U.S.

AIR MAGAZINE
::J;;i\';.d STRATEGIES .....> ./i
September, 1988

Mind Mapping
By John Grossmann

U.S. Army. One key part

ichaelGelb sometimes gets strange
of his program is a detailed
explanation of the meaning
behind these frequent scrib-
blings, a technique called
mind mapping that more
and more executives are
using to boost creativity,
organize their thinking, and
even dramatically increase
meeting productivity.
Mind mapping was cre-
ated by Gelb's colleague
Tony Buzan, author of Use
Both Sides of Your Brain,
as a tool for tapping the
seemingly limitless power
of the mind. Imagine, sug-
gests Gelb, the total num-
ber of connections in the
entire global telephone net-
work. "The neurocircuitry
of the human brain is 1,400
times more complex," he
says, adding that research
now indicates a person prob-
ably uses less than one-tenth of one

M looks from passersby. People will see

lllm busily filling a sheet of paper with
an octopus-like diagram, scribbling
away in several colors. Asked what
he's doing, Gelb may, depending upon
the task at hand, explain that he's
planning his workday, or writing a
speech, or even generating a five-
year plan for his company. "It looks
like you're having fun,"
someone usually says. "I
am," replies Gelb, by
then often well on his
way to landing another
client for his High Per-
formance Learning Cen-
ter, based in Washing-
ton, D.C. As director,
Gelb has presented his
three-day seminars to
managers at mM, Du-
Pont; Polaroid, Digital (i~:,;,c:(:if:'/';~
Equipment, and even the :'!;j':j,;';''''',r,
percent of his or her brain power.
What is mind mapping? A mind map,
Gelb explains, is a nonlinear way of
organizing ideas: "It's a picture of the
way the brain works. It allows you to
get access to your smarts."
Faced with the task of writing a
speech, most executives would ready
a batch of Roman numerals and
revert to the outlining skills
taught to them in high
school. That's a big mis-
take, says Gelb: "Outlining
is a prematurely linear way
of expressing your thoughts.
You're forced to order your
ideas before you come up
with them, which puts a
severe clamp on your abil-
ity to generate ideas.
"Say your speech is on
marketing bowling balls.
YQumight start by drawing

