The Story (so far) of how Mind Mapping
has influenced my Life

Grenville Payne, Buzan South Africa

YOUR BRAIN "UNPLUGGED"

What “unplugged” means to me:

“When music is labeled acoustic, unplugged, or unwired, the assumption seems to be that other types of music are cluttered by technology and overproduction and therefore aren't as pure.”
Craig Conley, Splendid Magazine.

Mind Mapping has enabled me to discover that “Your Brain”, and thus your thinking, is “Unplugged” when you use Mind Maps.

Your thoughts are much more organized, free of clutter, flowing and uninhibited.

When I look at a completed Mind Map its like listening to the natural sound of music from an unamplified musical instrument. Impactful, clear and pure.

Since the early 1970s when I first encountered Tony Buzan's "Mind Mapping" concept, I have had many "Aha!" moments when I have been amazed by the power of the tool and its ability to "liberate" the thinking and learning capacity of the brain. Here are a few of my "Aha!" moment stories.

REALISING THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL'S DREAM

A Mind Map, drawn on the back of a School Prize Giving Programme in under ten minutes, raised R240,000 and built a Media Centre in just two years.

In the mid 1980s, as members of the parents committee, my wife and I were enjoying a cup of tea with the other members and teachers in the Staff Room minutes before the start of the Annual Primary School Prize Giving.

Our recently appointed, young, enthusiastic Head Master strode purposefully up to us, academic gown billowing out behind him, and issued a finger waving challenge in my direction: "You are in computers, yes?" "Yes, I am": I agreed, blissfully unaware of the nerve shattering, adrenalin pumping request that was about to follow. "I have a twenty minute gap in this morning's programme straight after the Welcome and before the Guest Speaker. Please stand up and tell the parents why we need a Media Centre with a library, an auditorium with back projection and a computer centre with twenty five personal computers. Okay?"

Before I realized what I had said in response, the Head Master had thanked me, turned on his heel and sped off to the hall and onto the stage with the staff and the members of the parents committee in tow. Waiting in the Hall were eight hundred children and two hundred parents!

On taking my seat, fortunately some rows from the front of the stage, with head and heart pounding, I immediately searched for something to make notes on. All I had was the Prize Giving Programme. An A4 size sheet of paper, folded in half to make four A5 pages. Thankfully the back page was blank. The Head Master was in full voice welcoming everyone. I stared hopelessly at the blank page. What was I going to say? "Draw a Mind Map!" I exclaimed to myself.

Three main branches, Introduction (sub branches: Greeting and Purpose (what the headmaster said we need..) ,Body (sub branches: each item on the head masters list – say a few  supporting words on each - not too difficulty as a parent myself.) , Close (ask for the “money”!). And away I went!

My talk was done in my allotted twenty minutes. Questions followed for another twenty minutes, much to the annoyance of the Guest Speaker, who never forgave me. As we went along I added to my Mind Map the comments and information that flowed from the interaction with the Parents, Teachers and Pupils. The idea had acquired a life of its own.

That Mind Map, on the back of a School Prize Giving Programme raised R240,000.00 and built the Media Centre in just two years. The largest amount previously raised by that Primary School been R60,000.00 for a swimming pool. That had taken three painstaking years of Cake Sales, Raffles, Golf Days and Fun Runs.

Aha! It’s not just the Mind Map, it’s what the Mind Map does!  

THE ENCHANTED LOOM

A metaphor for the Brain

“The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of travelling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns.“ From “Man on his nature”, 1942, by Charles S. Sherrington, neuroscientist.
 

Neurons. (With due acknowledgement to the copyright holder should one exist)

A group of children clutching handfuls of giant coloured crayons, crawling all over the floor with Tony and drawing on large sheets of paper with great purpose. That is the lasting picture I have in my mind. Tony Buzan had touched the minds of these special children. Their brains were spinning out a pattern of thought, energised by the enchantment of the game.

The teachers at this school for children with learning difficulties had, in desperation, taken a bold step to address their problem. For two to three years they had been teaching the three "Rs" (reading, writing and arithmetic) to a group of children aged from around seven to twelve years. In the case of arithmetic in particular, in spite of many hours spent, the teachers felt they had not been able to teach the children even the basics of arithmetic.

On the best days general communication with the children was challenging. Eliciting consistent, unambiguous answers from the children about the basic functions of arithmetic appeared beyond the teachers. None of the children could clearly show that they understood what had been taught.

The BBC had recently broadcast a series of programmes on the workings of the brain that were presented by a certain Tony Buzan. Sensing that Tony Buzan's techniques and knowledge of how the brain works may help them to communicate better with the children they invited him to their school.

Tony began by assuring the teachers that the children probably knew much, much more than the teachers believed they did. He was right. In less than an hour, the children, crawling all over the floor with Tony, clutching handfuls of giant coloured crayons, had drawn a web-like diagram, festooned with a colourful assortment of stick men, balls and fruit arranged to show quite clearly on each branch of the web that they knew that arithmetic is made up of adding, subtracting, multiplication and division.

