Meeting with cool people
Learning Journeys à la Monkey Business
Jul 22nd
July 2010 has been a great learning journey month with friends from TA around Europe. I felt like harvesting a bit of this concept of Learning Journey, because that’s becoming such a key element in Monkey Business’s business!
One significant day in the 3-weeks journey of mine was the day of attending the thesis presentation session of Liher at Mondragon University / MTA. Liher had done his thesis about Learning Journeys. In his presentation he reflected what he had learned in the journeys he did together with the TA network over the past 1,5 years, and how he will use his learnings in the future. The topic was really real and tangible, because due to the experience Liher had gathered, MTA had given him a challenge to organize all the learning journeys of LEINN and MINN University programs to Finland, US California and China during this and the next year. Quite a nice challenge, I thought! One significant interest factor at Liher’s story for me was that I had been with him in most of the learning journeys he described, and he had indentified that we could work on the journeys together in the future as well. Super! For me the Learning Journeys theme resonated well with the Travel Agency for Superheroes concept, that we have been developing in Monkey Business recently, so here I’ll share the ideas that popped up while enjoying the dialogue at Liher’s session.
The style of the event was open and full of inquiry, such as: What is a learning journey?, that Liher asked from us. I made a drawing of the success factors of my kind of learning journey and here it is:
Then the dialogue moved into the learning journeys with a meaning. What’s your meaning of taking a journey?, was the question. What’s the trigger? There must be many, ne could go to learn about people, surf, Art of Hosting, SoL, food, the Hub’s, sports, learning, Team Academy, Kaospilots, fun, sun, snow, hot, cold, history, personal discovery or cultures – you name it!
As organizers of multiple the learning journeys we then wondered: What’s the needed agenda / structure for a successful journey? Connections, networks and the first night booking were the obvious first thoughts. But the type of the journeys Monkey Business arranges is preferably with open agenda and created in dialogue with our guests. We try to avoid arranging trips with predictable results (referring to the slogan in our Banana card ”How would you feel if someone gave a you banana that had been chewed already?”). Cornerstones of our journeys are Monkey spirit, TA spirit and knowledge of the destination with local friends. Challenges are to network even better in the world of facility providers, such as accommodators and restaurants so that we could concentrate on our main strenght which is creating experiences rather than booking facilities. However, we gotta build the network of trusted facilities as well!
After talking about the facilities Maria, a professor of MU asked: How can we move people into a learning journey? Because for sure learning journey does good, but only if a person is ready to take it and jump in. Can we create a need? Creating the need might work out by talking about the content / calling questions / topics of the journey, but what if Learning Journey guests come with the fear of jumping in and opening up for anything that might come? Fear is the one that blocks the most. So how do we overcome the personal fear and closure? That was the final question posed in the session, and stayed unanswered.
Now in the case of LEINN journeys, Liher and Monkeys practice the way to create a journey that takes off the fear. The fact is that in the coming September there are 60 people to come for a Learning Journey to TA Finland, and soon after that in March 25 people going to California and on the next autumn double to California and 25 to China… Liher, Monkeys are there for you to help you and for sure this concept of Learning Journeys deserves some thinking / dialoguing work. Maybe it starts from creating the Leading Thoughts for our Travel Agency for Superheroes? Who’s up to that!?
With Yellow summer mood,
Henna Monkey
p.s. I’ve just finished reading a book Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie, hence the artsy illustration trial. Note the nailpolish that acted as a glue and marker!
Team Evolution & Dialogue – insights from TA@Uni Surrey
Apr 4th
At 18th-19th of March we had an honour to work with Uni of Surrey and SoL UK by hosting 2 days of TA workshops at UK. There’s a plan to implement TA to the educational field of UK, and therefore we are learning and working together. The workshops were hosted by Surrey Team Enterprise Project, STEP1 team. From TA the hosts were Petrus Piironen from 3rd year team company Cromita, Alexandra Tancula from the World Wide Team, myself from MB and Mikael Hirvi from Partus, the Team Academy adult education and brand managing company.
