Books
What is Our Story?
Aug 12th
Here’s a post taken from my first blog “Flow of Meaning” that I had written in late 2007. I find it’s pretty timely even today. -Ville Monkey
I just learned about it from a Finnish Entrepreneur Jari Sarasvuo from his book Huomiotalous – Diilin opetukset (freely translated – Notion Economy – insights from The Finnish version of TV-show Apprentice: Diili). He stresses a lot the story of a company. Too many companies today lack a story. A story that changes people both within and outside the company. He asks us to ask ourselves:
“What in our story signifies hope, feeling of control, love and calls for growth? How these promises change the reality both inside our company as well as outside world?”
Ok, so this is the mission, right? He continues:
“If you and your friends in your company could create history, should you? If you could rewrite the rules of your field, why would you not do that?”
Let us all ask ourselves:
“How does the world become a better place, if our story becomes a reality?”
And we want to make the world a better place, I think. We need a strategy: how can we make this happen? Strategy is very much connected to leadership. A story is a strong tool for leaders. If you don’t have the story, you are probably lost. Do people know about your story? Who wants to be part of our story of creating revolutions of teams and team learning?
Customers whom we want?
Mar 23rd
We Monkeys aren´t like most people. But we do need friends(customers) to play with. To learn, lead, cocreate and to make world more fun & yellow! We have to first know who we are. Seth Godin, Tribes:
“ The art of leadership is understanding what you can´t compromise on.”
Beginning of year 2010 for us has been a bit like hike in a desert. Just have to believe that the oasis will come. Seth Godin, Tribes:
” The second thing you need to know is that the only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that it´s worth doeing. Faith that failure won´f destroy you.”
Cosmos has challenged us by asking: are you serious about this? Time on desert has put our values in test also. Inner pressure is sometimes almost too hard to handle. But returning back from uncomfortable zone is rewarding. Things look clear for a while – illusion of infallible.
Prahalad & Krishnan, The new age of innovation:
” Start-ups do not need well-developed proseccies.”
Form follows funtion, said someone. So what we can do is keep on doeing. Culture is the Strategy. More experiments with customers who play with same rules. So we want:
*You, whom don´t want to work overtime daily to keep up the status quo
*You, whom don´t want be sheepwalking anymore
*You, whom wants to change, yourself, organization, world
*You, whom wants to learn, all the time, everywhere, from everybody
*You, whom wants to do all this together, smiling
Eye for an eye makes the hole world blind. – Gandhi-
Tantourist.
Book Recommendation: Synchronicity – The inner path of leadership by Joseph Jaworski
Mar 19th
I first saw this book in the hands of Rowan Simonsen, one of the hosts in the AoH Karlskrona seminar we organized exactly a month ago. Few days later a friend lent it to me and it’s been probably one of the most inspirational books I have read in my life.
During the book Joseph shares his own personal journey, but helps a lot to reflect the reader’s journey as well:
Who am I?
Why am I in the journey?
What is this journey all about?
Why am I really here?
What is my higher purpose in life?
We all have plans, ideas, projects, dreams…therefore we all are in a journey. Jaworski asks: “Are you serious about this?are you serious about dedicating yourself to what needs to be done to achieve it?Are we deeply committed to creating what we truly want for its own sake?”
He shared that the American Indians and The Samurai were warriors that were so open that they were ready to die for the cause. Monkey Business being a travel agency for superheroes, are we Samurais enough?
Jaworski shares one very important thing, and I fully agree, that one of the big mistakes we do is that we get blinded with all the day-to-day tasks. Myself personally for some reason I tend to end up being hands full in projects, emailing…complaining that I don’t have time for reflection. Ville once told me: “ Liher, you have the time to reflect but it’s yourself who chooses not to take it”. And it’s totally true. It’s always very easy to leave apart the reflection and the book reading, which is as important as taking action in the learning process.
Strongly recommended book for the Monkeys preparing the Solo Experience.
Have a great yellow weekend!
