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How to lead a network well? ideas from AoH Karlskrona

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Hey all,

here’s some online fruits from the Art of Hosting training I am happy to attend in Karlskrona. We have a unique opportunity to learn together with many Kaospilots, MSLS-students, Team Entrepreneurs and other inspiring people from different networks.

I hosted a session in Open Space, (which Tennessee one of our excellent hosts calls the best tool to get people into action fast) session at Art of Hosting training in Karlskrona with a calling question or topic: Networks / Tribes – How do we eliminate the limits of growth?

We started with Oliver from Kaospilots, and soon also Marco from MSLS (thanks for harvesting), Rovan one of our hosts and Vilma from TA/PArtus/SoL joined the dialogue. Thanks all for participating and supporting the thinking together.

Impact for me to host this session is that I am part of many networks (e.g. SoL, The Hub, TeamAcademy, PrecencingInstitute, WorldCafe, AoH, AppInquiry etc.) that are growing and somewhat aligned, but still I wonder how we could really leverage the power of these networks making the world better. Also a question in my head is that why there are so many of them? Could we combine or bring them together somehow? Furthermore I am really pondering what we can learn from the way Open Source communities are being organized?

So here is some of our thinking:

Potential bottle necks limiting the growth of a network are for example but not limited to following:

1. Hierarchy: It’s hard to fight to the top of the hierarchy in order to get your voice heard.
2. Exclusive Inner Circle that is hard to be part of.
3. No room for action of members, if you need to act permission it may be hard to get
4. Values and spirit are not attractive
5. Somebody is exploiting the network
6. Business Model is not sustainable and
7. Communication or the lack f it

So, how do we eliminate the limits of growth? And what is this growth we are looking for? (Money/Members/Impact/Practitioners/etc/etc?)

Or, thanks to Rovan, the new question emerged: What are characteristics of good, nourishing leadership for a network/tribe? Here are some ideas that we came up with:

1. Open and transparency of decision making process and “organizational” structure, even if it’s dynamic. No Taboos or un-written rule. The aim should be to make the system as visible as possible.
2. Empowers loads of action (systemically): What is the minimum structure needed to enable self-organizing and action?
3. Good communication culture (this is the real challenge I guess)
4. Clear process of creation and updating the leading thoughts
5. Low entrance step, it’s easy to join, accessible.
6. Inclusive, nobody is left out if they want to contribute and participate.
7. Purpose large enough but clear enough. People should feel that I want to be part of this. Purpose is container both for action and expansion. Case: 350.org brought together many networks, as did Survival Academy.

All right, I also participated in two other session of which fruits I may share online later. But I really would appreciate any comments on this so the space is still open.

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Posted in Cool and Important, Dialogue, Meeting with cool people, Monkey Business, facilitation | 2 Comments »

Solo Experience in Finland in Summer 2010

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Happy new year everyone also from my side! The blog has been a little sleepy last days just like the bears sleep and hibernate over the winter. And Moomins do the same. Nevermind that, because we are thinking warm thoughts and next summer.

1.5 years ago we did a brave experiment with our friends Ralf, Charles, David and Marie. It was called a Penquin Expedition (a pdf) and it included a special thing called Solo Experience. Solo may be familiar to you for example through books like Syncronicity and Presence. Our experience was very good, we have a special place by the lake Saimaa where we can work and the summer in Finland is spectacular.

This coming year we are planning to open solos. The first one is in the first week of June and the second one will be together with a Penquin Expedition and during the last week of August. Here are some slides about the first one!

Solo Experience in the Finnish Forrest by Monkey Business

View more documents from Ville Monkey.

Loads of yellow! Ville

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Tags: Coaching, Courage, Encourage the heart, Learning Expedition, Marketing, Monkey Business, Slides, tribe, Workshop
Posted in Dialogue, Marketing, Products, Travelling, Workshop | No Comments »

Nathaniel the Kaospilot taught us Graphic Facilitation

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Finally on Friday last week we put the graphics on our offices wall but read below what happened before that.

Last week we got a great surprise guest to our office. He is a friend of a friend of a friend of ours and he was visiting Jyväskylä and then he popped up into our office. And now he is a friend of ours as well. His name is Nathaniel, and he is probably the first ever Kaospilot to actually visit Team Academy. Kaospilots are cool, they have a strong sustainability value to their education, and also they have eye for design. Besides, they do learn about process facilitation, team work and entrepreneurship. The goal is to educate social innovators, I think. Be sure to check them out if you didn’t know about them yet. I also wrote earlier about Kaospilot’s good marketing.

