. Having this framework of wisdom in place helps with good decision making, efficient processing of options, and creative thinking that stems from solid principles.

We thrive on being at the edge between overload on the one side and boredom on the other side. If we have inefficient ways of dealing with data and turning it into information then we will have data overload problems, and if we have inefficient ways of turning information into knowledge, then we will have information overload. What most people term information overload is actually a combination of data overload and information overload. If we get overloaded by either data or information overload, we are likely to either withdraw from the information flow and adopt a “whatever” or “I don’t care” approach, or do some sort of more mundane task or work, or blob out in front of the TV, or distract ourselves from the actual task we should be doing. In one way or another, we either cut down our input or our processing of it to avoid the feeling of overwhelm.

On the other end of the scale, if we are not stimulated with enough data, or the data we are receiving already fits with what we already know in every way, we get bored, and sometimes do things that actually sabotage situations or relationships because subconsciously we have become bored.

As you can see, our typical reactions to overload are unhelpful because we get into stuck states and just give up completely, and our reactions to boredom are often unhelpful because we sabotage things just to make life interesting.

While it is possible to go through life with very few tools and strategies to be able to cope with overload or boredom, if you live your life like that, you are likely to be very unfulfilled and accomplish very little. On the other hand, when you use the right tools and techniques to be able to deal with increasing amounts of data, information and knowledge, you will enter a “flow” state where you are able to achieve massive amounts in a short space of time, and be able to be creative and a visionary. It will both make for massive personal growth and productivity, but will also allow you to feel in control of the situation, going with the information flow.

If you feel bored, and develop the skills to be aware of that situation before you artificially introduce drama, then you will go and seek out more stimulation – more data, more challenges to tackle, and you will get the immense satisfaction of dealing with the hard problems and conquering them.

When you are dealing with a lot of data and information at once, it’s like a pipe, and if that pipe gets blocked, then all the information and data piles up behind it and very soon you have an overload situation and everything shuts down and you start using your tactics to get rid of the incoming information, or ignore it, and the whole flow process stops and you stop learning, stop gathering knowledge, stop creating wisdom, and stop being creative. One of the most common causes of this happening is when you get stuck making a decision, which is why I made the video on decision making, so you never need to have that blockage again.

But the more subtle issue is if you have more data than you can handle going in to the pipe, and the pressure gradually builds up and builds up and you don’t know how to handle it, until it eventually explodes.

Now if the knowledge is inaccessible, or difficult to understand, then it is useless to you or whoever could benefit from it. When the knowledge is readily accessible and actually used in the decision making and problem solving processes, and creative green field thinking, then you have the sum of the knowledge and experience of everyone and every situation that contributed to that knowledge at your disposal to allow you to make the most of every situation.

Of course this is where Mind Mapping comes into play.

As you gather the data, you can put it into a mind map, and as you do so, you are naturally deleting, distorting and filtering the data to become information and to match with the knowledge and information you already have. This helps deal with data and information overload. As you arrange the mind map, you are starting to group the information so that the linkages between the ideas convey meaning, and the organization is exactly the same as when information is organized in your brain. At this stage you are still operating mostly from a left brain logical perspective, but at the same time you are naturally creating an image that is attractive to your right brain too.

As you graft the branches and use the colors and branch shapes and images to indicate the commonality of ideas, you are building the understanding of the patterns within the information, and generalizing back to the root branches. This allows you to gain the level of overview of information that is necessary for it to be knowledge where you understand how it all fits together, and how your objectives are going to be met.

So you are automatically turning the data into information and the information into knowledge as you create and refine your Mind Maps. This knowledge consists not only of the keywords on the branches, but also the colors, positioning and connections the branches have, as well as the images, boundaries, task information, priorities, branch notes, and all your hyperlinks to other documents, web pages and resources. They all go to make up the sum of the knowledge contained in the Mind Map. The compactness and richness of this visual representation of the knowledge makes Mind Maps excellent knowledge management tools, so that when you (or somebody else) need the information, it is right there in an easily understood format, and with all the richness of the information and data behind it.

Having the knowledge represented graphically in this way is a great help in going the next step to wisdom and understanding where you get the picture of the principles and the underlying patterns in the knowledge, and can therefore propose archetypes and principles that can drive forward through a brainstorming process to new and innovative solutions.

Using Mind Maps in this way ensures that you can manage the volume of data, process it efficiently into information and package it up into knowledge without getting overloaded. This means you can move through wisdom to true creativity based on a solid foundation of understanding. To my knowledge, there is no other tool better suited to this process of creating and maintaining close to optimal performance than Mind Mapping.

 

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Often the number of factors you need to deal with when making difficult decisions can leave you bogged down and feeling overwhelmed and helpless. What you need is a structured way of getting all the issues out there, uncovering and designing all the options, and a system for choosing the best options to pursue.

Watch this video to see how you can find and explore options, assess their impact, and how to decide which option or options to pursue, using the power of mind mapping.

The first step is to brainstorm the potential directions very much like what we talked about in the problem solving video, but once you have the decisions outlined, there are some techniques that come in very useful for exploring the potential decisions in detail, and also techniques for deciding which option to choose, and assessing the impact of any decision.