In the workshops one theme was rising up as essential part of TA, and here I want to reflect on it. There had been a thought of implementing TA in Surrey as short courses / summer programs with an intention of piloting it so. Before we even got into deeper discussion about the benefits and downsides of the short courses, Petrus got a system intelligent insight of showing this Team Evolution modelling made by a Monkey fellow Ville Hast.
We described this figure by sharing a fact that on the first year teams are less productive than members of the team as indivuals could be, but investing time for working as a team makes us exponentially productive by the 4th year. Then Arie de Geus took this figure in deeper analysis by sharing us a story and example of the power of dialogue from the Roayl Dutch Shell, where the management teams aimed to spend hours and hours dialoguing. Why so? Because due to the shared knowledege and understanding they gained by dialoguing their desicion making process improved remarkably making them fast at implementing desicions and committing people to work on changes. Dialogue simply brought competence for the company.
It was clear then, that short courses of TA are useful as pilots, but for making it really a successful learning program in the Uni no less than 3 years is the recommended lenght of a program, because team learning and dialogue need time. In Team Academy Finland team companies the first two years go for learning the dialogue with 8 hours / week basis and investing for learning, and the 3rd and 4th year as a team bring exponential growt in quality of the ideas and action of the team members and thus the revenues also grow. In adult learning programs 1 year time frame works well, because adult learners come with more experience and capabilities to think together than the BBA learners aged 18-30.
Summasummarum: dialogue is power and it’s wise to make effort for allowing time for it in any learning program and company. At this UK journey I started valuing our Mondays Are For Monkeys dialogue sessions especially! …we’ve got a chance to improve so much when we invest on dialogue.
With yellow Easter regards,
Henna Monkey
Greetings from Hacienda Itzincab: 1st Day of Exemplar’s Meeting
Mar 20th
Mwalimu of URDT on this QIK MonkeyTV video shares what’s about to happen on the first day.
We are here to learn from one another and yesterday we started by a presentation by ROCA. The story was told by the founder Molly, and the work they are doing is amazing. Building spaces where change can happen. For high risk youth. They work in the city of Chelsea, close to Boston, USA with youth that have big trouble ion their lifes. Suchs as drugs, gangs, violence, guns, teen pregnancy etc. What they do is to build a community and a follow a change process that slowly helps them to change. The story was also a story of struggle and growth of the founder, how she had to change first herself in order for the youth and the police and the officials to change. They use Peace Making Circles, and people can call whenever there is need: “Could we organize a circle?”. It’s the same with our dialogue circle, helps to deal with internal and external. The same with us Monkeys, we need to have our Monday Mornings are for Monkeys in order to keep the alignment and good spirit.
We also started to talk about the challenge and joy of scaling up the efforts and organization. Does the business stand for itself or the founder? asked Jeremy, the founder of Icebreaker. What’s the original intent of the organization? What will happen if the leader/CEO/founder/entrepreneur is suddenly taken away by accident or something?
Another idea what I wanted brought up here was ideas and pondering about leadership. How do we conceive leadership? a)Acting oneself? b)enabling action of others? Or how do we lead in a way that enables learning? Maybe leading loving? if love is to see a person as they really are and not as our projection or self-reflection? Nurturing people’s growth to be the best they can be?
Thanks for all, I feel grateful to be here. Keep it yellow!
Forest Solo is coming, Do you wanna join us?
Mar 11th
Johanna met in Tulimyrsky a really nice lady, Hilkka from Tupaswilla. In Tulimyrsky was speaking Heikki Peltola and he asked us 8 questinons. Those were
1. What I love to do?
2. What I´m good at?
3. What ignites me?
4. What pisses me off?
5. What do I value in life?
6. What do I want to avoide?
7. What I want to learn?
8. What will I become when I grown up?
Then we got a chance to find a new person and share our answers with each other. Hilkka waved to me and so we shared our answers. Their answers were quite similar. I told to Hilkka about Tralvel Agency for Superheroes and we noticed that we share the passion for similar things. We both are creating experinences and in the centre of everything is learning.