Anyways, we got along very well with Nathaniel, and he taught us some cool tricks about Graphic Facilitation. After having some coffee and talking about various things Nathaniel showed us a video he had done. And, you maybe guessed, we wanted to do the same kind of things about our own products. We picked up our new product called Kick Ass Event Facilitation and here are the results. First Nathaniel himself and third one is Tatu in Finnish. We also got a small making of/behind the scenes video on Youtube and we got pitches by Henna, Hugo, myself and Johanna waiting to be published shortly. Tatu kinds of comes to this video shooting from the bushes; he wasn’t told beforehands what product he was supposed to explain about. The idea was to keep the video presentations authentic and alive, kind of the jazzy style improvization. Any questions, ideas or similar? Please share them through comments or get in touch with us directly. We are ready to rock with you!

edit: Henna wasn’t happy with her video being online so I took it out. Sorry for that – both Henna (for putting it here in the first place) and the world (that it’s not online anymore).

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Posted in Cool and Important, Design by Monkeys, Dialogue, Friends of Monkey Business, Video, facilitation | No Comments »

Little more of LAVA09 – Motorola time!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Just came across this video at Mikko’s NoCry blog. I embed it here. It’s a 30 second film about the presentation we did in the LAVA09 conference.

And here’s the motorola by Johanna about journey and works in Iceland!

Hey, here is for you mine post-motorola about Lava. I wanna share it with you fellows.

1. What went well?
- We had a chance to do co-creating together and a chance to get know each other at good way -working together.
- We had there a great punch of people, all different, different ages and different countries, different skills and knowledges.
- I was really excited about our task and it was great to work with a new people from different backgrounds.
- Everybody was really involved in our process.
- That time together was really important to us, Monkeys. We got new ideas and we got a lot of inspiration.
- It was great to met Juha-Matti, who has drawn our super monkey and also Tupsu-cartoons.
- It was great to spend time with Nic, because I didin´t know him before so well.
- Iceland was an awesome place, I have always wanted to travel in there.
- We were sleeping last two days in a home of one local family. It was really nice and we got touch the country whole different way.
- We met one Finish girl who study in Iceland and she told to us plenty stories about Iceland and Grönland.
- We spend too much cash – we bought and ate too much of banana candies, so we didin´t have enough money to go back to our Icelandic home by bus. So we had to hick-hike. It was new experience to me. And one new banana story to tell.
- We were in a great jazz bar, where was going on some great jazz jams.

2. What went poorly?
- We didin´t have time to close our process together. So I´m not sure of that did everybody understand the hole process and what happened and why.
- We didn´t have so much free time over there so we couldn´t go far away from Reykjavik. We need to go again over there.
- We had only short time to be House of Ideas, Design Central and other places.

3. What did I learn?
- I learn to know new peoples and working with them.
- Creative chaos is a good thing, you just have to know how to lead that.
- Be brave to challenge of process.
- It´s hard to get of the box what you have.
- To courageous of your heart it´s working.
- If you have too much of negative pressure, it locks you up.
- I learn more about my self and Monkeys.

4. What I gonna do next?
- I want to be in contact all those new people who I met in there and maybe we can do something together for future also.
- I wanna go sometimes back in there and maybe surf there.
- I got many of new handcraft ideas.
- I send post-motorola for everyone.

So here is something what I´m thinking of this process. It would be nice to here something for all of you also.
I hope we can see each others sometimes again. You are heartly welcome to Finland and visiting to us.

Have a great time and keep it yellow!

Loads of fun and huge hugs!
Johanna

Ps. We have Nathaniel from Kaospilots visiting us yestarday and today. We are about to cook something cool together!

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Tags: Iceland, LAVA09, motorola
Posted in Dialogue, Monkey Business | No Comments »

Greetings from Iceland and LAVA09

Friday, November 13th, 2009

We are seated in a nice cozy not-for-profit cafe in the center of Reykjavik. Tatu just asks if we reached our goals for this trip. Why were we here? Did we make the Iceland and the LAVA09 more yellow and fun? Did we have fun all together?

