Day 13: Tension and relaxation at the end of Week (sprint) 2

On Friday, we had our first weekly project review meeting with a couple of the senior program managers. We had requested such meetings in week 1 to ensure that throughout our time here we would get the opportunity to present our progress and intermediate results and get feedback early on on whether we’re still on the right track.

Given our insights from Thursday and a possible re-focusing of our Scope of Work, we felt some tension in the morning while preparing our presentation. Just like the other teams, we also felt a little impostor-ish again. We all feel competent in our regular jobs, and here in Bangkok we definitely need to go beyond our comfort zone.

I, for example, for the most part still feel like one of the people who in the situational leadership model are described as being in the lowest maturity quadrant: Highly enthusiastic (about the new thing they’re getting into) and not very competent. I guess it’s about time to change that.

Our meeting with Khun Wichai, the Small Business team manager, Khun Jarusri, the Education team manager, and Mike, our main contact, went well (we think — we’re not sure yet whether our Thai hosts would actually raise critical feedback if they had any). We took them step by step through what we found out, showed them the mock-ups for harmonized forms templates and a Facebook group as a community platform (Facebook, because it’s very broadly used in Thailand), and asked for feedback. There were a couple of detailed questions (too early to be answered) and some thumbs up. It was a good end to the week!

Saturday and Sunday we’ll largely spend together with the group, so Friday evening was a more individual, relaxing affair — at a rooftop bar for some and a Thai massage for others.

As week 2 in Bangkok comes to an end, my wife put it perfectly:
“Your time there is exciting, wonderful, new and different.”
What else would I want?