A Map to Drive IT Transformation

Jim at McGee's Musings blogs today about one man's attempt to help corporate executives demystify IT. You can read his review of "Blind Spot" by Charlie Field here. What interested me was his reproduction of a diagram in Field's book.

Here is the map as it appears in the book (click on image to enlarge):


I'm sure it's a great paradigm. But what I sometimes don't get is how anyone is supposed to actually use diagrams like this. It reminds me of a day-long seminar I went to once. The teaching event was centered around 100-plus PowerPoint slides (heaven help us), each one explaining key things we needed to do to be better at our jobs. It was good information. At the end of the event, the organizers ceremoniously went around to each attendee and handed them a 3-ring notebook with, you guessed it...100-plus PowerPoint slide reprints. How, I wondered, was anyone supposed to put into action the great resources we had been shown (and at a pretty price, by the way).

How much better to exchange document forms that people work with. Take, just for example, the same diagram expressed as a mind map (click on image to enlarge):


For so many people, the form in which we receive information can make it challenging to interact with that information. I guess that's what I love about mind mapping. It's so easy to add content, whether that content is your ideas, hyperlinks, hidden notes, icons, etc. It's so easy to drag and drop the information around, to quickly move to anywhere in that body of information to add new thoughts and ideas that come to you as you view the entire body (or a selected view of it) from "above."

Maps make normal linear documents seem so... so 20th Century.