This is a short postcard to all of you. More detailed reporting may come a little later. Have a good weekend you all!

Here is a 5 min video with a short interviews of our new friend Niklas (the secretary general of Nordic Periphery Projects), Tatu Tantourist and Ville Monkey. Here we reflect all together what was our role. It’s filmed two days ago just before our final dinner at the spinning restaurant.

Ps. Two Icelandic and real cool initiatives in the fields of clothing and music, respectively: Naked Ape and GoGoYoKo. Check them out.

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Tags: Iceland, LAVA09, Reflection, Travelling
Posted in Cool and Important, Dialogue, Marketing, Monkey Business, Travelling, Video, Workshop, facilitation | 1 Comment »

Book of the week in Nordic / Scandinavian spirit!

Friday, November 6th, 2009

H0op! On Sunday 3 Monkeys will go to Iceland to the magnific LAVA09 event presented below, and that makes me feel like happy to be Nordic! Also I feel like fostering our roots and culture here in the north of Europe, and thus, the book recommendation for this week comes from Sweden. Unlike the normal business reading, it’s a novel…bestseller of the Swedish novels in 2005! The book is named Små citroner gula… and in English: A restaurant of yellow lemons.

It’s a sory of young Lady who opens up her own restaurant…and meets the reality of life as a young business owner. Agnes with her partners is giving it all for the initiave, but they face a variety of challenges starting from the customers that write critics into the media and drunken chef as an employee… All could be real, but it’s just a novel…excellent weekend book!

Next week after this relaxing weekend is holding another big journey for Monkeys too. First TA invites 8 people coming from Brazil, England and Barcelona for a Learning Expedition to Team Academy, and Monkeys are hosting the funnily serious evening program B-) Then after LE Henna Monkey and Sari and Liher from Mondragon Team Academy will go to Brazil to work for opening the Team Academy in there together with a University Senac Sao Paulo. Cool! We are turned on by that challenge and humbly dialoguing for gathering the best knowledge for leading that journey into a success!

Keep it yellow!

Henna Monkey

P.S. Writer of this blog entry is often seriously oriented hard worker, who needs novels to let the brains rest sometimes! If you recognise yourself from this description it’s propably time for you to read a novel too

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Tags: Books, resilience, sustainability, sustis
Posted in Books, Dialogue, Marketing, Monkey Business, Team Academy International Network, Team Coaching, Team Mastery, Travelling, Workshop, facilitation | 4 Comments »

Open Space in The Hub in Madrid

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

This past Thursday I experienced best facilitated Open Space ever. It was in the Hub Madrid and facilitated by Lotfi. I think I have taken part in few and at least facilitated partly two of them. But this time I kind of started to understand what open space can be. I am a fan of fluctuative and flowing programs in meetings, thus I dig open space.

Why this time the open space was a success? Let me try to analyze it a bit.
1. A clear calling question: This open space had a theme and it was “How can I help you?” so it was not as open as universe but still left plenty of room for the participants.
2. Also the question was personal enough to make meaning for the participants. Everyone was asked to write their challenge on A4 paper. Where do I need help from these people. I wrote: How can I lead myself? When the theme was this personal everybody who wanted could either give or get value for sure
3. Then as we were about 30 in the space, there were 6 spaces and 2 rounds of 20 minutes each. So 12 people were chosen based on their eagerness to host a space. 2 persons voluntarily combined their sessions. And I think here was the key. No public combinations of sessions. First come first serve. And because the law of two feet was in place people could go where ever they wanted based on their interest. In the first round I joined a small talk about Sustainable Clothing industry.
4. Good facilitation of time. “When it ends, it ends.” Lotfi informed the people in conversations about the time when 10 minutes were left, and also at the point of 5 minutes left. He went around to every circle and said the time left plus showed a little sign with the time that was available. The sign was good as I am a visual thinker, or seeing helps me to understand. Also having seen the paper we could without bigger interruption to keep our intense talks going on.
5. System with the stand. See the picture. People when presenting their case were standing on a little box. This reminded ms about the story of London marketplace where anyone can go and give a talk. It greated that image to my head.
6. Harvesting. Nobody was forced to share about their insights or stories but it was voluntary. It worked very well again. Some hosts shared with passion what they had got, and I am sure others walked home with good insights too.
7. Lotfi as a host and facilitator had very inviting energy and drive. I have found him to be a very positive and enriching in his interaction with others. No sarcasm that deminishes security and kills energy from him, but good open questions and encouragement.