The supporting Mind Map for this article and video is available on NovaMind Connect.

We will talk about how to use Edward DeBono’s six thinking hats to examine the possibilities from six different perspectives. For each perspective, you put on an imaginary hat that only allows you to think from that perspective. We show you the structure of this in a Mind Map made using the six thinking hats method. White represents information needs and gaps; the red hat is where you put forward intuitive ideas without needing to justify them; black is where you are judging the ideas harshly and exercising caution; yellow is logical reasons why this will work; green is alternatives and proposals; and blue is the big picture. You can read the full details in Edward’s book called “Six thinking hats”.

Next is PMI, where you consider a concept from the point of view of positive or Plus aspects, negative or Minus aspects, and Interesting things about the proposal – things that are neither positive or negative, but instead have some interesting aspects to them. This is a slight variation on the listing of advantages and disadvantages which was propounded by Plato and Benjamin Franklin.

One really useful way to use this is by creating a Mind Map where the first level branches are each person or group affected by the decision, and their PMI reaction to the option you are considering. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how they would feel about it, or survey them to find out for sure.

Another thing that you can factor in to the assessment is what is called a force field analysis, where you put the proposed change in the middle of a Mind Map, and on the left you have the forces for change, and on the right you have the forces against change. This is again a variation on the advantages and disadvantages lists, but is specifically directed at the environment of the problem.

These techniques allow you to generate different options and explore the potential decisions thoroughly, but what about actually making the decision?

Actually you are likely to find that the thorough exploration of the options makes the decision easy, but assuming it’s a difficult problem you still need to have tools to be able to choose the best option.

Often you need to narrow the list of options down, and you can do this by using the Pareto principle which in this context means that 80% of the benefits come from changes to 20% of the factors. This can be really helpful if you have a lot of options which could feasibly be implemented. To use this system, rank each of the options, and choose the top 20% of the options to implement. You can do this using the priority markers if you are using the Platinum edition of NovaMind. Otherwise, you can just number or color code or arrange the branches to indicate the ranking.

Say you were trying to increase sales of your products and you had listed a number of things you could do to increase the number of leads, increase the conversion ratio, increase the average sale, increase the number of transactions and increase the margins. Now you rank the options, and start by implementing the top 20% of the items, and it is likely that you will increase your sales 80% as much as if you had just blindly implemented all the options, and at a much lower cost and amount of effort.

A refinement on this method is to also include a cost benefit analysis in your assessment of the options. You can create a branch for the costs and another for the benefits, and if there are other things you need to consider like short term and long term impacts, and risk factors, these can be added in to the assessment. In order to make it more objective, it can be useful to have things like the assessed probability of success, overall benefit, risk factors, and preferences used as factors in a formula to give a better rating to each option.

But what if you have a number of options that still look good and you need to choose one to implement? You need a technique for selecting the best option.

Start a new mind map with the decision you need to make in the title, and for each solution or option, create a first level branch. In some cases the result will be an outcome, and in some cases it will be another decision that needs to be made. If the result of making a decision is that you need to make another decision, then add the options for that decision as child branches, and continue until you get to every branch representing a decision producing an outcome. In the video we use an example Mind Map where, we have a decision as to whether to do advertising or start an affiliate program, and the decision to do advertising leads to another decision as to whether to use Internet or Print advertising.

For each possible type of outcome, add a child branch. In most cases, just two or three outcomes will do, to indicate either success or failure, or optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic outcomes.

Now for each of the possible outcomes, give it a value which makes sense within the domain. In the case of a monetary benefit, like increasing sales, it will be dollars, but in other areas, you might have to assign arbitrary values to the relative value of that outcome. Next, assign a probability to each of the possible outcomes, representing the likelihood of that outcome happening, so that the total adds up to 1.0. For each option, multiply the likelihood by the value, and add them all together at that level. This is the value of making that decision. Now subtract the cost of implementing that decision, and you are left with the beneficial value of that decision. Choose the largest net benefit to implement. In this case, clearly creating an affiliate program is the best thing to do.

This is of course easier to understand when you see it in the video.

This works well if you have the factors reasonably well defined, but if there are complex subjective elements to the decision, you will need to use what is called a priority vector as a multiplier for each category. This is basically a way of weighting the factors that are more important in your decision. To work out the priority vector, we need to briefly switch over to a spreadsheet and add a row and a column for each category you are assessing, then for each square in the matrix, assign it a value according to these options:

• Equal importance => 1
• Somewhat more important or better => 3
• Definitely more important or better => 5
• Much more important or better => 7
• Very much more important or better => 9

…and if it is less important, then use the reciprocal value, for instance if it is definitely less important then you would use the value 1/5. Of course when something is compared to itself it is the same, so the values are always 1.

The video example shows how to calculate the weighting for each thing that has a subjective weighting, and then apply that to the actual values for each option that is being considered, as well as combining the weighting with the beneficial value of each option.

This turns the uncertainties and subjective assessments into a formula that can be applied to give a decision that reflects all the relevant facts, probabilities of success, and the more subjective inputs, giving you a definitive decision that you can use with confidence.

