How to Create a Cognitive Web

To create a cognitive web, you need to follow three steps. The first time you do it, the process may seem a little awkward, but after you've done it three or four times, it will seem like second nature to you. The three steps of the process are:

1. Write down the end result the customer seeks.

2. Brainstorm, writing down every point, idea, example, and detail you can think of supporting the basic notion that you will help the customer achieve that desired end result.

3. Organize the points, using two principles:

   1. The persuasive paradigm.

   2. The customer's own priorities.

We'll go through each step in detail so you can see how it works.

Step 1: Identify the End Result the Customer Seeks

Ask yourself what outcome or end result this customer wants to achieve. Write that end result in the form of a phrase or brief sentence in the center of a sheet of paper, on a whiteboard, or on a flip chart. Circle it. That's your starting point.

Remember our warning from earlier. You must be careful about mistaking your own goals or outcomes or products for the customer's desired end result. If you get the first step wrong, you'll march down the wrong path. You'll find you have made a convincing argument about something the customer doesn't want.

Let's pretend that you're proposing a system integration project for Urban Bank Corporation. After careful consideration, you create the following end result statement:

Step 2: Brainstorm

The next step is fun. You get to be creative, you get to generate ideas at random, and there are no wrong answers. Let your mind roam freely over the end result, asking yourself or your team questions and recording any thoughts, facts, insights, or observations.

The seven questions are a good starting point. Also, sometimes it's helpful to ask yourself the traditional journalistic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Who on our staff has done this kind of work before? What exactly will we implement? What is excluded from our scope? When does the client want this work finished? Where will the work be done? How does the desired implementation date affect our project plan? Is this date tied to some other critical event?

You can see why working in a group can be so productive. The more stuff you come up with during the brainstorming phase, the better. If you're facilitating this process, resist judging contributions at this point. You're better off not excluding or rejecting any contributions now.

As you come up with all of this material, you link the entries to the end result and to each other, grouping them into clusters of related points. Draw lines connecting related ideas or facts. Connect the key points or content groupings to the end result you wrote down first. These are the main spokes of your cognitive web. That's where the "webbing" element comes in. Your output will now look something like this (although yours will have many more elements and a lot more detail):

At this point, you may want to combine some elements, discard some, redraw the connections so that what was an element of the solution becomes part of the project plan, and so on.

Step 3: Prioritize

Generating all of this potential content was a nonlinear process. It didn't matter if the first thing you thought of was the hardware specifications, the change management process, or a really good case study. But the order in which the customer sees the content does matter. So we need to prioritize it.

First, look for the four components of the persuasive paradigm: needs, outcomes, solution, and evidence. Use those for your main groupings of content and label them in that order. Is one of them missing? Add it now. Is it hard to fit some of the points in your web into one of those four categories of content? Perhaps they really aren't relevant to your proposal.

Once you have the main categories of content identified in terms of the persuasive paradigm, look at the details within each category. Which detail is the most important to the customer? You've done your audience analysis work already, so you should be able to put yourself in the audience's place. Enumerate the points and subpoints in terms of what matters to the audience. When the task of prioritizing is complete, you will have a cognitive web that looks something like this:

If you're working on a sheet of paper or on a whiteboard, you probably have quite a mess by now. That's good. Now you can copy this mess neatly on another sheet of paper, putting point number one first, followed by its subpoints, and so on, in nice linear fashion right down the page. Presto! You have an outline for your document. And it was fairly painless, wasn't it?

Our sample cognitive web will look like this when transformed into an outline:

1. Urban Bank Corporation's key reasons for wanting to provide secure, online banking for both retail and commercial customers:

   1. Reduce operating costs

   2. Gain a larger share of customers' banking business

   3. Keep up with competitors who have Internet-based banking services

2. Key outcomes Urban will look for from a successful project

   1. Increased profits

   2. Decreased headcount

   3. Improved customer satisfaction surveys and better service

3. Our recommended solution

   1. Hardware components

      (Lots of details here)

   2. Software components

      (Lots of details here, too)

   3. Services

      1. Application development

      2. Testing

      3. Etc.

4. Our project plan

   1. Timeline

   2. Key personnel

5. Cost analysis

   1. Pricing

   2. ROI

6. Why we are the best choice to do this work

   1. Case studies

   2. Recent projects with Urban Bank

   3. References

   4. Awards and partnerships

From this outline, we can write the executive summary for a formal proposal. (Take a look at the example below.) We could then repeat the process, as necessary, for each section of the proposal, focusing our cognitive web on the technical specification, functional specification, project management, and other topical areas.