Liher, The Green Monkey
Monkey Business Book Project
Mar 7th
This idea has been in my head for while in some forms and it ignited again when me, Petrus, Liher, Ola and Rogerio where driving back from the excellent Art of Hosting training in Karlskrona that brought together people from Kaospilots, MSLS and Team Academy. See Liher’s post about it here.
Ever since our flight back from SoL Global forum in Oman me and Tatu have been talking about writing a book. In fact, back then we did actually come up with a loads of different ideas. The basic idea was to make an inspiring book with stories, theories, quotes and pictures. We were inspired a lot by Paul Arden, Seth Godin and Tom Peters.
Empty page
Well, time goes on and the idea develops and we are lazy to write the book. And we keep on printing out more Monkey Business notebooks. And the idea comes up when we are somewhere about 200km from Stockholm. Let’s make a Monkey Business notebook version 2.0 where people could send their own ideas, drawings, illustrations, theories, quotations and so on whatever they have put in their Monkey Business notebooks. So it would be a mash-up notebook. Still with loads of room to write your own things in but with some text already there at the bottom of some pages, or a big drawing on the other or something totally different.
Idea is to get this book out by June 2010. We need your help. Please, send us pictures of your notebook’s pages with something on them. We will give them to a designer and eventually print some of them into the new version of Monkey Business notebook. You’ll be accredited for your contribution and also get a copy for yourself before they go for sale in public. The deadline for submissions is 31st of March. Then we will give the material to a graphic designer who will put it all together.
I am very curious to see what kind of book we can create together. All questions, contributions, ideas are most welcome! Ville Monkey
Ps. If you want the version 1.0 Monkey Notebooks we still got some left. 12 euros including mailing. They are good for your thinking.
How Do We Think?
Feb 11th
Just found this cool video on Facebook through Innovandis & Asier of Funky Projects.
Has anybody read the book We Think by Charles Leadbeater? What do you think about it? Yellow mellow, Ville
Richard St. John’s 8 Secrets of Success
Feb 2nd
Today we heard from a potential partner that “you should delete your webpage” and get some concrete going on. Also we should get “some more meat around the bone”. Whuh. Heavy stuff. At the same time he cancelled our meeting planned for Thursday morning. Well, we kind of had a feeling that this may be a tricky partnership but still the reaction from him was little surprising.
Anyways, it was about time to hear some negative comments because Tom Peters on his book Project50 says something like this: “Think sometimes if you have pissed off people lately, because if you haven’t, then you are either not working hard enough or not being radical enough.”
And this is what also Jari Parantainen says in his Finnish blog that we need not to be afraid to divide people into two groups because if we get haters then we also got lovers.
Furthermore, practically the same thing from Guy Kawasaki: Do not be afraid to polarize people (point no. 4 in his post about the Art of Innovation).
The third similar minded comment is in this excellent and inspiring TED video by Richard St. John. This is actually what I wanted to share in the beginning. See the video below.
He says that one secret of success is persistence. He says that if we want to succeed we need to persist CRAP – which stands for Critisism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.
And this is what we say when people ask us about the marketing: Be brave, dare to make marketing that may piss off people. But I have to admit, that when the guy calls you and tells you to delete your website and get some more experience, it doesn’t feel good and kind of it puts me down. Anyways, I am happy to know we got loads of supporters out there and this is probably just one guy, who didn’t get what this Monkey Business is all about, maybe?
Keep it yellow everyone! Peace, Ville
What´s cooking Linus?
Jan 19th
Our campaign for January is wild as a Jungle and beating like a drum. Order one monkey now – and get second for free! Two monkeys for the price of one! Double amount of action, chaos and mistakes means at least six times more of learning. Maybe? Choose your Monkeys here: MonkeyBusiness_pres (Great profiles made by Nic. THANKS!)
