Effective Mind Maps. Analyses of business mind maps by Chuck Frey, author of the Mind Mapping Software Blog

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1 Effective Mind Maps Analyses of business mind maps by Chuck Frey, author of the Mind Mapping Software Blog Type of map: Business owner dashboard map Software used to create: MindManager Source: BiggerPlate map gallery URL: Overview Many businesses, including the one I currently work for, have weekly staff meetings. These gatherings are an excellent opportunity to bring everyone up-to-date on the status of current projects, discuss new developments, prospects in the pipeline and other operational priorities. They are also an excellent opportunity to surface any emerging problems and develop action plans to solve them. The mind map below is one that Liam Hughes, owner of BiggerPlate.com a large online repository of MindManager mind maps- uses to help him and his team run their business. I think it s an excellent example of a dashboard mind map. It can teach us many lessons about how to create a similar dashboard to help enhance the operations of our team or organization.

2 In particular, this mind map is designed to do two things: 1. It gives the owner of the business (Liam) a 50,000-foot overview of all aspects of his business operations the quintessential bigger picture view. Business owners need to be equally focused on what s happening today in their business, but even more importantly, where future growth will come from. What future products and services will we develop? Who else can we sell to? Who can we partner with to grow our business faster and better serve our customers? Those are some of the issues that can be incorporated into a visual planning tool like this. 2. It can be used as sort of a visual agenda for his weekly meetings with his staff both a checklist of topics that need to be discussed in a structured order, as well as a status report of where we are now. So let s take a closer look at what we can learn about Liam s well-organized and effective dashboard map. Overall map design This mind map has a clean design that is easy to follow. It utilizes icons to add meaning and context, but otherwise doesn t contain a lot of images. Ideally, a mind map ought to show you at a glance what it s trying to communicate, as well as make it easy to drill down into the details. This dashboard map provides an effective overview of Liam s business. Boundary emphasizes finances In this dashboard mind map, Liam uses a colored boundary to draw our eyes to the key measure that is the lifeblood of all small businesses cash flow. If there isn t adequate cash flow, it may be challenging to pay your suppliers and employees on time. A lack of it may also hamper your product development and marketing efforts. In short, cash flow is crucial to the ongoing success of any small business. As such, it deserves special emphasis, and Liam Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 2

3 has made it the most important part of this mind map by emphasizing it with a boundary. Looking more closely at the data contained within this branch of the mind map, Liam emphasizes clients that still need to be invoiced very important, because with most customers, if you don t invoice them, you don t get paid. It s that simple. It also displays the financial liabilities the company currently faces. Finally, note the net position subtopic colored green (appropriate for a key financial measure, isn t it?). This enables him, at a glance, to see if his business is cash positive or not. Nicely done! Innovation More than almost any type of business, innovation the development of profitable new products and services on an ongoing basis is critical to small firms. It s good to see that Liam has emphasized it here, with a topic specifically devoted to it. Most of the rest of the map is focused on present sales and operational issues. But it s also critically important that Liam and his team look to the future in their weekly meetings. What are we going to be working on next? Where are the next opportunities? What unmet needs do our customers have? What business model or strategy is going to drive our future growth? Although the subtopics that Liam has listed here don t appear at first glance to be very innovative, the important thing to remember is that you remember to include the topic of innovation in a dashboard map, if you decide to create one for your business. You get to decide what topics you want to cover within it. The most important take away is that you need to make planning for the future an essential part of your weekly team meetings whether you manage a department or lead an entire company, it s a valuable strategy! Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 3

