The best $10 iPad app

by

At lunch on Monday, one of my friends showed me an iPad app for mind mapping. I’d heard of such things and hadn’t been too excited, but he insisted on showing me how he uses it in meetings with clients, prospects and other contacts to brainstorm … and then email them the picture immediately. So I downloaded it on Tuesday and by Thursday … here’s where I really want to write “it changed my life” but I’m instead going to say it is my new favorite iPad app and $10 very well spent.

I’ve been in the midst of an intense assessment all week, a combination of interviews, workshops and data gathering … the kind of week that invented the phrase “drinking from a firehose”. I’m a big believer in doing projects like this intensely, to move through quickly to hypotheses and get on to figuring out the solutions. The art of it is pulling out the top issues and then hypotheses for how to fix them from all the other noise. It is something my brain and our teams together have learned to do even more effectively over the years, but this is the first time I’ve found a tool that’s really helped support that thinking. Every time a new idea popped up this week, I just went into my master mind map and added it. Oh, and I used another mind map to storyboard the deck. And then I created a little example for this blog and I timed it. 5 minutes. Its extremely fast and even less disruptive than taking a note somewhere. It is great working individually or when brainstorming with others.

So check it out – let me know if you like it as much as me! Its called iThoughtsHD

READ MORE

The Magic of Mortals

The Magic of Mortals

Daily we wake up to new developments in automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). Across sectors and industries, automated solutions prove highly successful in surpassing the capacity of the human brain for certain tasks, improving...

read more
Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leaders have been trying to crack the code on talent development for years. Recent studies have shown, however, that strength-focused leadership [read: intentionally elevating the qualities that already come naturally to us] is the clear winner for developing talent...

read more
Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

  Listen to any earnings call or executive presentation and you will likely hear the terms “top line” and “bottom line.” These are words used to describe a business’s performance. According to Investopedia, the words are defined as follows: Top line refers to the...

read more
Your Personality Is Showing

Your Personality Is Showing

There I was, minding my own business one evening, digging into my organization's SEO performance (as one does), when I came across something interesting. Search terms related to "MBTI" — or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel...

read more
Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Hello. My name is Monique, and I’m a change manager who hates change.   After years of receiving “consulting therapy” from various mentors, I am now able to say these words out loud and proudly. But for a long time, it felt more like an admission of guilt. I mean, who...

read more
Creativity as a Cure

Creativity as a Cure

The topic of creative solutioning has been front and center these days as we talk more and more about organizational adaptability in the face of dynamic and uncertain times. For example, I recently read about a project that got me thinking about specific priorities...

read more
Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Big news over here as we close out the year - we have been acquired by Pariveda, a 750-person consulting firm in 12 markets across North America! We are now “Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company” and I’ll be serving as the Managing Vice President continuing to lead...

read more
Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Dallas, December 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announces the acquisition of Thought Ensemble. With the addition of Thought Ensemble, Pariveda now provides holistic business strategy,...

read more
Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

It was about a year ago that we first started hearing about Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085) and I knew it was going to be national news. We’d just gotten past the “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, and our lovely state was trying to break new ground...

read more