Does this method work? Yes! It really does. In seminars we usually do a cognitive web based on one of the attendees' real opportunities. From the initial moment of volunteering to summarizing the executive summary, we can usually complete the exercise in twenty minutes. People have told me that it has cut their writing time on letter proposals from several hours down to thirty minutes or so. Even some left-brain writers use it, because it also helps them become more creative and do a more thorough job of analyzing the opportunity. Try it!

Executive Summary

[The following is a sample executive summary based on the outline we developed above.]

Urban Bank has identified an opportunity to use Internet-based technology to improve the bank's financial performance and deliver more value to your customers. Specifically, your research indicates that if you can provide secure, online banking services for both your retail and your commercial customer base, the bank will achieve some important objectives.

First, you will be able to reduce operating costs. The more transactional business you can move to the Internet, the fewer clerks and ATMs you will need. If you can move 5 percent of your current routine activity to the Internet, you can save in excess of $4 million annually through reduced salaries, benefits, and rental fees associated with ATMs.

Second, you will have the opportunity to gain a larger share of your best customers' banking business. The transactional records that you can store from Internet-based banking services are more extensive and easier to consolidate and mine than other records. By tracking activity online, you will be able to identify opportunities to cross-market other services to your best customers. For example, if you have a high net worth individual with a home loan through Urban, you can market investment opportunities, checking plans, or auto loans via e-mail.

Third, you will stay competitive with other banks in the region who have introduced Internet-based banking services. Customers do not usually switch banks because of differences in basic service delivery models, but over the next few years there is no question that Internet-based banking will become standard. Failing to develop a means of providing secure, online services could gradually erode the bank's reputation.

In summary, if you can provide secure, online banking services, Urban can increase profits (since reductions in operating expense go directly to the bottom line), can reduce headcount or relocate employees into more productive work, and can actually improve customer satisfaction and account retention. In fact, for many of your customers, banking online is much more convenient than going to a local branch or finding an ATM, so their perception of the service Urban is providing will not go down.

As we detail in this proposal, we are experienced in establishing exactly this kind of system for the financial industry. We recommend creating an online banking system built on a hardware platform of ... The software components we recommend include ...

Of course, choosing the right hardware and software is only part of the solution. You also need the services to execute the project on time and on budget. We are recognized as experts in the area of application development for banking systems, and have received commendation for three consecutive years from North American Bank Technology Monthly, the leading independent journal serving the baking industry. Our development services include development and customization of the applications you need, testing of those systems, phased introductions, and back-end support. In addition, we will train your own IT staff to manage and maintain the system so that you are completely self-sufficient. All of these services are detailed in Section 3 of our proposal.

Our project plan takes into account two factors. First, delays in cutting costs mean delays in generating more profit. Therefore, we have developed an aggressive timeline. Second, doing the job right the first time is always better than fixing the job later. Therefore, we have allowed enough room in the timeline to study your infrastructure thoroughly and to develop the right solution for Urban Bank.

The leader of our project team, David Williamson, has developed and installed online banking systems for some of the region's largest financial institutions, including ... Williamson was a featured speaker at the recent International Conference of E-Commerce Strategists, where he presented our methodology for successfully designing and implementing online banking systems. He used five different projects that he had managed as examples of the right way to handle these projects.

We have included case studies that cover several of these projects. In them we document not only the systems we implemented for our clients, but the impact these systems had on their profitability and market share.

Over the past several years, we have had the opportunity to work with Urban Bank on a number of important and exciting projects. For example, we were the lead in developing the Urban Extranet, which has enabled you to clear funds in half the time it previously took. We also were the designers and implementers of the Urban E-Learning system, which has cut training costs for new employees by 70 percent. These projects have established our reputation for quality work. In addition, we have included references from other clients who have benefited from our pragmatic approach to innovative solutions.

As an award-winning technology provider, we have partnerships with and certifications from all the major technology firms, including Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and many others. You can trust us to provide well-trained, experienced people who can complete your project in a timely and cost-effective way.

We urge you to move forward on this important opportunity. The Internet will transform banking as we know it in this country. In the process, it will transform the nature of competition, the way banks work, and cost structures that underlie them. As a regional bank in a highly competitive market, Urban must take advantage of competitive opportunities as quickly as possible. We are ready to help.