Couple days ago Henna and Johanna went to meet Hilkka in Laukaa, Tupaswilla. When we arrived in there Henna said that ”ou, we came in the winter wonder land !” It was becouse there was so much of snow! We met also Jussi who owns the place with his father. The place was awesome, nearby the place was small lake and we walked with Jussi up to the hill. There was beautiful fiew, fire place and a hootchie. Its´ a great place to quiet down. In Tupaswilla you can walkabout with snowshoes and you can do many things over there.
We have been asked when would be next Forest Solo. Tupaswilla would be great place for that. Do you wanna find your personal mastery with us at Forest Solo in Tupaswilla?
Yellow, Johanna
How to lead a network well? ideas from AoH Karlskrona
Feb 20th
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.
Monkeys on the road!
Feb 5th
” I visited your website and didn´t just get what you do? ” Typical comment from our friends. What do we do? What have been doeing lately? Are we REAL entrepreneurs? How are we making world more fun and yellow?
Every Monday Morning is Monkey Monday. Or sometimes it´s Tuesday. But we need to be in face to face contact to learn, laugh and live. Last week I and Ville hoasted four hours in Lahti University of Applied science. Our hidden plan was to encourage two hundred students towards creative economy and entrepreneurship. But our visible goal was to run the best and most enjoyable schoolday of year 2010. We used stories, dialogue, mental models game and punisher vs. pyromane -exercise. In the end about 90% of students answered YES! So it was “good tennis” from us. Good Job.
Thursday Janne went to coach three days session for start up entrepreneurs in a 1,5 year long process in Central Finland, Laukaa area. And now he is ending a one similar process in Northern Finland, Posio area. Janne is our specialist for long processies. I was working for a day in Helsinkin with Brand Brothers Finland for Tammi publishers. Our task was challenging: “do what feels right”. So we worked as interaction fakirs to make some atmosphere magic…
Henna and Johanna has had several meetings around issue of HUB Jyväskylä in Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Tampere. Henna is fighting hard to save her home region, Iisalmi by entrepreneurship. And aside Henna has closed some related deals. Johanna has found a surprice for us. It´s red? We´ll see it on monday…
Ville the Fox, our geek has been coaching two days in University of Oulu with Zestmark. Aside Ville takes care of our connections to the virtual world. And he is also the brains for Monkey Business with his ideas, precence and jazz. Francis Francis X1, yellow, arrived to our office on Tuesday. And we were really exited. Not a single cup of espresso was made. Cos it was ESE(easy serving espresso) model and we returned it at the same day. The biggest failure of the week. Wednesday we had a deep three hour dialogue with Innovation Professor Antti Hautamäki from University of Jyväskylä. Themes were creative economy and cultures meaning for an area. Results will go to parliaments future forum and we are one example…
So here we go. Again. And again. Something will be remembered and alot forgotten. Take it yellow!
Tantourist.
The Yellow Man and the Art of Hosting event
Jan 24th
The story of today happened last December in Copenhagen during the Survival Academy event. Every single morning, right after leaving my friend’s flat, I could see it there, standing, waiting for someone to give it a ride. Being myself still half sleep-half awake, while eating a banana as a breakfast, it always made me smile. A big smile. This sort of smile that you don’t want anyone to see you, because you think that others might think: “why is this guy laughing alone, is he going bananas?”
But there it was every morning, cheering me up and encouraging me to follow my heart, be myself and to be open to talk to the new people that I was about to meet. Let me introduce you to THE YELLOW MAN:
That’s him, yes. With a logo that seems to be taken from KaosPilot, he is concerned about what is happening in the world and is trying to offer more sustainable food delivering økologic food. He likes the yellow color too! So he is our Danish Monkey.
