How to use mind mapping in product operations?

Mind mapping, as a tool, is now used in all walks of life. Take the Internet and software engineering as an example. Mind mapping often appears in demand interviews, demand analysis, outline and detailed design, etc., as a design aid.

It also often appears in various meetings and is used as an outline for lectures. It can be said that due to the advantages of mind mapping being easy to understand and use, it has quickly become a necessary skill in the workplace. Some recruitment JDs directly require proficiency in the use of mind mapping.

There are many software that support mind mapping, including the mainstream MindMaster. All software are similar. No matter which one you choose, you can easily make a mind map. The purpose of this article is not to teach you how to use these software (because it is too simple and even people with no basic knowledge can easily get started), but to tell you that being able to use these software does not mean that you can really use mind mapping. We have some misunderstandings about the use of mind mapping.

I have seen a lot of mind maps made by colleagues and friends that look like this:

Catalog Type

Single Dimension Tree

You may say that this kind of drawing is good, with clear structure and easy to understand at a glance. This requires us to discuss what is the purpose of drawing a mind map? Mind mapping has never been the best means of presenting results and transmitting information. It is a thinking tool that helps you establish logical thinking. It advocates the process from divergent thinking to associative memory.

In other words, mind maps cannot follow only one pattern or template. Mind maps reflect your unique thinking process and are not universal. Even if you tell others your thinking process, they will not understand it because this thinking process is unique.

If mind maps are not suitable for standardized information transmission and standard collaboration documents between organizations (because mind maps bring in too many personal styles and ideas and are not a standardized format document), then where would mind maps be more appropriately used? We will now focus on explaining the use of mind maps from four aspects:

1. Organize your thoughts

The main application scenarios are: organizing ideas, analyzing problems, thinking about solutions, etc. If you have a central idea and hope to enrich it in a systematic way, you need to focus on the center and provide associations, reasoning and descriptions of various dimensional branches through divergent thinking.

These dimensions are as follows: basic questions (5W1H), nature, history, structure, function, process, evaluation, classification, definition, personality, etc. However, for the effectiveness of brain memory, the dimension branches should be between 3-7. If there are too few, it will not be systematized, and if there are too many, the brain will have a memory bottleneck.

The central topic for organizing your thoughts must be clear and cannot be vague, otherwise the thoughts you organize will be difficult to be targeted. This is different from the scenario of creative thinking. The central topic of brainstorming requires sufficient breadth and cannot be limited to one purpose.

For example, the topic “New E-commerce” is not an effective central idea for “Organizing Your Own Thoughts”, but more like a brainstorming topic. If we want to form systematic ideas that we can explain ourselves, our topic must have clear questions or conjectures, such as: "New e-commerce is a process of service upgrade."

Organize your thoughts

The above picture is a semi-finished mind map I drew with the theme of "New e-commerce is a service upgrade process". You can compare it with the "catalog type" and "single dimension tree type" provided earlier. The difference between them is that the analysis dimensions and associated connections increase. There is also a biggest difference that I did not draw, that is association. If I were to continue completing this mind map, I would use a lot of association to enrich it.

For example: in the word "function" of "serving customers", I will associate it with how new e-commerce serves customers: "service is everywhere", "service charges instead of charging by product", "enjoy first and pay later", "consumers care more about service brands" rather than "product brands", etc., all of which may appear.

summary:

This is a process of how to construct a mind map of "organizing your own thinking". The key point is to establish the integrity and systematization of thinking through multi-dimensional branches, and then enrich these branches and establish connections between knowledge points through sufficient conjecture, association, and reasoning. Mind maps are not standard output files, so there is no need to worry about whether your guesses, associations, and reasoning are correct. The purpose of mind maps is to fully reflect your thinking process.

2. Organize other people’s thoughts

The main application scenarios are: reading notes, meeting summaries, implementation of superiors' spirit, etc.

I have found that many people use mind maps to take minutes of meetings. At this point, I suggest that unless you are already an expert in mind mapping, try not to use it as a first-hand record (shorthand) of the meeting, because the drawing of mind maps involves a lot of thinking and reasoning. Think about it, if you are immersed in thinking about one meeting point, you will miss other meeting points, so unless you are an expert, don't try it.

If you are used to using mind maps to record first-hand meeting minutes, then you can look back and carefully see what the essential differences are between what you recorded and what you recorded using Word or other shorthand methods? There is no difference, because you lack the thought process, so you just use the mind map to record a meeting minutes. Mind maps are more suitable for summarizing and analyzing the spirit of meetings, reading notes, strengthening and implementing ideas, etc. These aspects can better reflect the divergent thinking function of mind maps.

The biggest difference between organizing other people's thoughts and organizing your own thoughts is that organizing your own thoughts is a 0-1 process, while organizing other people's thoughts is a 1-0 process.

To organize other people's thoughts, we must first have the main points or conclusions of others. We must use these conclusions and key points to find reasons that can be interpreted, explained or justified using our own knowledge system. This is very important. The process of organizing other people's thoughts will produce different results for different people, because different people have different knowledge systems and backgrounds.