These mind mapping techniques take you from the tools to find options, to simple decisions and right through to giving you top of the line tools for making very tough decisions that rely on both hard facts and more subjective factors. When you use mind maps in this way, they become very powerful tools for visualizing the options and making fantastic decisions.

 

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Mind Maps are a great tool for planning and managing projects.

In this video I will show you how to plan your projects and how to use those project plans for scope management,  communicating project goals, and getting the buy-in of all stakeholders.

The earlier video on to do lists introduced you to the basic concepts of organizing your requirements using mind mapping. Now we will extend that to look at project planning specifics.

But first, let’s ask the question, “What’s wrong with the age-old standard project management packages like MS Project and Merlin?”

Well, they certainly do give you good tools to manage your projects, but they really have a strong tendency to get people focusing on the minute task levels of projects far too early in the inception phases of a project.

This means that you can easily lose sight of the main objectives of the project, or get so stuck in the details that you forget some important tasks or objectives.

But the planning for a successful project begins before that. There is a whole inception phase of the project where the relevant information is collected together and organized so that you have a clear understanding of the scope, time, cost, quality, resources, communications, risks and of course stakeholder requirements for the project.

Often this information is gathered as large specification documents which are hard to navigate around and understand the requirements, but all of these areas can benefit from the use of Mind Mapping, and you can create Mind Maps to represent each knowledge area, and have branches for the details and hyperlinks to other documents and resources where required.

As you start a project, you need to define what the major objectives are, and each one of these objectives will become a first level branch of the Mind Map, then for projects of any reasonable size these objectives get further broken down into sub-objectives that contribute to the achievement of the major objectives, or the major areas of work contributing to the overall objectives. So these become the second level branches like this. Finally it is broken down into actual tasks that must be performed, which are the leaf branches on your Mind Map.

Obviously this is flexible and you only use as many levels as necessary for your project, and for a large project, it may require more levels.

When you get down to the task level, you may want to assign resources to the tasks. This is something you can do in the Platinum edition of NovaMind. The video shows you how to create and assign resources to the branches. Of course the resources usually refer to people, but can also refer to other resources which have a limited availability, like vehicles and meeting rooms.

The video also shows you how to assign task information to the branches, including priorities, percentage complete, start and finish date and duration.

You can see how easy it is to structure your project into objectives and then go right down to the task and resource level using Mind Maps. This means that you can use brainstorming techniques to come up with the right ideas and objectives. The techniques used for brainstorming are covered in a different video.

As you go through the exercise, you will fully explore the options for the project in much more breadth and depth than what you could cover in a requirements document. Then you can do the assessment of the ideas and objectives, and make sure that the ones you want are retained, and then look at the budget and time constraints etc, and go through a scoping exercise.

Mind Maps are a great way to manage project scope because you can remove a branch or sub-branch without impacting the other branches.

This makes it easy to make sure that there is nothing forgotten in the early planning and scoping part of the project, as well as being a great tool for presenting the project to all the stakeholders.

If you are trying to get funding for a project, it makes it much easier when the project plan is drawn out as a Mind Map. Everyone can see what the objectives are for the project, how they are going to be achieved, the tasks that are required to achieve the outcomes, as well as the resources that are required. When the project sponsors see in the Mind Map all the things that need to be done to achieve their objectives, they will understand the basis for the project costs, and can make much better informed decisions on scoping and overall outcomes. This means that it is much more likely that they will accept the costings you have provided because they can see where their money is going – everyone can see clearly what the objectives are, how they are going to be achieved, and what resources are going to be required. They may also decide to take some of the main objective branches and move them to a new phase in the project so that it can be done properly, rather than trying to fit it in to an unreasonable timeframe.

But what if you need to bring someone up to speed on a project that is already underway?

Mind Maps are very useful in briefing new team members on the project. When a new team member is assigned to the project, the Mind Maps will give them a picture of the overall project goals, updating them very quickly. The Mind Maps give a graphical overview of the tasks, how they relate to each other and their importance and impact in the greater scheme of things.

The new team member can then be introduced to their individual role in the project and will be able to quickly see what their responsibilities are and how these responsibilities relate to the overall project, giving them a better understanding of what and how they will contribute to the team and the project. Often this will lead to them volunteering their skills for tasks you may not have assigned them to, because they understand that they can make a strong contribution to the project in that area.

You very quickly have their “buy-in” on the project, whether they are coming in at the start of the project or part way through. They can see exactly where they fit in, why they are needed and how they can contribute.

Now of course during the running of your project, you would use a dedicated project management package like MS Project or Merlin to handle the detailed running of the project, and you can transfer your project information to Merlin, or to any project management package that reads the MS Project XML file format (which is just about all the project management software currently available).

So as you can see, NovaMind is a great tool particularly for the inception phases of projects.

Watch the video now to hear about using Mind Maps for brainstorming requirements; scoping; time, cost and quality management, assigning resources, communicating project requirements, and managing risks. When you use Mind Mapping in this way, you will be able to manage the scope of projects better, make sure that no requirements are left out, have better communication with the stakeholders and sponsors, and have better buy in from your staff working on the project.

All these things add up to better managed and more successful projects.

 

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