Let's Try Something Different! Mind-Mapping Using Images, Not Words

Let's focus on the invention process—that crucial early stage where you generate and explore ideas. I’ve found that while traditional mind maps often rely on simple word associations, they can be much more powerful when we tie them to our lived experiences and mental images. By visualizing specific moments instead of just jotting down abstract terms, you create more resonance for both yourself and your readers. 

Here is a video: https://youtu.be/UsS-Scys0TU 

Try mind-mapping using images and imagistic descriptions of experiences rather than word associations. 

Key Learning Points

Move Beyond Words: I encourage you not to just list categories like "Success." Instead, try to visualize a specific image or memory you associate with that word. 

Harness Lived Experience: Please use your actual experiences to build your evidence. This makes your writing authentic and helps your narrative "flow." 

Create Emotional Resonance: When you write from a place of sensory detail and personal truth, you'll find it connects more deeply with your audience. 

Categorize and Connect: I like to use mind mapping to help see relationships between different ideas, then drill down into the actual experiences within those categories. 

Reflection Questions

When you think of a broad topic for your paper, what is the very first mental image—not just a word—that comes to mind?

How does describing a lived experience from your own life change how you provide evidence compared to using a general fact?

If you feel "stuck," how might my method of mapping with images help you find a new direction?

Success During a Downturn: Interview with Steven Tedesco, Running Foxes Petroleum. Innovators & Entrepreneurs Series

Achieving success during downturns is a function of vision and leadership, and it requires a person to think creatively and independently. These are just a few of the insights provided by Dr. Steven Tedesco, Running Foxes Petroleum, in the two interviews presented here -- written, and also via YouTube. Welcome to an informative interview with a successful entrepreneur who has used science, technology, strategic thinking, and pro-active environmental responsibility to innovate and create a dynamic, thriving company.

1.    What is your company and its primary focus?
Running Foxes Petroleum Inc.  Our focus is shallow conventional oil and gas, waterflooding, coal bed methane and shale gas.  We focus in Eastern Kansas, Western Missouri, Southeast Colorado and in eastern central Utah.  Our goal is to target reservoirs that are simple in nature and do not require complex fracking and drilling.  Geologic risk is minimal.  The real risk is proper execution which is easier to control.

Dr. Steven Tedesco

2.    What is your background?
Geologist by training with three degrees.  BS from Northeastern University, Masters from Southern Illinois University and PhD from Colorado School of Mines.  33 years’ experience in the oil and gas business with over 2 years of experience in nuclear, mining and geotech.  I have also become very will versed doing petroleum engineering, land, marketing and contract negotiations.

3.    What are some of the lessons / insights from hard rock geology that apply to petroleum geology?
The use of technologies, such as surface geochemistry and aeromagnetics, that can be successfully applied to oil and gas.  The earth is a dynamic process and both metals and petroleum accumulations have very similar characteristics to each other.  Therefore all technologies work to some degree on an type of deposits.

4.  How would you characterize a successful entrepreneur?

 Interview with Dr. Tedesco on LifeEdge, October 15, 2015.

A successful entrepreneur has to have vision.  Seeing opportunities where others see nothing.  For example distressed gas assets can be acquired very inexpensively.  Most of the industry does not like gas.  But as history shows both oil and gas products go through cycle.  By buying gas assets now, improving them either with working over or drilling new wells at lower costs will only benefit the value of the assets when prices go higher and costs to rework and drill new wells will also rise.

5.    What are some of the opportunities that an entrepreneur would identify during a downturn?
Looking for distressed properties.  In a downturn multiple companies and individuals get over extended and this presents opportunities to acquire assets at minimal cost.  Many of these assets will be like diamonds in the rough.  With a little work their value can be greatly improved.  The difficulty is to finance these opportunities.  It requires companies to take a contrarian attitude despite the overall thought of low prices for a perceived extended period of time.  History shows those that identify the bottom of any cycle enter and exit the next boom very successfully.  Also the entrepreneur has to be committed to the vision.  People tend to follow in herds in industry.  The visionary needs to ignore to some extent the people around him or her who attempt to dissuade them from pursuing the vision.  The vision and opportunity does need to be well thought out from all angles such as geology, engineering, operations, land, regulations, costs, IRR, etc.  