When we accept new knowledge or a new conclusion, if we do not think about and interpret it in our own language, then this knowledge is not our own knowledge. The role of mind mapping here is to turn other people's knowledge into our own wealth through our own thinking.

Service maintenance and retention mind map

The picture above is a mind map I drew before, which is about the maintenance and retention process of telecommunications industry services. The central idea and concept are the core specifications for maintenance and retention based on the service consumer life cycle that China Telecom Group has issued, and we need to use our own thinking or our own company's system to map and implement these concepts.

Yes, the key point of organizing other people's thoughts is mapping, mapping other people's core concepts into your own knowledge system, and mapping industry norms into the product system of your own company or organization. If your goal in organizing other people's ideas is to use the knowledge for your own benefit, then by all means do so.

Maintaining and retaining local mind map

This is a partial mapping of the maintenance and retention mind map. You can see that the improvement period, maturity period, and off-grid period are standard concepts of the consumer life cycle. We need to map them into methods and business processes that we can implement based on the actual background and the company's work goals.

summary:

You may have such doubts: my knowledge system is not comprehensive and in-depth enough, and if I directly map other people's knowledge, what should I do if the mapping is wrong or appears very naive? My answer is that the mapping is wrong or seems naive, but that is also your knowledge! If you don't map and digest and absorb it, no matter how good other people's knowledge is, it will be useless to you. Only through repeated mapping and verification can you enrich your own knowledge system, and eventually your interpretation can help solve problems in your life and work.

Some people read a lot of books, but what they read is the knowledge based on the cognitive framework of the author or others; I would rather read only one book and fully use my own knowledge system to interpret and explain it, which is my own knowledge.

3. Memory

The main application scenarios are: learning memory, tool mastering, etc. The convenient use of mind maps in memory comes from the brain's multi-dimensional associative memory method. This memory method is not a new concept today. When we learn new knowledge and need to memorize, we are usually encouraged to use association and multi-dimensional memory to deepen the reflex stimulation of this knowledge in the cerebral cortex.

For example: If I give a word "bear", what will we associate it with when we use multi-dimensional memory? Maybe everyone thinks differently, I drew the 3-7 dimensions that I think of for your reference:

Memories of bears

summary:

The multi-dimensional associative memory method is currently a common means of memory. Through this memory method, you can not only remember a central thing, such as bear, but also remember a group of related things. What you can remember is precisely the most active storage area of ​​the cerebral cortex. If you care about politics, you will remember political words related to bears, such as "Russia". If you pay attention to movies, you will remember movies about bears, and so on.

The divergent and multi-dimensional characteristics of mind maps can help you achieve a natural memory of the associations between things. To use mind mapping well is to put unfamiliar signals from the outside world into the most active area of ​​your memory so that you can retrieve them at any time.

Animal English word memory map

4. Creative Thinking

Main application scenario: brainstorming.

Finally, let’s look at creative thinking. As mentioned in the first paragraph about the application of “organizing your own thoughts,” the central topic of “organizing your own thoughts” must be clear and cannot be vague. The central topic of the creative thinking scenario must be broad enough and cannot be limited to one purpose and a specific method. It must be open to the elaboration of the central theme information, not the elaboration of specific methods.

"Organizing your own thoughts" is 0-1 thinking, while "creative thinking" is 0-N thinking. The final result of creative thinking may not be the same as your original envisioned goal. Because in creative thinking we do not give too many central restrictions, but make full use of divergent thinking and association to establish an unstructured train of thought. Let’s take the theme: “New e-commerce” as an example and see what you would come up with if you brainstorm.

Brainstorming on new e-commerce

During the brainstorming process:

• The first step is to quickly think divergently about words or sentences related to the topic. There are no conditional constraints. You don’t have to consider whether it is feasible. Instead, try to write down everything you can think of as branch topics. There are no boundaries here. The boundary of your thinking is the boundary of the central topic.
• The second step is to further think about the constituent factors of branch topics without considering the dimensional constraints under the branch topics (cross-dimensional thinking) and without structural restrictions. Write down all the components you can think of.
• The third step is to establish the relationship (connecting lines) between these leaf nodes and use a large number of relationship networks to connect these innovative ideas. As long as the association is logical, it can be established.
• Finally: You can keep the most closely related ideas (the nodes with the most connections) as raw material for organizing your own thoughts in the next step (of course if you have this need).

Why do we only keep the most closely related ideas in the end? Because many of our innovative ideas do not exist independently, they are actually interrelated in your brain. If you write down independent and unconnected ideas, these ideas are often not innovative, but rather whimsical.

summary:

The most difficult thing about creative thinking is not divergent thinking, but convergence of ideas. This is why many of us use brainstorming to think about problems, but after using it we find that the result is a mess and the ideas are difficult to settle and utilize. By connecting the ideas based on their relevance, and leaving only the most relevant ones, we can ensure that what we think about is systematic innovative thinking, rather than castles in the air and oases in the desert.

Final summary:

A mind map has never been a standardized structured document; it has too many personalized features and represents one's own unique way of thinking. So what will happen if you use mind maps as interface documents for organizational collaboration? If the other party can understand it, it either means your thinking is too simple or you have used the mind map in the wrong place.

Author: Newbie

Source: Newbie