Well the RSA have just produced this video summary in their Animate series from Dan Pink which summarises some of the other problems about paying bonuses, including a study at M.I.T. sponsored apparently by the USA Federal Reserve Bank.

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However the acronym STINKS is of no use in remembering this list of Mind Mapping Benefits but it was good in grabbing your attention. If you think you hate Mind Mapping because it never seemed to work for you, you come here for mutual support. My message to you would be find a really good teacher who will guarantee you will get it or your money back

OR

You are a champion of Mind Mapping – you saw the headline and thought “what drivel is this guy promoting?”

So anyway here is STINKS

Mind Mapping:

• Is great for SORTING the thoughts and Ideas you have in your Head. We often suffer from Mental Clutter. Mind Mapping is a great de-clutterer for your thinking. Mind Mapping is first and foremost a “Thought Organisation Tool”

• is a great tool for TEACHING. Teaching yourself to learn and using it as a guide to help you help others learn. Mind Mapping was originally devised by Tony Buzan as a tool for study and learning

• is exceedingly useful for INTEGRATING thoughts and Ideas. Helps you see the wood from the trees and in doing so helps to integrate important ideas together into a new ‘whole’

• means NO MORE LISTS. Well not quite. Lists are very useful if they are for temporary stuff – like doing a to-do list, stuff that you want for today but you won’t need it for tomorrow. The great thing about lists is they take no time to prepare. However for stuff that you need to remember for the longer term Lists are useless and they are lazy. It takes much much more time to learn and remember a list than it does a list that has been reformatted as a Mind Map. (But it takes longer to format a Mind Map than it does a list). So the golden rule lists for temporary stuff Mind Maps for remembering stuff

• helps you to uncover the KNOWLEDGE that you didn’t know you knew (the ‘trigger’ effect of Mind Maps can rekindle past memories)

• is very good for SPEAKERS. Good to plan a speech, rehearse a speech, and deliver a speech – it just saves so much time compared to any other technique (I did a presentation on this last year at the Annual Convention of the Professional Speakers Association that went down really well).

Oh and the ‘S’ can also stand for SEXY. Mind Maps are just so much sexier than lists or bullet points.

So there you have it. Mind Mapping STINKS

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Here I will touch upon Herbert Benson’ work on the relaxation response and some more research from Csikszentmihalyi.

Csikszentmihalyi’s earlier work on the psychology of happiness had coined the word “flow” (others refer to this as “being in the zone”) a state of relaxed focus attention when humans can achieve extraordinary results with minimal effort.

In his recent research on creativity Csikszentmihalyi links the conditions for flow to the conditions for creativity.

Some of the conditions for “flow” to occur are in the table below:

Let’s look at these features from the traditional management/business perspective

In the Compliant Company many things are happening to prevent this human condition of “flow”.

• Arbitrary targets destroy (1).
• Annual appraisal is the antithesis of (2).
• Setting challenges to achieve targets without a method for achievement upsets (3).
• Supervision, having your “activity” measured + arbitrary targets are major distractions for (4).
• A Blame culture sabotages (5)
• A reward culture sabotages (6)
• Extrinsic rewards sabotage (7)

The key requirement for attaining a creative or ‘peak’ experience

Herbert Benson has given some great insight here.

Hiss early research was on the “relaxation response” and he was the first western doctor/scientist to study the abilities of eastern yogis.

His recent work has been on what he calls the “breakout principle” – what happens when people get their “ah-ha” moments and make a breakthrough in their thinking.

What he has shown is that in most cases of creative solutions to complex problems there is first a period of intense mental struggle with a task. (Activity and task merge, much like Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow”). Then there is a period of “release”, of deep relaxation, and this release leads to the breakout point or the “peak experience”. (Benson has demonstrated that under these conditions the brain produces “puffs” of nitric oxide. Zohar has shown this is associated with the production of “coherent” brainwaves which correlate with these breakthrough moments)

So this helps to explain why we get our most creative moments when walking, or in the shower, or having a massage etc. Intense activity followed by deep relaxation is a necessary requirement for ‘breakthrough’ moments.

How does your company operate to ensure there are opportunities for lots of creative moments in the workplace?

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Intrinsic motivation is sabotaged by rewards. It’s almost that simple.

With rewards, the focus is on the reward not on the desire to complete a task or to make a difference. People start to do the tasks for the reward rather than the satisfaction of doing something of value.