What is exciting is that today I get to experience another type of Open Space, the BarCamp here in Strasbourg Project Factory. It’s organized by my friend Yann of Novelys. He participated in Learning Expedition in March and I also met him at the Team Academy Alsace Anniversary party last November. So very excited how this my first ever BarCamp will go.

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Tags: madrid, open space, the hub, Workshop
Posted in Cool and Important, Dialogue, Friends of Monkey Business, Workshop, facilitation | 1 Comment »

Three Hour Workshop about Team Learning and Team Academy

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Now, as the topic says, the case is to host a three hour workshop about Team Academy and Team Learning. This is a nice tricky case. I think.

How to stage an experience of Team Academy in three hours?
How to make it so that people have fun and they learn? (In this case learning quals to change their behaviour, at least get one thing to put in practise.)
Should we show videos or tell some facts about Team Academy?

I am doing this with Anita from Creative Impact. We have never done a workshop together for a customer. I have worked a lot with her in the Team Mastery 2 and in the SoL’s evolution process, but we have not delivered things like this before together. It’s interesting to work with new people. I think we are about to learn something. I feel that. It always happens when working with new people. And learning is fun, when doing mistakes is allowed and even recommended.

Another interesting factor is that I have not met the customer ever before. We have changed some emails, and he has participated in the SoL Spain’s event that was about Team Academy. And now he is inviting his colleagues and friends into this workshop. Exciting. I think we need to talk with him more today in order to really know what he wants. What kind of results he is looking for? And what kind of results are the people he has invited into this workshop looking for? As Anita put it very well: What is the question that calls us into this meeting?

I think the questions above are very important if we think in the same way as Einstein used to. “If I had one hour to save the world I would use 59 minutes to figuring what the right question is and then 1 minute to actually solve it.” This is important because we have to do our a kick ass workshop with the right theme.

Anyways, we are thinking to start from the individual and personal mastery. I think in workshops it’s absolutely crucial to be on the personal level. What I can do to change this world? I get furious if people outsource the problem beyond their reach. As Gandhi says, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. And as Viktor Frankl says: “You can always choose your own attitude.”

Peter Senge asks in his book Fifth Discipline in the chapter about personal mastery two-three questions: (more…)

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Tags: Co-creation, Coaching, Courage
Posted in Dialogue, Monkey Business, Team Coaching, Travelling, Workshop | No Comments »

Why Inquiry is so difficult?

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

I asked the question from myself and the group after one session at SoL ESG’s gathering at Meadowhead, Scotland.

Why Inquiry is so difficult?

What is inquiry? Orietta asked me. My dictionary says it is “an act of asking for information”. In a context of dialogue and conversation I see dialogue as an open question that opens new possibilities.

It is difficult, because when you inquire you expose yourself to the group as someone who is not aware of everything. This is how we are trained to think, to be specialists, not to be people who go around ask what’s going on in here. Nevertheless, inquiry is more valuable than gold. And Gold will never lose its value.

We can think this also from a systems perspective. When dialogue starts on some topic there may be a little inquiry to set the direction. But soon, I have noticed, for example in ESG meeting I attended, people start to advocate their views on the topic or (a bit) aside the topic as in good dialogue is supposed to. And then we have a created a system of changing expertise on the issue. And when this kind of expert system is being created sometimes for me it is hard to inquire. I create within myself a system of holding back. I hold back my question, because I feel that people could think I am stupid or even laugh at me. I think the underlying fear is being found un-lovable. Esa Saarinen says that systems of holding back occur naturally if we don’t pay special attention on dismantling them.

But then, these systems of holding back and expertise only are possible to dismantle. And a good way is through inquiry. Because usually, when you dare to make the step into unknown, you open yourself, you also open the way for others to do the same. When you do that creative system intervention, you actually bring a lot of fresh air and sunshine into the system, and the system changes. Maybe through your example other people will dare to ask more questions. And suddenly, the dialogue is on a whole new level, we are not speaking anymore from the level of expertise, but from the level of real world personal experience and heart. That’s when “the talk” starts. So again, you cannot blame others for the system, but you have to be the change you want to see in that system.

(more…)

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