Reflection – Mind Mapping 

 Challenge   For more than ten years I have been working in the restructuring consulting business in Germany , so   my native language is not English . Usually our clients are struggling private companies facing the   threat of insolvency . From time to time we get some more strategic projects which are related to   organizational aspects of reinventing a business model but not directly facing insolvency issues . In   this case our client was a big private company within the construction business headquartered in   New York City . Our client wanted to extend its business operations to Europe , Africa and Asia and   therefore acquired several standalone companies in 48 different countries with a total of   approximately 300 production sites . The team I lead was engaged by the global CFO based in New   York and the new EMEA CFO based in London , United Kingdom . Our target was to perform an   analysis of the current processes in the finance department across all countries and come up with   suggestions for an efficient reorganization . At this point of the project neither we nor the CFO had   any idea about the processes in the different countries , the underlying IT systems , accounting   standards or which people are involved in the finance processes .       Selection   The first tool we applied was the tool of mind mapping to achieve a basic understanding of the   underlying processes , IT - systems and involved persons . We started analyzing the global budgeting   and business planning process as those are tow central activities within the finance department of a   global company . Usually if you map out these processes you can get a deep understanding of the   processes within a finance organization . We chose the tool of mind mapping as it enabled us to   organize a large amount of messy data , regardless of the amount we were not able to expect at this   time . In addition mind maps are a great tool to develop ideas about processes and also support the   communication with top management as they are easier to read than tables , spreadsheets or   reports . Like shown in the video on the mind mapping tool in week 3 this seemed to be the perfect   approach for us , maybe in combination with other tools like the storytelling tool shown in week 1 .       Application   Once we had identified the key persons in the 48 countries we started collecting all the management   reports which were generated on a monthly basis . We received an overwhelming mass of data and   reports of several thousand pages . Some of our colleagues started with mapping out similarities and   differences in a visual way using classic mind - mapping tools . As we soon were aware that a classic   mind mapping will result in a way too large overview we thought about how we could adopt the   classic mind - mapping tool to fit our needs . As most of the relevant data was aligned along the profit   and loss statement of the company we decided to come up with an adjusted version of the mind- mapping tool matching the structure of the profit and loss statement . This approach worked out and   we were able to create a visual mind map showing all relevant similarities and differences across the   48 countries . Using this tool we were able to discover differences in the calculation of key   performance indicators as well as discover such basic things like differences in calculation revenues   and profits . The mind mapping tool enabled us to be aware of one of the greatest challenges in the   whole project – missing comparability across countries due to a lack of consistency .       Insight & Approach   To come up with a solution for this we invited all responsible finance managers to several workshops   to London . We organized break - out sessions based on the insights of the mind map we created in the   weeks before the workshops . For the workshops themselves we decided to include another design   thinking tool – visualization . We used the availability of finance managers across all of Europe , Africa 

 and Asia to map out the current processes within the finance organization to come up with   consistent processes across all countries . In addition to the classic mind - mapping we also used the   concept of the Business Model Canvas ( as also described in another course of this specialization ) to   map out customer centric key performance indicators . The result of the workshops was a clear   roadmap on how we can transform the finance organization to meet the challenging needs of a   global organization . In total the project took approximately eight months and was huge success .   After the successful reorganization we decided to start over at the beginning . We created mind maps   of the reorganized processes and created Business Model Canvas of the reorganized budgeting an   reporting processes . These are now part of the internal process documentation . Our client as well as   our company were convinced that the aspects of design thinking and the visual approach helped us   to achieve our target . This is why this approach has become a standard approach in our company   now .     This leaves one last question . Would another approach have been better ? Well , I do think by starting   with the mind mapping approach we selected the correct approach for our needs based on the given   information at this time . Looking back from today it may have been a better approach to start over   with the tool of visualization instead . Visualization would have enabled us to take a closer look at the   messy processes and the highly fragmented IT environment earlier . Maybe this would have been an   advantage in the beginning of the project . However , we included visualization during the workshops   and performed a combination of mind mapping and visualization to achieve our target . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Reflection – Mind Mapping 