Needless to say, the teachers were astounded, and proud to boot. Tony Buzan had given them a means of engaging the children in the whole learning experience. Watching this all unfold on a TV Programme called "The Enchanted Loom" in the early 1970s left a permanent impression on me.

In a very short space of time I had learnt a lot about the brain, and had witnessed the power, simplicity and facilitative ease of an intuitively engaging technique that accessed and recorded thought. Tony Buzan called it Mind Mapping.

USE YOUR HEAD

A few short years later I saw a business colleague reading a copy of Tony Buzan's book "Use Your Head". I borrowed it and thus began the practice of using Mind Maps almost every day of my life.

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world".
Archimedes

GROUP THINK: A LONG ENOUGH LEVER…

We develop a powerful business tool using a Mind Mapping

Our sessions always seemed to ignite an energy that no obstacle, interruption, or distraction could impede. What we sought would emerge, no matter what.

For six years in the nineties I owned and ran a small high-tech network analysis services business. We solved complex problems for large corporates who ran complex networks they depended on. Just two of us started the business. We grew to fourteen and then went back down to six just before we sold to the local South African Office of an American multi-national.

As a small team we had to find ways to combine our strengths to be effective at solving problems that the on-site resources of a large corporate could not. That's why they turned to us. We had the sexy tools and the know-how.

Process and structure evolve

At first the "team" thing just kind of happened. We would huddle around a problem, come up with a plan of attack, implement, solve the problem and move on. Great. Except, when the pressures of time, volume and difficulty built up, for the "team" thing to work, we found we needed ground rules and a framework that people could rely on and follow instinctively, knowing that by doing what was expected of them the pressures would abate and the objective would be met.

As we stumbled along, a more structured approach grew experientially with us, and it worked. We solved many problems in good time and effectively.

It was only years later, after we had become employees of the American company, when someone remarked that he admired our approach to problem solving as a team, that we sat back and looked at what we were doing.

The Framework: A subtle, generative, thinking process of Mind Mapping

Essentially, it went like this. One of us would receive a request for assistance. This could be to solve a customer's network problem, produce a solution for a proposal to meet a customer's requirement, or to respond to a formal Request for a Proposal or Tender.

The Question

We would first meet informally, pulling our chairs together to form a circle. One of us would present the request or problem and then we would all discuss it with a view to establishing a consensus on what the real question was that was being asked of us. Consensus sometimes came quickly. A single statement by one of the team would, bar a few words, be accepted as "it" and we would then proceed. More often than not it took a few rounds of iterative discussion to arrive at "sufficient" consensus to move on. I always felt better about those outcomes that had been "cooked" a bit by the open discussion and the  challenges of the team "consensus" building process.

Next we would move into the more formal setting of a meeting room, behind a closed door. The whiteboard would be cleaned completely and the "question" would be written in the centre of the whiteboard and a circle drawn around it.

The Answer

Once the "question" was up on the board it signaled the start of a free-for-all brain storming session. Anything and everything said, in no particular order, went onto the Mind Map. In the beginning it always looked a scary mess. Then, and this happened every time, at a point in the discourse, one or two groups of thoughts would begin to coalesce, connections and associations not seen before would be made and the "answers" would become apparent. With this phase the room would grow quiet. Then, as if sensing "victory" the quiet would be broken by a further period of excited Q&A until we were all in agreement. Done.

Delivered

A logical and appropriate slice of the solution would then be allocated to each member of the team and we would all spend a few minutes copying our respective pieces from the Mind Map on the whiteboard. I would write down a copy of the entire Mind Map and manage the Project from that "master Mind Map".

We had designed a generic format for our responses that we called a "Proposed Statement of Work". We would use the Mind Map to complete this document as the basis for our formal submission. These were key components of our reliable, well thought out, tried and tested framework. The "whiteboarding" was the fun part.

Summary
These were key components of our reliable, well thought out, tried and tested framework. The "white-boarding" was the fun part.

I had not found a word for this "process" until I read one of Tony Buzan's books where he referred to "Group Think". Although our "process" had the hallmark of brainstorming, working as we did around a Mind Mapping approach and consensus building, it became more. No problem was too big. To us, our "Group Think" had become a long enough lever to move the world.

SOUTH AFRICA: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES…

On Saturday June 16, 2007, I joined the company of the Warriors of the Mind.

After years of using Mind Mapping fruitfully and teaching many others to do so too, I was delighted to meet with Tony Buzan on his June 2007 visit to South Africa.

In two short months I wrapped up my working career and turned my focus full time to what I have always loved doing: teaching and sharing.

My chosen vehicle for this purpose is Tony Buzan's world of Mind Mapping and Mental Literacy. To this end I represent Tony and his organisation in South Africa.

In my spare time I have been researching a concept I have named "Strategic Awareness" which I intend building and sharing along the way. Under the banner of "Strategic Awareness", my business focus is inspiring growth through creativity and innovation.

My journey continues, with more focus and energy than ever before.

Start your journey by attending a Buzan Mind Mapping programme. Become a Buzan Licensed Instructor