4 This week topic for time-based follow-ups This topic is an excellent place to put follow-ups that are timebased in other words, action items that need to happen on a certain day. For example, if your business places its orders with a key supplier on a specific day of the week, every week, then you could place that recurring event there. Or if you have scheduled key client or customer meetings coming up in the next week, you can note them here. You can really make this part of the dashboard map your own put the upcoming events, deadlines and other scheduled priorities you need to focus upon here and make it work for you! I also like the fact that Liam has created a sub-topic called next review and he has colored it green to make it stand out so he can quickly see when the next staff meeting or periodic review of this dashboard is scheduled to take place. Sales pipeline All business owners are concerned about what their sales pipeline or funnel looks like. Who are our prospects? At what stage of the sales process are they? Who is responsible for these leads, and what are the next steps for each one? That s what this section of the mind map (pictured on the following page) answers, in a concise visual format. Note how Liam has segmented the company s sales leads using standard CRM (customer relationship management) terminology: Hot leads are those that have the greatest potential for turning into sales in the short term. Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 4

5 Prospects are companies that have shown some level of interest in the products and services Liam s company offers. But these firms are too early in the sales process to determine if they will eventually turn into customers. Suspects are firms that Liam or members of his team are aware of, who could benefit from his company s products and services. Think of them as low-level prospects. We want to put information about our products and services in their hands and better understand their needs. But we don t know at this point in time just how interested they are in what we have to offer. Holding pattern: This category can be used to keep track of prospects that may have been hot at one time, but for one reason or another, their interest has cooled in investing in your products or services. This could be a temporary setback, such as a budget cut. The company still wants your solution, but it may be another 6 months to a year before it can afford to invest in it. You don t want to lose track of these prospects, yet you don t want to have them creating visual clutter at the higher levels of your sales funnel. Think of this topic as a parking lot for prospects that may be valuable some day. Just a couple of things to point out here: I really like the way Liam uses color coding both the topic color and a corresponding border color to visually group the different types of sales leads. This is a very effective design. Note, too, how all of the lowest-level sub-topics are tasks next actions that we need to take to close these potential sales. The resource indicators (below each task) show who is responsible for them, and in what time frame those tasks need to be accomplished. Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 5

6 If you use this dashboard map to drive the agenda of your weekly staff meetings, you can use this part of it as a tool to check with your salespeople to ensure that these follow-ups actually happened, and to make alternate plans if they didn t. Operations/delivery In most companies, the salespeople are not the same people who actually do the work, build the product or deliver the service. If sales is the front end, customer-facing part of your business, operations is the back end, where things get built and shipped. Here, the business owner needs to keep his or her finger on the pulse of key projects. In this dashboard map, Liam enables project tracking by creating a series of topics that are focused on specific clients or customers. This is a great way to focus on the ongoing needs of existing customers, who are always a low-cost way to add revenue by selling them additional services. Too often, business owners don t pay enough attention to existing customers. As a former senior executive with an ad agency, I have first-hand experience in seeing how a business owner can become preoccupied with bringing in new business, while almost completely ignoring key existing clients. This can sometimes result in those key clients feeling ignored, and taking their business elsewhere. I ve heard clients say some variation of, Bill was very interested in talking with us when we first came on board with your firm. But now that we ve been a client of the agency for a few years, I feel like he just doesn t care enough about us. We never hear from him any more. Trust me this is something you do NOT want to hear a key client someone who brings substantial revenue into your firm say this! Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 6

7 Liam s customer-focused section of this map is a great way to help prevent this from happening. Using a dashboard like this, the business owner can see what s going on with each key piece of business, schedule calls or visits to remain visible and be knowledgeable about the status of the work the company is doing for them. I like the emphasis Liam places on delivery. Too many small companies and sole proprietors get caught up in endlessly tweaking their products, but don t ship finished products as often as they ought to. In most industries and professions, you must ship first, and then get paid. So it s crucial that you maintain a focus on moving projects toward completion as efficiently as possible, while at the same time avoiding scope creep and quickly cutting your losses on projects that appear to be failing. One final note: You could easily create links from this section of the dashboard map to submaps that contain more details on each client or customer project enabling you to easily view the forest and the trees. Questions? Got questions about this report? Please contact me at chuck@innovationtools.com. Published 3/18/2011 Business Owner Dashboard Map Page 7