 Challenge   For more than ten years I have been working in the restructuring consulting business in Germany , so   my native language is not English . Usually our clients are struggling private companies facing the   threat of insolvency . From time to time we get some more strategic projects which are related to   organizational aspects of reinventing a business model but not directly facing insolvency issues . In   this case our client was a big private company within the construction business headquartered in   New York City . Our client wanted to extend its business operations to Europe , Africa and Asia and   therefore acquired several standalone companies in 48 different countries with a total of   approximately 300 production sites . The team I lead was engaged by the global CFO based in New   York and the new EMEA CFO based in London , United Kingdom . Our target was to perform an   analysis of the current processes in the finance department across all countries and come up with   suggestions for an efficient reorganization . At this point of the project neither we nor the CFO had   any idea about the processes in the different countries , the underlying IT systems , accounting   standards or which people are involved in the finance processes .       Selection   The first tool we applied was the tool of mind mapping to achieve a basic understanding of the   underlying processes , IT - systems and involved persons . We started analyzing the global budgeting   and business planning process as those are tow central activities within the finance department of a   global company . Usually if you map out these processes you can get a deep understanding of the   processes within a finance organization . We chose the tool of mind mapping as it enabled us to   organize a large amount of messy data , regardless of the amount we were not able to expect at this   time . In addition mind maps are a great tool to develop ideas about processes and also support the   communication with top management as they are easier to read than tables , spreadsheets or   reports . Like shown in the video on the mind mapping tool in week 3 this seemed to be the perfect   approach for us , maybe in combination with other tools like the storytelling tool shown in week 1 .       Application   Once we had identified the key persons in the 48 countries we started collecting all the management   reports which were generated on a monthly basis . We received an overwhelming mass of data and   reports of several thousand pages . Some of our colleagues started with mapping out similarities and   differences in a visual way using classic mind - mapping tools . As we soon were aware that a classic   mind mapping will result in a way too large overview we thought about how we could adopt the   classic mind - mapping tool to fit our needs . As most of the relevant data was aligned along the profit   and loss statement of the company we decided to come up with an adjusted version of the mind- mapping tool matching the structure of the profit and loss statement . This approach worked out and   we were able to create a visual mind map showing all relevant similarities and differences across the   48 countries . Using this tool we were able to discover differences in the calculation of key   performance indicators as well as discover such basic things like differences in calculation revenues   and profits . The mind mapping tool enabled us to be aware of one of the greatest challenges in the   whole project – missing comparability across countries due to a lack of consistency .       Insight & Approach   To come up with a solution for this we invited all responsible finance managers to several workshops   to London . We organized break - out sessions based on the insights of the mind map we created in the   weeks before the workshops . For the workshops themselves we decided to include another design   thinking tool – visualization . We used the availability of finance managers across all of Europe , Africa 

 and Asia to map out the current processes within the finance organization to come up with   consistent processes across all countries . In addition to the classic mind - mapping we also used the   concept of the Business Model Canvas ( as also described in another course of this specialization ) to   map out customer centric key performance indicators . The result of the workshops was a clear   roadmap on how we can transform the finance organization to meet the challenging needs of a   global organization . In total the project took approximately eight months and was huge success .   After the successful reorganization we decided to start over at the beginning . We created mind maps   of the reorganized processes and created Business Model Canvas of the reorganized budgeting an   reporting processes . These are now part of the internal process documentation . Our client as well as   our company were convinced that the aspects of design thinking and the visual approach helped us   to achieve our target . This is why this approach has become a standard approach in our company   now .     This leaves one last question . Would another approach have been better ? Well , I do think by starting   with the mind mapping approach we selected the correct approach for our needs based on the given   information at this time . Looking back from today it may have been a better approach to start over   with the tool of visualization instead . Visualization would have enabled us to take a closer look at the   messy processes and the highly fragmented IT environment earlier . Maybe this would have been an   advantage in the beginning of the project . However , we included visualization during the workshops   and performed a combination of mind mapping and visualization to achieve our target .
### Output: 