Buzan - Mind Maps at Work

Black and White Mind Maps

Colour Plate Section

This book is dedicated to everyone in the worlds workplaces, whether you are a chief executive in China, an accountant in the UK or a nanny in Norway.

It is a response to the ever-expanding chorus of people who, over the years, have asked me for advice on how to apply Mind Maps to specific working situations.

On a practical level, Mind Maps can help you manage your workload, plan presentations and solve the toughest of business dilemmas. They can also fulfil the role of a life coach by helping you figure out what you want from your working life, while giving you a clear overview of complex situations and taking the stress from demanding obligations.

The more I have worked with different people in diverse organizations, the more roles I have noticed for Mind Maps in the workplace. As you will see from the examples throughout this book, Mind Maps are being used in astonishingly imaginative and creative ways in all kinds of enterprises, by all kinds of people all over the world.

On a personal level, Mind Maps have helped me appreciate that:

• The creativity of the human mind is infinite;
• Mind Maps are an expression of that infinite capacity;
• The infinite capacity of the human mind can create an infinite number of uses for Mind Maps.

This is why there is no limit to how Mind Maps help me and inspire me in the work I do and why I want to share them with you.

Whatever kind of work you do and whatever role you perform, Mind Maps at Work will help you unleash your limitless creative potential. This will enrich your life and bring you success and satisfaction both at work and at home.

Do you want to:

• Set goals and achieve them?
• Be more efficient at your job?
• Come up with ideas and creative solutions?
• Change career or start up your own business?
• Deliver excellent presentations with confidence?
• Stand up for yourself and your ideas?
• Be a key player at work?
• Lead your team to excellence?

If your answer is yes to any of these questions this book is for you. Mind Maps at Work will help you set and achieve all your goals and ambitions in the workplace and free up more time outside of it. With Mind Maps, your potential to impress your colleagues is infinite: Mind Maps are the tool for bringing out your talents and will help you make any challenge that comes your way an opportunity to demonstrate your brilliance.

Mind Maps will help you:

• Plan to perfection;
• Awaken your creative genius;
• Find inspired solutions to any problem;
• Recall facts under pressure;
• Motivate your team to success;
• Deliver lively and succinct presentations;
• Achieve a good work-life balance
• Love your work.

Mind Maps will enable you not only to survive, but to thrive positively at work seeing beyond the fog of mundane details to a shining vision of where you and your business are heading. With this clearly in mind, you can calmly plot your course, confident in your ability to reach your goal.

Mind Maps have helped all kinds of individuals and businesses to achieve their potential and become great places to work. Mind Maps have also assisted millions of individuals all over the world to realize their dreams and achieve their ambitions. You will read about some of these success stories throughout the book, for example:

• Planning perfection: Con Edison, supplier of energy to New York, used Mind Maps to plan the restoration of power to Manhattan after 9/11;
• Creative inspiration: Design engineers at Boeing use Mind Maps in group meetings to brainstorm ideas;
• Thinking big: Mind Maps have been used to plan entire cities in the Gulf;
• Success after disaster: When Veritas in Singapore burnt down, the vice-president and his colleagues used Mind Maps to get it up and running again within 10 days;
• Global rebranding: John Scully, the man credited with taking Apple computers into the big league, used Mind Maps to develop his ideas and record his research for their new look;
• Profit turnaround: Mex, a restaurant chain in the USA, was brought back from the verge of bankruptcy with Mind Maps.

When you start using Mind Maps at work, you will be astounded by how much simpler and easier things become. Mind Maps are positive catalysts for change, clearing away confusion, illuminating targets and goals and crucially promoting the acquisition of knowledge.

Mind Maps can help you at work in an infinite number of ways because, like you, Mind Maps are workers. When Mind Maps are at work, they work hard, enabling you to think radiantly and unleash your own incredible potential. Mind Maps are also team players and are invaluable in facilitating communication:

• Between individuals;
• In the boardroom;
• Across whole companies.

Mind Maps can make being part of the team enjoyable and creatively inspiring. And as a team leader, your skills as a manager and motivator will be enhanced no end.

With Mind Maps on your side, you are able to achieve a much finer sense of work-life balance. And, for those of you who work at home, you can separate your home life and work commitments and have the best of both worlds.

Mind Maps will become your allies: they will be there to support you in any working situation.

By the time you have finished reading Mind Maps at Work, you will have gathered around you a potentially infinite team of Mind Map colleagues. With the Mind Map manager, director, colleague, supporter and leader by you side, the possibilities are limitless

Let Mind Maps at Work help you do the work.