Flight Levels and Business Agility in Bangkok
First of all, the clocks tick differently in Bangkok – the jet lag has really got to me this time. Apart from that, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm I experienced during two Flight Level classes, a top management workshop, an Applying Kanban training and a talk in 12 days Bangkok. My two Flight Level classes had three special features:
- Nearly consultant-free. Apart from me and organizer Kulawat Wongsaroj and Kamon Treetampinij from Lean in Consulting there were almost no consultants. Nevertheless, the first training was sold out within a very short time and we had to set a second date because many managers wanted to know more about the Flight Levels. I think it’s best not to have more than 15 people in such intensive classes. Anyway, we also succeeded with once 18 and once 23. The fact that the Flight Levels went beyond the participants’ limits also had to do with my talk on business agility at the Agile Bangkok Meetup. 150 people were in the audience, but what I didn’t know was that more than 1000 more were watching my talk via the Facebook live stream!
- Nearly tech-free. We have mainly focused on the Flight Level idea in rather non-technical areas: marketing for beauty products, medical supply management for hospitals, real estate development and wholesale of sexy underwear. An insurance company and a bank were also there.
- C-leveled. Amazingly many representatives from the C-level found their way to the Flight Level classes in which they were exactly right. Many said after the training that they finally have something totally practical in their hands. In Kanban classes or in Scrum training you learn how to build and run boards – but especially top managers can’t do much with that. Their feedback was that thanks to the Flight Level training, they now know which boards are needed in the organization, how to connect these boards and who should coordinate with the systems. The trick is not to optimize the organizational structure, but to maximize value delivery to customers. We used three examples from completely different areas to see how this works in practice.
You can laugh – as loud as possible!
Who ever has the possibility to play the ship folding game or TWiG with a group of Thais, absolutely should do that. I rarely experience so much positive energy: people have bent over with loud laughter, discussion and explanation. Unfortunately I didn’t film it, it was a real highlight for me. According to all the feedback I got, TWiG was great fun for them, because it summarized everything they had learned during the two days. Thai people are really the best example of fun at learning and that’s why I’m very happy that I’ll be in Bangkok at least one more time this year.