6.    Do you have any books / key thinkers that you would recommend?
I believe we can learn a lot from past leaders.  I read books on George Washington, Robert E. Lee, George Mitchell, Lord Thomas Cochrane, Patton, Kennedy, General Rosecrans, Woodrow Wilson, Ho Chi Min, Churchill, Reagan, to name a few.  These are leaders despite some eventually being on the wrong side exude commitment, resolve and leadership in both good and bad times consistently.

Note:  Steve Tedesco will be presenting a paper at AAPG's Revitalizing Reservoirs Geosciences Technology Workshop in San Antonio, December 1-2. 

Be a Decision Architect: Structure Your Mind, Your Processes

The basis of bad decision-making is human behavior.  But behavior is often simply reinforced by current decision-making processes. In order to break through, one needs to redesign the environment, and be the architect of the context and conditions.

That's a strong statement, but it's what John Beshears and Francesco Gino have asserted in their article, "Leaders as Decision Architects" which appeared in the May 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review. 

 
For Beshears and Gino, the most important elements for making sound decisions and doing it in a timely fashion is to create a framework that facilitates good decision-making. The most critical elements are the following:

1.  Motivation:  All members of decision-making team must feel motivated. After all, decisions involve risk and a sense of vulnerability. To overcome the inner resistances that may arise, it's important to make sure there are rewards, both intrinsic and extrinsic. Without good motivation strategies, and ones which are flexible and meet the needs of individuals, it's unlikely that the project will be carried through to fruition.

2.  Cognitive Bias:  Daniel Kahnemann and others have long demonstrated that what makes cognitive bias so insidious is the fact that it's invisible to us. So the first step is to recognize that there is bias. This often requires the view of a neutral outsider, since those within the organization are often afflicted with the highly contagious (but often useful) groupthink, or worse, folie a deux.  So, a neutral outsider can identify the presence of cognitive bias. Then, the challenge of further determining what kind of bias it may be, and then the underlying assumptions that allow it to exist (and which make it hard to resist or eliminate). We all have our pet ideas about reality and about identity -- and, they can be quite destructive. One of the most useful tactics is to gather evidence that denies / fails to confirm the preconceived notion. Disconfirming evidence needs to be plentiful and reviewed often, because those who suffer from cognitive bias tend to reject or discount evidence that does not align with what they want to see.

3.  Align with Decision-Makers' Best Interests:  Cognitive dissonance is one of the surest ways to paralysis, and yet it's surprising how many times people are asked to do things that are not in their best interests.  Often, too, individuals try to force themselves to do things that go against their own best interests as well. It's amazing how often we may be unaware that we're either asking individuals, team members, partners, even loved ones to do things that are not in their best interests, and then we exhibit surprise when there is resistance to the idea.

4.  Positive Emotions: Caring About the Outcome. It's hard to do something when you don't care. It's even harder if you feel aversion. So, whatever the decision is, the issue needs to be something that the decision makers care about, and their feelings must be positive.

5.  Redesign the Context.  This is where the concept of being an architect can really be useful. If you can change the structural environment in which you're making your decision, then you have a chance of seeing it in a new light. If not, you're likely to be impeded by resistance, bias, emotional blockage.

Finally, once the steps have been taken, it's important to focus on solutions. Instead of trying to implement or evaluate numerous solutions, the key is to find one and then try one's best to implement it. There will be variations in the ways in which the solution can be implemented, and it can be modified while in the process.

Reference:
Beshears, J. and Gino, F. (2015) "Leaders as decision architects." Harvard Business Review. May 2015: 51-62.

Leadership / decision-making are mission critical.