In this article Vanda North looks at the 'real' impact of Radiant Thinking training for those with whom she has worked. What happens to the newly developed Mental Literacy skills as people return to a non-Mentally Literate world? Billiton's Ros Casares interviewed several of the people who attended Vanda's classes, this article was the result:

Awakening a Sleeping Giant

Your brain is a sleeping giant. Its limits are unlimited. While man has known for centuries that he has a brain, it is only in the last 25 years that we have discovered how the brain actually works. Recent research has revealed the human brain to be much more powerful than was once thought. In fact most of us use as little as 1 per cent of our conscious capacity - so what are we doing about the other 99 percent?

Learning to Learn

'Teaching people to think, create, remember, concentrate, plan and communicate before they embark on any other training guarantees that all the subsequent training is absorbed and applied appropriately and at least two times more effectively than on average,' says Vanda North of Buzan Centres, who has enthusiastically put most of the 60 participants from Billiton companies through their paces during courses to improve their mental performance.

Organised by the Billiton training department, in Leidschendam, these Buzan training sessions force participants to go back to basics, to understand how their mind works and how to use it to the best advantage. Vanda North explains: 'Your brain has two main upper parts, or cortices, which are linked by a fantastically complex network of nerve fibres. Each cortex deals dominantly with different types of mental activity. In most people the left cortex, or 'left brain', deals with logic, words, reasoning, number, linearity, and analysis - the so-called 'academic' activities. And the right cortex, or 'right brain', deals with rhythm, images and imagination, colour, day-dreaming, face recognition, and pattern or map recognition.

'When you were at school, it was most probable that greater emphasis was given to left brain thinking. If you were prone to doodle or day-dream at school, you were scorned for not paying attention rather than encouraged to develop the skills of your right brain, which we now realise are distributed throughout the cerebral cortex.

'However it is now known, and increasingly recognised in schools and other places of education, that mental images and drawings can double your power of retention and help the process of continuous learning.

'All types of brain activity are important and should be connected with each other. Isolated connections are cul-de-sacs that lead nowhere. They are produced and closed off by linear thinking habits. These blind pathways can be opened up and connected to each other by activities that stimulate the whole brain.'

One of the most dramatic innovations in the pursuit of mental literacy is the Mind Map. Tony Buzan, the originator of Mind Maps, discovered this intellectual tool as a result of an intensive study of memory and a review of the latest research on the left and right hemisphere of the human brain.

Mind Mapping is an activity which prompts each of the two parts of the upper brain to interact with each other. The result is higher quality of thought. The Mind Map is a learning tool and technique that incorporates the traditional mental tools of words, numbers, lines, lists and sequence, with an additional set of mental tools that are especially powerful for improving memory and creative thinking - image, colour, dimension, space and association, or linking.

Using the Mind Map technique immediately doubles thinking power. It can be used where any traditional note-taking system is used. It is especially useful in creative thinking, speech preparation, speech presentation, note-taking, strategic planning, decision-making, problem solving and training at all levels.

A Mind Map is often colourful, dramatic and highly visual in format. We all have basic doodling, symbol making and outlining skills, and these can be incorporated in the Mind Maps we create. They can be used to help assimilate and respond to presentations, as memory and review devices, as well as communication tools. They give a clear picture of the overall structure of the information and also allow the user to see the connections. You can add to Mind Maps as ideas develop. It is essentially a form of thought organisation and note-taking, identifying the key elements of a problem or discussion and thus improving the brain's ability to see all the possibilities and make fast, highly effective decisions. They help the brain get a firm grasp of any new subject, idea or string of information that is presented to it. It uses the skill of your whole brain, thereby accessing the other 90 per cent!

Putting it into Practice

Reading through the comments on the course evaluation sheets, one would assume that everyone was ready to rush out and change their way of working. But did they? We spoke to a number of participants several months after they were introduced to these new skills. Vanda North adds her comments to their response. Rob Snepvangers (General Manager Billiton Metals, Canada Inc.): 'I still use the techniques when I want to assemble all aspects of a problem or a programme in order to discover, or put together, the proper logic. I keep a file of my Mind Maps, and find that looking at them again can be quite useful. However, I find the technique not easily adaptable to day to day matters. Many of the computer programmes we use somehow force you away from Mind Mapping into square or linear thinking.'

Vanda North: There are programs which allow Radiant Thinking to occur on a computer too!

Nick Crase (Billiton Australia): 'I was already familiar with all sorts of mapping techniques - from the electronic microscope to the global satellite systems, but what was this thing called Mind Mapping? Also, what were these strange doodles of many colours and shapes being prepared by people when they should have been concentrating on taking notes? Was there a link here? Surely not - everyone knows that doodling is a waste of time.

'After the course I found that Mind Mapping links these things together and provides a powerful, useful tool. I now use the technique in many aspects of my job (and lapse back into linear note-taking as well). I have found that planning meetings in advance using Mind Mapping, recording the progress of a meeting, reviewing action points and following these up has been enhanced.

'One of the great advantages is that you can return to your Mind Map and add new ideas, re-evaluate alternative strategies and tactics or options and continue to develop previously captured ideas. If your colleagues are also familiar with the technique you can pass a simple, quick map to them to enable their ideas to be incorporated into any evaluation.

'I would not say that I use the Mind Mapping techniques for everything that I do, but the ideas and concepts behind the technique can be applied to anything you wish to put your mind to.'

Paul Everard (BIM): 'I use mind mapping on a daily basis and probably of all the notes and jottings I make in the course of a week, well over half will be in this form. However, I do just use an ordinary pencil and not colours.

'On speed-reading - I practised mainly on newspapers and magazines and find it only partially effective.'

Vanda North: Your pencil is fine for notes and jottings - colour and additional beauty only become necessary if you want your Mind Map to be memorable.

Hans Verschuur (BIM): 'I used Mind Mapping for quite some time after I was introduced to the technique, but I found that after a while I returned to the more traditional, linear, way of making notes. For example, in some formal meetings I found that Mind Mapping did not give sufficient detail. However, for more informal meetings the Mind Map does work in ordering one's thoughts and general understanding. Maybe I am too much of an engineer and my left lobe (or was it the right one) has not developed sufficiently to appreciate what appears to be sometimes chaotic Mind Maps.

'I still make an effort to use the speed-reading technique for technical articles. But also here with time the skill seems to fade away.'

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