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Team Thinking & Learning Centers
(Advanced methods and tools developed for
consultant and client use)
TEAM THINKING/LEARNING CENTERS
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Various possible designs of a TeamThink WallTM (diagramming surface) for analysis, problem-solving, decision-making, and strategic/long-range planning purposes.
We have been diagramming complex industries, organizations, and situations on specially constructed walls ever since 1976―years before the terms "mind mapping," "influence diagrams," "information visualization," and "information architecture" were coined. Our earliest “wall” (1976) was 160 square feet. The largest wall to date was 256+ square feet (32' wide by 8' to 10' high). It had hundreds and hundreds of objects on it―entities, factors/variables, their cause-effect or sequential relationships, and key bits of data associated with them. Such a wall model is a visual summary and integration of large amounts of both qualitative and quantitative information.
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Developing a huge diagram of a TeamThink WallTM (pictured below) helps a group deal with the complexities of a real-world situation visually. It enables analysts, planners, decision makers, and policy makers to handle (make sense of, interrelate, and brainstorm) at least 50 to 100 times more information during think-work processes. Because the most strategically significant information is on the wall right in front of them, and because they have helped develop everything on the diagram from scratch, they need not try to juggle it all mentally. [Remember Miller's "Magical number seven (factors mentally manageable at a time), plus or minus two."] This leaves their minds free to analyze, sequence, interrelate, and/or integrate many bits of information more easily and effectively, to be more insightful and creative, and to better recognize what's going on, why, and what to do about it. [Developing a DKB involves "information visualization architecture or design."]
The above 256 square foot wall contains an Illinois county's
1992 Long-Range Economic Development Planning analysis. We
use this example because we do not make public our business
clients' strategic planning DKBs (diagrammatic knowledge bases).
Diagrammatic knowledge bases (DKBs) can illustrate and contain both qualitative and quantitative information regarding, for example:
entities and variables operating in a company's industry, marketplace, and external business environment;
the operational, intelligence, and logistical activities or phenomena occurring throughout an entire theater of military operations; or
how socio-technical/cultural factors are influencing the motivation, attitudes, behavior, activities, interactions, flows of task-related inputs and outputs, and performance both within and between organizational levels and units.
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One design aids in performing a “time-lapse environment-business scan” for long-range planning purposes (i.e., for analyses of scenarios).
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A hardware/software system for projecting a Diagrammatic Knowledge Base (a computerized wall diagram of, for example, one of the three items above) onto a rear projection wall―real time, seamlessly, and in its entirety in the type of strategic planning warroom pictured above, so that it can be used and modified interactively. The rear projection wall is not just one screen or a series of monitors, but a whole "continuous wall." [Using our design, a 256 square foot rear projection wall can be constructed for about $10-12,000!]
TeamThink SystemsSM
Division of R. D. Cecil and Company
1151 Middle Road — Suite B
Dixon, Illinois 61021-3904
Sales and Support
Telephone:
1-815-312-2571
Hours: 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Central (Chicago) Time, Monday through Friday
Fax: as above, but call ahead
E-mail: rdc1@rdcecil.com