We are supporters of fundamental freedom. Everyone is able to achieve what ever in the world – if you don´t mind who gets the honour. Pekka Himanen´s book, The Hacker Ethic, has had a lot influence to our Ideology. Passion and dedication to that, building on enthusiasm will carry on. So how can we encourage people on that? More listening to heart than rational mind? How do we help people to join enriching communities? How do we help people to find out who they really are? And what are they really passionate obout? And what is their strenght, superpower that they should build on? How do we help individuals to lead theirselves?
Linus Thorvalds created source code of Linux and story goes on. What is source code of Monkey Business? The DNA that people monkeying around are sharing? Do you feel the call?
Tantourist.
Christmas Calendar Day 15: Experience Economy
Dec 15th
Lately I have heard couple of times about the challenge when the basic production in Finland just is not sustainable financially anymore. We simply cannot compete with cheaper labor of Eastern Europe or the hard working, little paid Asia. Unless our culture will change radically we have to be prepared to say: “So long basic production, so long.”
So in how deep s**t are we? Is there anything we could do? Can we build a national survival strategy? Where to start?
I am not sure, but I thought I should present you one idea that could help in some cases. Close your eyes, and think for a moment, what could it be. I put a picture here so you can really do it. Maybe have a glass of water before reading further.
Little competition here, who’s design is that candle holder in this picture?
So, what I think could be a one part of the solution is what Pine & Gilmore calls the experience economy. It can be coined to 5E’s: Education, Escapism, Entertainment, Esthetics and Espirit of de Organization. The Last one is addition by Johannes Partanen. See an image below.
Maybe the latest phenomenon that I explained through this theory is the books by Dan Brown. I haven’t read any yet but thanks to the launch of the new book he has been on the newspapers in Finland. This is what I imagine of his books. They are educative – when reading you “learn” about history, religion, symbols etc. They are also engaging and thus escapist, you forget the time and place and concentrate only on the book. It’s good entertainment, time passes and can be fun, even talking with your friends about the book. Esthetics; the books are located in cool places, Rome and Washington DC for example. Esprit of Dan Brown – Well, I guess that’s the style of his writing. Maybe someone who has read something by him could comment on this?
And one thing to say here is that Experience is always personal, though many times when it’s collective it enhances it. But everyone has their unique way of experiencing. See a good post about experiencing in here.
So how can Dan Brown help to keep the industry in Finland? What do you think? Do I need to chew the banana more or does this park your creativity?
Ville Monkey
Ps. One of the paradoxes of Dialogue in my opinion are that you need to speak from the heart and voice your opinions, ideas and inquiry directly but you shouldn’t chew the bananas ready for others. Sometimes the line between those two is hard to define. Well, to put it simply, speak from the heart but don’t chew the banana for others. Mystery is part of marketing. Did I chew it too much by saying that?
Letter to Erlend Loe
Nov 19th
Hi fellows!
All the Monkeys read couple months ago Erlend Loes books Supernaiiv and Doppler. Somehow those books started a deep and really various conversations among us. Some one were a repressed and someones were really exited about those books. We got a good conversations about that why everybody react the way they did. Because of that we all know each others better and also ourselves, I think. We got a bunch of encouraging of what we are doing, we are the right way about our yellow business and our values are worthy to take care of.
Yellow, playful and sincere,
Johanna
Book recommendation from Iceland
Nov 13th
Inspired by the cool and tough Iceland I am bringing you a fresh book recommendation. This time it is from my friend, Shinsaku who’s a scholar in environmental studies and eager nature-man, just like the monkeys. Shinsaku says:
Have you read Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “Upside of Down“? it’s a very good book. Not a novel. I’m sure you heard of Resilience or Panarchy and things like that. They are and are going to be very important new paradigms and everyone on earth should know it. anyhow this book explains and put theory in context well. well-written as well.
I first of heard of the word resilience in the SoL European Sustainability Groups event in Scotland at Meadowhead. There was a man called Nick Wielding who nowadays works for CarnegieUK Trust. They’ve published an interesting looking report called A Manifesto for Rural Communities – Inspiring Community Innovation. Be sure to check that our as well.
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