Maybe it was a sign, or maybe not, but I just know that what it was about to happen during one of those days in Copenhagen was something meaningful. During the Open Space session in SA, I got to know Benjamin Degenhart from KaosPilot and Kati Thomson from the MSLS crew, with whom I immediately clicked and after introducing ourselves we realized how much we and our schools had to learn from each other.
Where does the learning come from?Action, YES! That’s why we decided to start running a project together and after talking to few more people in the event we decided to organize an Art of Hosting training for our friends from our networks.
The initial idea was born about a month ago, and now with the concept more defined the event will happen in Karlskrona (Sweden) from February the 18th until the 21st. Idea is to gather up around 70-80 people from all around the world under the same roof (KP, MSLS, TA & others), connect with like minded young entrepreneurs and get an Art of Hosting training. It will be a 4 days hands on training, having conversations that matter as a great source for us to learn from the interdisciplinary teams, plus experience and learn to host circles, World Café, Open Space, Dialogue and other group processes. We, the young generations, need to start working together cross-disciplinary to tackle the complex challenges of our time. So this is the place to be!Bold, brave and caring for each other, YES!
Hosts will be Toke Moeller from Denmark, Tennesson Woolf from the US, Rowan Simonsen from UK, Simone Poutnik from Belgium, Valentine Giraud from Brazil and Jasmine Cargill from New Zealand, a truly Dream Team!
As Ben said, having those ingredients plus some extra spices from other networks together… uhja, i wanna taste that soup 
Price will be 150€ for the team entrepreneurs/students and 250€ for alumni/staff, VAT included. For registration and further info you can check this web and/or write me at liher@banana.fi
I believe that the Yellow Man knew what was about to happen, but he just showed us the way. He encouraged me to be open to meet and spend time talking to new people. Plus,I happened to be in the right place at the right moment. Rest I had to do was to trust the process.
ROCK!
Lihis
BarCamp inspired Open Space in Tiimimestarit Areenalla
Jan 16th
Tatu and myself got a change to host an open space today at Tiimimestarit Areenalla (Team Mastery Arena) inspired by the BarCamp Alsace6 I participated in Strasbourg Project Factory. This is just quick post to share the ideas from Johannes about the BarCamp /Open Space and moreover about the new Prahalad book, The New Age of Innovation. This video is in Finnish, sorry for the non-Finnish speaking folks.
And below is picture of a very couragious Penquin (in reality 2nd year) Anssi and the program grid of today’s OpenSpace that the participants created.
Tonight is the 17th Anniversary of Team Academy. Should be massive! Maybe I will be doing live reporting through Twitter and Qik Live of ours. Keep it yellow! Ville
X-mas Calender day 13 – What is this Monkey Business?
Dec 16th
That´s THE question. Here are some quotes from people whom we have met while chewing bananas:
*Experienced Business Coach, woman: “Monkey Business is formed around easy customers who buy what ever these Monkeys sell.”
*Senior Business Coach, man: ” Monkey Business is nothing, it´s just a tribe of fifty people or so.”
*Manager for International Affairs, man: ” Do these people know what Monkey Business means? How can their thinking be that low?”
*Innovation Manager, man:” You can´t be the best in the world. It is not possible.”
So, what do you think? What is this Monkey Business?
Tantourist -giving big warm hug to our supporters around the world. THANK YOU!
First reply to our legendary letters!
Dec 11th
YES! I got a letter yesterday. Chritmas card in an envelope, with printed address sticker. Text was written by hand. And I was sooo exited to realize it was from Jaana Venkula. I wrote to her 14th of September – it´s also in our blog, here.
Jaana thanks me for the splendid letter which she got and wellcomes us to be in contact with her later. And all the best for 2010.
Jaana – this was really uplifting! THANKS!
Tantourist.
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