7~ SEPTE:-'IBER 19KI:! USAIR

a picture of a bowling ball with a
dollar sign on it-after all, that's
what your speech is about. Sure, it's
corny, but corny and silly will make
it more memorable. It also makes it
fun and will help loosen you up.
People who are overly serious tend
to furrow their brows, hold their
breath-and think less effectively."
The next step, Gelb explains, is to
free-associate key words having to
do with the topic. "I'm not a marketer
nor a bowling ball salesman, but I'm
going to make up a speech on
marketing bowling balls," he says,
pen raised for just an instant. "Who
will my customers be? Where are we
going to get the bowling balls? Where
will we manufacture them? What
problems might we encounter?"
As he speaks, he draws pinwheel
lines radiating out from the bowling
ball he's drawn at the center of his
page. Atop one line he prints "cus-
tomers" and on another he writes
"manufacturing."
"Make sure you print; don't write
cursively," Gelb emphasizes. "One :
of the biggest problems people have
with note-taking of any kind is that i
later they can't read their own writ-
ing. Printing also tends to encode
ideas more clearly in your memory.
Writing one key word at a time helps
you get the essence of what you're
thinking. Research has also shown
that key words and images-which
we'll get to in a minute-are the
fundamental units of our memory.
We don't remember paragraphs; we
remember key ideas and phrases."
Gelb's pen darts about some more,
adding branch lines and other impor-
tant words to the page: sporting
goods shops, union, foreign. "It starts
to create itself," he says. "Give me
another 20 minutes to mind map this,
and I could just about give a speech
on marketing bowling balls. Part of
what I teach people is learning to
trust their native intelligence. Once
you start to really think, it's remark-
able what you can come up with.
"This first phase is called the
generative phase of the map-when
you're just letting your brain go.
When you're done, you'll have your
speech on one piece of paper, and you
can easily see all the elements and
how they relate. For instance, the
union might stop us from getting
manufacturing materials, which might
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lead us to alternative sources, which
might lead us to foreign markets.
"By outlining," he continues, "I'm
less likely to think about marketing
bowling balls overseas-say, in the
Soviet Union. Some of your mind-
mapping ideas might be dopey or
irrelevant. That's fme, because the
next step is to eliminate those that
seem irrelevant or off the main
subject. Next, you say, 'Okay, I'll talk
first about who are our customers.'
Put a number one next to it. Then,
'I'll talk about the kind of organization
we need.'''
Gelb's eyes widen. "Ah, I just got
a new idea: the history of bowling and
bowling balls and how that relates to
manufacturing." He adds a line for
"history," gives it a number three,
and then draws an arrow to manufac-
turing, which he marks with a four.
"Then I'll talk about various union
problems," he continues, "and that
will lead me to alternative sources
and foreign markets. The thrust of
my speech is now becoming clear."
Suddenly it's time for a splash of
color. Says Gelb: "I might go around
with my yellow marker and highlight
the things that are most important.
With my blue marker I'll highlight the
things that I have questions about or
need to develop further. With my
green marker I'll highlight the things
that I think might be funny. I'll use
an orange marker to highlight areas
where I've raised the same point in
different branches. With regular color
codes I can get instant access to the
material at several different levels."
The next step, Gelb explains, is to
redo the map on a fresh sheet of
paper and organize it by numbered
topic, moving clockwise around the
bowling ball hub-customers at one
o'clock, organization at two o'clock,
and so on-until the entire speech is
on a single sheet of paper instead of
on a thick stack of index cards. Gelb
is not quite finished, however. To
help cue him when it is time to talk
about foreign markets, he draws a
quick picture of a Frenchman in a
beret. He looks up and explains:
"The better you get with this, the
fewer words you need. Your little
pictures will set off memory keys.
The result: You don't wind up giving
a wooden, rehearsed speech. You're
not just reading something. It be-
comes alive, more fun both to receive
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and to give. It's conducive to sponta-
neous creativity. That's one of the
real advantages of mind mapping. It's
not just good in the short term for
generating more ideas and for organ-
izing those ideas in a new and more
effective way. Keep doing this, and it
trains you to think more creatively."
Mind mapping has many other
uses. Gelb credits the technique with
cutting his long-distance phone bill
and all but eliminating time-
consuming and sometimes embar-
rassing call-backs. "How often do you
make an important phone call to
someone and immediately after you
hang up, think of other things you
wanted to say? Why does that hap-
pen?" he asks. "Because your mind
is still associating around that topic,
that person, that company. Just be-
cause you've hung up the phone, that
process doesn't stop.
"Before you make a phone call.
make a quick map of everything you
want to talk about. Youwill, by doing
that map, make note of not only the
things you want to talk about, but
you'll also get those two or three
'ahas' you'd otherwise remember
after you hung up. Furthermore,
while you talk, you might want to use
mind-mappingtechniques to take notes
of important information by jotting
down a few key words or symbols."
Gelb also recommends mind map-
ping as a way to analyze and energize
perhaps the biggest productivity sink-
hole of all: meetings. Beforehand, he
suggests, have everybody draw a
mind map of what they think the
meeting is about. The meeting might
then begin with a comparison of
maps, a sly focusing of the agenda.
Gelb's most striking suggestion,
though, is to assign someone to map
the meeting in progress-on a chalk-
board, perhaps, or better yet, on a
sheet of paper that covers the wall.
"We've sometimes covered all the
walls with paper," he says, comparing
the result to a big flow chart. "The
mapper assigns a different color to
each person and maps his ideas as he
speaks. You get instant feedback. If
you see blue everywhere, you can
realize, at a glance, that maybe blue
is talking too much. Map a meeting
from start to fmish, and you'll get a
much better sense not only of who
said what, but of the real dynamics
of the meeting." 0