Mind maps are so cool and simple, until they get complicated. Let it flow but stay organized and keep it simple. Your mind map should help you make connections that organize your thoughts and visualize your project’s vision.

As a novelist, I always tell people the problem is not coming up with ideas to write about to immerse the reader into a great story. Great stories are all around us waiting to be formed. The problem is with getting organized, prioritizing time, and efficiently executing your plan. Mind maps make it easier to get going. This holds true for your real-life story, for business stories, and for managing project stories as well.

Here is my takeaway #23 from one of the most useful practical books in my field, “Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager”:

23) “We like to brainstorm using a mind map. Mind mapping allows you to come up with ideas without worrying about putting them in order”

Note: This comes from Chapter 4 “Planning the Project: Milestone or Mirage?” (page 90)

If you have a cluttered (but creative) mind, like me, you have all sorts of projects in your head, just waiting to be formed. If you, or your organization (as the case may be) want to decide what project to authorize your time to work on, or if that has already been decided and you want to think about what projects that entails, start with a mind map, maybe some wire framing, and/or a table of contents. These progressive formats can help you brainstorm ideas, outline, frame, and fill in the details of your business and project stories.

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STORY TIME:

I am currently working on a 3-in-1 (System) Series of Programs (“Pivotal” Change | “Practical” Project Management | “Perpetual” Improvement & Knowledge Management). Bringing it all together to help organizational change, team change project management, and individual change growth and understanding touches every level of work and takes a lot of organizing of experiential stories and processes and ideas. But free thinking with mind mapping, structuring with wire framing, and prioritizing the order to present refined information with a program’s table of contents has led to a clear path.

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Allow me to show you the progression of some of my ideas as it relates to my “Pivotal” Organizational Change Program:

1) Mind mapping:

(Note: Image is not comprehensive. In fact, my notes look like a complicated napkin diagram that I can’t completely decipher. This can be a simple sketch.)

2) Wire framing:

(Note: Image only shows the first couple of chapters of introduction to setting up a Change Program in an organization. I like to keep wire framing activities to just the first few levels/columns of Title, Heading, and Subheading. This format is from Excel, but from it you can also create Decision Trees and process Flow Charts.)

3) Table of Contents:

(Note: Image only shows through Act 1, and I am mostly adding this note to maintain a parallel structure with the other points. The table of contents in Word can link to the headings of your document, which helps a lot with writing out the details and developing tangible and intangible projects.)

I fancy myself as a format guy, meaning I like using the simplest forms to outline, write/communicate, and refine project stories into existence. These formats we discussed in this blog post can be done with one person organizing his or her thoughts or with many people on a team through a brainstorming session, a planning session, and building the project.