Old Psychology demonstrated that animals do things for reward or to get away from pain (the carrot or stick approach). Old Psychology holds when the animal has survival needs unsatisfied (the hungry cat can be tempted but the satisfied cat can’t) and the theory of manipulation by carrot or stick holds true (Skinner’s original work with animals actually only worked when they were frightened and half-starved).

New Psychology is different. Creation Companies are those that are becoming more and more tuned in to New Psychology and New Thinking Principles. A Creation Company will recognise that when a human being has most of their basic needs met, carrot and stick is not as effective as Old Psychology predicts (thought those that would say they are ‘hungry’ for success can be tempted by the really big rewards).

But as Alfie Kohn and now Daniel Pink have affirmed there is very little evidence that rewards improve human performance in the long-term. And the main reason is that extrinsic motivators sabotage intrinsic motivation. Linking pay to performance therefore sabotages long-term performance. The Banking Crisis is an example that partially arose when companies, and individuals, focussed on the carrots and not on the service. Lose sight of the task and you lose sight of the potential disastrous consequences of doing things for the wrong reasons. Thus it is not therefore a question of moderating the bonus culture,  with legislation if necessary, (as Politicians and Business Leaders would suggest) rather the question is how can we abolish the bonus culture.

We need to find mechanisms whereby people benefit from the long-term success of an organisation rather than rewarded for the profit they make on behalf of the company as individuals. We need this for companies to become Creation Companies that produce goods and services for the general good and well-being of people, life and the planet. That do things for the seventh-generation long term and not next year’s wage packet.

If you are a leader and you are not convinced by the idea that rewards sabotage intrinsic motivation (and thus also sabotage creativity and creative thought) then read Alfie Kohn’s “Punishment by Reward” or view Dan Pink’s video on the surprising science of motivation here

Now is the time for leaders to wake up to the fact that much of what we do in the guise of ‘management’ is detrimental to improvement (see here the Seven Deadly Diseases of Management)

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A mini series on HOW Mind Mapping improves personal effectiveness and productivity,whilst comparing and contrasting the various alternative graphical mapping techniques with ’scores on the doors’

Lists or bullet points do not easily show the big picture, key points and the detail easily or clearly on a single page.

All graphical mapping techniques do better than lists.

The rules of Mind Mapping enable more information to be summarised on the paper space than is possible with other graphic techniques.

More efficient use of the paper space with less clutter is a key USP for Mind Mapping over other graphical mapping techniques

So how good is each technique at seeing the big picture, key points and detail?

Lists 1/10

Spider Diagrams 5/10

Concept Bubble Diagrams 5/10

Mind Maps 9/10

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We need to understand that we can all be creative and we can all learn to become more creative.

So what can we learn by looking at the background/opportunities of people who have produced some really big creative ideas? What can companies learn in order to ensure that creativity happens in the workplace? I have already discussed some of the factors in a company that allow creativity to happen here.

However are there any personal characteristics that a Creation Company should look for when they employ new personnel? Well it’s not necessarily what we have been led to believe. And this also means that personality type profiles with an ‘either-or’ questioning approach can mislead.

In a landmark study on this subject, Csikszentmihalyi looked at the personality characteristics of ninety-one exceptional people (each of whom had made a difference to a major domain of culture). What he found (here) was that the creative people in his study had complex personalities. ((4) (Csikszentmihalyi   Creativity. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention  ISBN 0-06-092820-4)

So if the question was “are they introvert or extravert” the answer was both (so this has implications for “old science” personality questionnaires that assumes an either/or approach to personality). What he found was that creative people could be both energetic and restful; smart and naïve; playful and disciplined; fantasy oriented and reality grounded; extrovert and introvert; humble and proud; masculine side and feminine side; conservative and rebellious; passionate and objective and could “suffer” yet enjoy what they did.

Thus for creativity to blossom in the workplace, we need to value complex personality, not expect people to fit into neat boxes. Indeed we need to allow people to “be themselves” and to honour the uniqueness in everyone.

So maybe, upon reflection you have a complex personality. Your ‘personality’ is not the box that some survey or ‘expert’ put you in. Maybe also you are fortunate to work in a ‘creation company’ (ie one that is or is becoming). Then what other factors appear to be important for each individuals creativity to emerge?

Coming Next: The Circumstances for Creativity

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