It is not sufficient to know only about your thinking Profile. You also need to manage this natural style to deliver the very best solutions. Effective Intelligence Maps are the thinking tools to do this. They are built of the same three levels of thought as the Profile. This joins together and aligns the two key features of everyone's working life – how you like to think and how you need to think for peak performance.

Everyone has tools for thinking. Some of them were learned in school, some at university or during professional training, or simply at work where they are usually so embedded in routines and systems that they are barely noticed. But are the ones used so automatically the very best for purpose? Effective Intelligence Maps, chosen consciously, upgrade the thinking performance of individuals, work-groups, and whole departments. Even when there are good processes in place, for example in well-trained sales teams, the Effective Intelligence tools bring fresh insight and quality that are appreciated by experienced sales people because they measurably improve results.


The Five-fold Power of Effective Intelligence Maps

1. Robust Best Practice

All the Maps raise the bar on best practice in industry and commerce. The research that informs them comes from many man-years investigation into patterns in thinking that bring better outcomes. Mainly used to improve the bottom-line, Effective Intelligence Maps have delivered both efficiency savings and improved profits. When used to gear up radical innovation and creativity, they are outstandingly effective.

2. Easy to Learn

How is it that people can work with the Maps so well? Of course, the skill of the user plays a part. So it is essential that learning to use the tools is quick and easy. The Top Ten Maps and their Worksheets are designed for this. They are built of the same thought-structures revealed in the Profile, so the underpinning coherence transfers across immediately. There is no time-wasting. At every level there is always a coding for rapid access and remembering. All Maps are available in printed and electronic formats, sized for pocket reference or for group discussion. If used regularly all problems can be tackled in the shared language of Effective Intelligence. 'Use it or lose it' is a practical motto.

3. Questions for Solutions

You can't expect the right answer to the wrong question. Intelligent people think by asking questions, of themselves and others, to find good solutions. How they structure their questions governs their effectiveness. Different kinds of problems and opportunities require different kinds of questions. The Maps reveal core strategies of questioning, so you can shape and steer your search for solutions as you go along and share your thinking with others. You can give yourself an overview or burrow down into depth for really tricky operations. People discover that an openness of thinking, which the Maps encourage, makes for richer ideas and fuller examination of possibilities. They encourage a questioning approach in all situations which also helps deal with the answers effectively.

4. Human Design

Effective Intelligence tools are drawn as Maps to accommodate the reality that people do not 'think' in any fixed order. Routines and prescribed protocols (sometimes very necessary) are not what people are naturally inclined to do. For business to thrive, motivated employees need freedom to think for themselves. Maps allow that freedom. They are not sequences of thinking-steps which confine and interfere with the agility of thought. Rather, they support how the mind actually works: moving in many dimensions, rapidly, as ideas are pursued or discarded, nursed forward or dropped. They are colourful, mind-stretching displays which invite exploration, analysis and judgement.

5. Holistic Quality Assurance in Top Ten Generic Maps

Now that innovation is everywhere, people regularly face situations entirely new to them. The Maps bring a holistic assurance that you have covered the necessary ground. The Effective Intelligence portmanteau of Maps is memorably small and perfectly formed! The most generic central Maps, the ones that are being used all the time, are only 10 in number. Each of them has a single name, which identifies a type of thought process. One 'name' embraces many tasks that in reality use the same thinking process. For example, the Decision Map is also a Map for Design, Evaluation, Selection, Appraisal, Purchasing and Investment. People cloud the recognition of their thinking process by the variety of their language which leads them to see their tasks as different, where actually they are the same. Once this is understood, the quality of thinking can be sharpened. Since each Map has so many applications, many different tasks can be improved through one Map alone.