On 6 and 7 March 2024, Berlin will be all about the digital transformation of companies. At the Expo and on the stages, as well as in networking and learning formats, Bitkom TRANSFORM presents innovative solutions and enables first-hand experience. We warmly invite you to visit us at the Expo and take part in our programme on the topics of business agility, flight levels, change management and low code.
In this episode, Benedikt Jost and Dr Andreas Rein give us an insight into their experiences and insights around Flight Levels and how they are used at mgm consulting partners in an agile environment to create added value for our customers. The two business agilists will also be discussing this on 6 March from 2:40 to 3 p.m. on the Solution Stage of TRANSFORM. Find out why you shouldn’t miss it in the podcast.
In conversation: Benedikt Jost (Partner and Business Agilist) and Dr. Andreas Rein (Flight Levels Guide)
Moderation: Karsten Kneese, Marketing Manager
Length: 15 minutes
Listen to the podcast
Transcription
Karsten Kneese: Welcome to a new episode of Innovation Implemented, the mgm podcast on digitisation and transformation topics. My name is Karsten Kneese and I work in marketing at mgm. Here in the podcast, we often talk about transformation and agility, and we will continue to do so at the Bitkom TRANSFORM congress in Berlin on 6 and 7 March. In this context, terms such as Scaled Agile Frameworks or Flight Levels or sometimes our own FLOW model come up. And today we will take a closer look at what we actually mean by these terms. I am very much looking forward to the conversation with Benedikt Jost and Dr Andreas Rein. Before we get started, please introduce yourselves briefly.
Benedikt Jost: Hi. I’m Benedikt Jost, a partner at mgm consulting partners, and I’ve been working in the field of business agility for over ten years. We help companies on their own learning journey regarding the topic of agility, what it is, what it can do, and what it is not. I particularly like to talk about the topic of agile nonsense, i.e. what can go wrong and what clichés and pitfalls there are that you should not fall for.
Andreas Rein: I would love to say hi too, but as a Hessian, it feels so wrong, even though I find hi incredibly likeable, so just hello. I am an organisational developer primarily in the lean and agile environment. I have been working in the Flight Levels area for six years and do everything that has to do with Flight Levels and flow-based work. We’ll talk about that a bit more in the talk. I’m looking forward to it. It’s great to be able to do this.
What can visitors expect at your Flight Levels talk?
Karsten: Thank you. Benedikt, our audience may already know you from other podcasts or from videos from Solutions in Hamburg in recent years. You’ve repeatedly brought up the topics of agility and flight levels on stage there. And you and Andreas will be doing the same this year at Transform on 6 March. Our Flight Levels Stories: what exactly are we doing? What can visitors to the event expect?
Benedikt: Lots of fun and many new insights and ideas around the topic of agility and, above all, Flight Levels and why, as Andreas always says so beautifully, Flight Levels actually have nothing to do with agility at all. So it’s not about agility as an end in itself, but about creating organisations that are capable of acting and able to cope with the complexity that is currently simply there due to digitalisation and many other challenges. We can solve this with agility or with Flight Levels, or at least provide assistance. And that’s what we’ll be talking about.
Andreas: And besides the fun that will definitely be had, I find it incredibly fascinating to see the pragmatism that prevails in our group. Of course, we have all done a tremendous amount of theoretical training and have learned a great deal and have a lot of certificates, but in the end it is the experience and this applied knowledge that makes us curious, keeps us curious, constantly developing new solutions and also working together with customers and partners, and I am very sure that we will also bring this spirit of exploration to Berlin.
In which situations do Flight Levels help companies?
Karsten: That sounds good. You mentioned solutions that can be applied in practice. In which situations can Flight Levels really be used, or, to put it another way, why are you doing this and how do customers benefit?
Andreas: Where do I start? Well, Flight Levels can be used wherever things are processed. I know how stupid that sounds. Whenever I have knowledge-based work, so I don’t have workpieces that come out of the punching machine, but instead take place in the mind, where knowledge work takes place, where virtual work is completed across departments, across trades and across knowledge, Flight Levels can be used because, on the one hand, they make it possible to make this flow of virtual work visible, measurable and, above all, controllable. Flight Levels are not a solution. That is precisely what Benedikt just said. Agility is not an end in itself. Rather, I want to use it to react to something, to react to a challenge that I find in the organisation. And many organisations have the challenge or are facing the challenge that they simply don’t know what is actually going on in the minds of their employees. So I am now with software developers, I am with lawyers, I am with HR departments. Wherever work is done virtually, i.e. knowledge work, there is initially no way of seeing what people are actually working on and what is keeping them busy. And with Flight Levels, I have a way of making the individual pieces and the relocation of work visible, understandable and interdependent, from the corporate strategy to the operational level and on to implementation. I think that’s the very short version.
Karsten: Thank you. Benedikt, what do you encounter in your projects?
