Flight Route Patterns reveal how work moves through an organization, helping leaders design routes for improved flow and collaboration.
Based on Klaus Leopold's Flight Levels: Leading Organizations, flight routes describe how work moves through an organization — from a trigger to a desired outcome. By mapping several routes, recurring patterns emerge that reveal how coordination, prioritization, and learning actually happen.
These Flight Route Patterns are the "heartbeats" of an organization: they reveal whether work is primarily driven locally, strategically, or through a mix of levels.
Recognizing these patterns helps leaders and teams to understand their current "flight behavior" and to purposefully design routes that improve flow, collaboration, and adaptability.
Local Coordination involves autonomous decision-making by teams at flight levels 1 and 2, promoting fast decisions and ownership but risking strategic drift if overused.
Pattern 2 outlines a strategic initiative flow from strategy to delivery, emphasizing alignment while cautioning against command-and-control risks without feedback loops.
Team-Only Route allows teams to independently manage localized tasks efficiently but risks siloed learning and misalignment with broader goals.
Bottom-Up Initiative involves elevating ideas from teams for validation and support while balancing local action to avoid system slowdowns.
Cross-Level Learning involves fluid interaction across multiple levels in complex adaptive systems, emphasizing learning and feedback over control.
Tip: Record the 3–5 most critical flight routes in your system. Observe their rhythm, feedback loops, and coordination gaps. Over time, this living map becomes your organization's navigation chart for adaptive work.