Collaborative Business Planning with Mind Maps

Graham Hughes welcomes Don Turner, Chief Operating and Engineering Officer at Nex Clean Energy, who shares his extensive experience using mind mapping across various industries, including automotive, aerospace, AI, and energy. (See below for video time stamps) He emphasizes that he uses mind maps for everything—from strategy development and business planning to engineering, marketing, and sales. A standout example is when he and his team used mind mapping to create a 67-page business plan in just three days, impressing investors. He highlights how mind mapping enhances communication, simplifies complex ideas, and improves collaboration, even for those new to the method. Don discusses the integration of AI with mind mapping and how it assists in brainstorming and structuring ideas. He also introduces the Vision, Objectives, Goals, and Initiatives (VOGI) Framework, which he developed to streamline strategic planning in over 100 companies. He advocates for greater adoption of mind mapping in education and business, stressing its ability to enhance critical thinking. Through real-world examples—including staff meetings, marketing brochures, and investor presentations—he demonstrates mind mapping’s power to boost productivity and clarity. Don concludes by predicting that AI will further revolutionize mind mapping, making it an even more essential tool for decision-making and innovation. 00:00 - Introduction - Don summarises his career spanning automotive, aerospace, AI, and energy sectors, and current role as COO and Chief Engineering Officer at an energy company. 04:19 - Mind Mapping for Strategy and Business Planning – Don explains that he doesn’t do anything without mind mapping. He shares an example of using mind maps to create a business plan in three days instead of six weeks. He explains why he prefers Xmind due to its usability and platform flexibility. 09:40 - Mind Mapping as a Communication and Thinking Tool – Don shares how he required his own children to use mind maps for problem-solving. Also how he uses mind maps for explaining complex ideas, such as pyrolysis in energy production. 17:46 - Practical Business Uses of Mind Mapping – Don shares how he uses mind mapping in Engineering & Product Design: for visualizing plant designs; Marketing & Sales: using Mind maps as marketing brochures for clients; Meeting Management structuring staff meetings using mind maps; real-time Collaboration: sharing maps with colleagues for feedback and updates. 24:23 - Mind Mapping for Decision Making and Education – Don demonstrates using AI to generate initial structures for mind maps; explores the role of Mind mapping in education for teaching thinking skills; explains how he uses it in strategy consulting and root-cause analysis (Ishikawa diagrams); and its value in encouraging critical thinking over rote learning. 31:06 - Mind Mapping for Strategy Development – Don Introduces the Vision, Objectives, Goals, and Initiatives (VOGI) framework used in over 100 companies to align strategy with execution. He shares examples of structuring corporate strategies and communicating them visually. 43:19 - Live Brainstorming and Whiteboard Mind Mapping – Don shares an example of using a whiteboard to develop a process improvement strategy in two hours. He reveals how a venture capitalist was impressed by a handwritten mind map as a company presentation tool. 47:38 - Future of Mind Mapping & AI Integration – Don explores AI’s growing role in mind mapping. He shows the importance of structured thinking and the ability to ask the right questions with the aid of mind maps.