Benedikt: If I may add: the problem in this context is often a certain decoupling and invisibility, as Andreas also says, and the Flight Level Model is basically a communication model with many aspects that make things transparent, that make the flow transparent, and that is what we see with customers: a lack of transparency, a lack of connection. Nobody knows what people are working on, nobody knows what they are working for, what the contribution to the value chain is. This makes it completely uncontrollable. A lot of effort is then put into making it tangible through artificial reporting mechanisms. But it doesn’t really work that well. Controlling is done at the portfolio level. That doesn’t work very well either. And with the flight levels, you create a very good basis for communication and dialogue. That’s the most important thing about it. It’s not rules or processes that are introduced, but a common language that can then be used to locate the questions, where is something actually discussed and how do we solve the problem. That’s the important thing, it’s a means of communication, a basis.
Andreas: We are making collaboration discussable, without, as you say, Benedikt, introducing new processes or new bureaucracy or rules, but simply by making it visible and agreeing on a few dependencies or connections. And in doing so, we make it possible to discuss, analyse and thus improve working methods and collaboration across departments and companies without having to attack the competence of individuals or even having to attack people at all, but only to talk about the work itself on a factual level. This is an incredibly powerful lever and an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to improving organisations, when it comes to developing organisations, getting people to talk and getting people to reflect together on improvements in their cooperation and then implement them.
What effect does Flight Levels have on people?
Karsten: That sounds exciting. Based on your experience, what happens to people and organisations when things suddenly become discussable that may not have been conscious before? What changes do you notice?
Andreas: I’d like to jump right in. So you break down structures and you suddenly see what grievances and what vulnerabilities in people, really in personal vulnerabilities, pains in organisations have been nurtured and cared for in some cases and in principle have become part of the organisational culture. What does that do to people? It may create a bit of insecurity, but it also empowers people to shape their own environment, their own way of working and their own sphere of influence. I believe there is nothing more motivating, nothing more encouraging and nothing more self-esteem-boosting than being able to work independently. But sorry, I’m rambling on
Benedikt: I can only add to that. I might have used a different word. For me, what is happening is very honest. It is very intense and very honest. We are making things transparent, including grievances and misconduct and a lack of discipline and other things. And we usually go through a normal change management cycle. That means that at the beginning people are euphoric and say yes, we urgently need to do something here. Then they realise what it means for them and of course there is some resistance. But basically everyone knows it’s the right way and that’s how it is. So you can also talk about it as a kind of spring clean or something like that and it’s not always fun, but it has to be done. And that is actually the effect we experience in companies. Of course, every introduction of a model, every kind of change management is also an investment of time. We all know the famous hockey curve and we have to go through it, but the effect quickly becomes visible and you can then talk about the things that are important. Classic Kanban methodology. Yes, that’s what it’s about.
What approach does mgm take when introducing Flight Levels?
Karsten: What makes our approach different in projects? How do we stand out from other consulting firms and other approaches in the field?
Benedikt: I don’t really like to compare myself, but I can talk about how we do it and what the deciding factors are. The topic of mumbo jumbo is what drives me. You can also do a lot of nonsense with the topics of agility and flight levels, especially if you implement them too dogmatically, too theoretically, and lose sight of what you are actually doing it for. And we try to avoid that. We take a very evolutionary approach. So we don’t introduce SAFe, a huge change in a company, which overwhelms many companies, but do it iteratively and piece by piece. Agile in methodology, as they say, and always focused on the effect. It has to be effective. It has to be pragmatic. It has to be understandable, reliable and not dogmatic. It also can’t be artificial. People talk about agile circus or agile theatre. I introduce a lot of new processes and roles, but in the end nothing happens. We are after something else. It is about an attitude in how people talk to each other and that is our focus when we go to the customers. Not much dogmatism, a lot of feeling for the situation and for effectiveness, a lot of adapting to the circumstances, no ready-made solutions that we roll out.
Andreas: I am not an mgm employee, and the big difference between mgm and other organisations that I work with, and the reason why I enjoy working with mgm so much, is a question that comes up again and again in our daily meetings: Are we adding value for our customers? We don’t want to sit here and write invoices, which is what a consultancy can do, but we want to create added value for our customers. That is in the DNA of this organisation, mgm. We constantly ask ourselves whether what we are doing is effective. Am I effective? Am I doing something useful? Does the customer benefit from our presence, from us doing what we do? Are they growing with us? I find that incredibly impressive because I also perceive it as honest. I actually believe that you would rather abandon a project where you don’t see your effectiveness confirmed than leave people sitting there and write invoices at the expense of customers. I find that incredibly honest and that’s a huge difference to other organisations.
Benedikt: Thank you very much. It sounds great when you say it. Of course, yes, that’s right. We would also write ‘consulting with passion’. I just don’t want to judge the others. You did that. Thank you very much.
Andreas: I may.
Karsten: I think that’s a nice way to end. We don’t want to give everything away yet and keep a little suspense for your presentation at Transform on 6 March. Benedikt and Andreas, do you have any very important last words that you would like to share with our listeners?
Benedikt: Gladly. If you want to know what illusory giants have to do with effectiveness in projects, you should come to our lecture at Transform and visit us at our booth.
Andreas: If you want to know why the question, what is your problem, is actually quite relevant, you are also very welcome and in the right place with us.
Karsten: Thanks. So there are many good reasons to come to Berlin for Transform on 6 March. We will be there on 6 and 7 March. Andreas and Benedikt, thank you very much for your time and for the interview. I look forward to hearing your lecture and, of course, to being there with other colleagues. That’s all for today. Thank you very much for listening. See you soon.
