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Keynote Cancelled? Call us!
Jun 6th
Not long ago Hugo was doing his morning duties at his bathroom when his cell phone rang. It was somewhere around 8 am. He thought: “Nhh. It’s too early. I’ll call them back later.” And he didn’t pick up the call that came from unknown number. The same person tried to reach Tatu but apparently was so anxious that even if Tatu wanted to answer he wasn’t fast enough. If Hugo had picked up, we would have been offered a chance to jump on a stage as a keynote in biggest Youth Entrepreneurship event in Finland, Aivomyrsky, within 2 hours.
Myself and Tatu were in Lahti 6 weeks ago hosting a Yellow Cafe / Open Space in Innovations for Knowledge Management seminar. They had a similar problem on their second day. Keynote had cancelled. Then as we came to the event on the second day we heard of that but the situation was solved already. However, that got us thinking – if Keynote cancels people that organize events should call us. And we would love to help. We need time to get to the event but nothing more than that. That’s enough to prepare.
Tatu with brand new Mental Models Game graphics.
We are ready to host a Keynote session at any size of an event. Anytime. On any theme. Now you may wonder: “That’s crazy. How can they be experts on any theme?” And you are right, we are not. But the audience attending any seminar is probably smarter together than any Keynote that was supposed to talk there. And we can make the people talk with each other. They will create knowledge together.
If it’s an opening/middle session of the event, our keynote would be the Mental Models game. If it’s by the end, we would host a massive Design Thinking workshop. Both are tools to make people talk and create their own meaning. Mental Models game helps to diverge thinking, and Design Thinking workshop will help to converge the ideas explored in the seminar. And the tools scale up. We can start from groups of 5. And go up to hundreds, thousands or ten thousands of people. It would be cool to do a workshop in a rock festival. Maybe one day?
What do you think? Does this make sense? How could we market this kind of service? And who’s the first client and when? If you are an event organizer, we would love to develop this further with you. Best yellow week to all! Ville
Core Competences of Monkey Business
May 16th
We were planning a coaching session with Ville for an organisation that had problems with quality. Organisation is working in a field where the quality is extremely important. We were chatting and talking about the case and different views we need to consider. We were thinking should we make an intro about the quality; maybe tell the steps to the good quality or something. I was thinking the quality and noticed that I know very little about it. I asked Ville does he know something about the quality. He said no. Then Ville looked at me and asked the same question and the answer was the same again. We both were smiling. Why in earth we’re trying to speak about quality when we don’t know anything about it and the organisation we are coaching are the experts of it. I understood that the organisation’s CEO didn’t want us to speak about quality, but to help the staff to speak about it. Helping people to speak is what Ville and I can do well.
It is important to know what you want to do, but it is also very important to know where you are good. When you find something that combines these two aspects you have found something precious. Something you could build your business on. Monkey Business is good at creating an interaction environment, teamwork and entre /intrapreneurship.
When we started the business I had a clue what we want to do: to make world more yellow and fun. Help organisations and individuals to find meaning for their work. The second question: Where we are good was not that simple. It took two years and hundreds of meetings and projects to have some clarity to this matter. When I look these three main things, it is obvious that those are our core competences, but it was really hard for me to understand that.
Core competences make our life easier
When we are planning a coaching session or process we know what we can do by ourselves and where we need to use external professionals. If we don’t know about the issue, we should ‘t try to be experts on that field. It is really good for your self-confidence when you can say:
“I don’t know anything about that”.
It makes it possible to concentrate where you are best.
What is Monkey Business?
Apr 21st
Monkey Business creates interaction environments, which enable fluent flow of information and learning. I have been answering the question above since 2007 when I started monkeying around. Almost always I have answered the question with different kind of answer. Year 2010 I was studying in Australia doing my master degree. When I came back I noticed I could not answer the question what is Monkey Business at all. To make it easier for me I started to think what we were doing and what are things we are best at. I started to crystallize our core to make it easier to understand.
I started to go through the work that Monkey Business did during the year 2010 from seminars to the organizational change processes. I noticed that almost in every case the core thing what we did was to create an interaction environment, where participants could speak meaningful things about themselves and their organizations. The main thing is to create an atmosphere where people can speak from their hearth without the fear of being stupid or wrong. Antti Hannula the Chairman of the board of directors at Aldea Attorneys at Law Ltd. said it very well.
The function of Monkey Business is to remove the obstacles of natural interaction between human beings.
Around this core substance we have redesigned our services to make the collaboration with customers easier. Here is the first peek to our redesigned services for our readers.
I will explain the services with few bullet points to make them easier to understand.
Ezy Start
- To create common consensus about the project
- Familiarize oneself with others
- Ease communication
Happy Ending
- Wrap up the project
- Share learnings and new ideas
- Decide next steps
Travel Agency for Super Heroes
- Learning journey for companies and individuals to/from Finland
- Organize visits to interesting companies and places
- Designing learning process for participants
Kick Ass Events
- Planning the event in co-operation with orderer
- Designing interactive program
- Executing the event
Yellow Attitude Workshop
- Creating entrepreneurship
- Creating intrapreneurship for organisations
- Igniting the passions
Yellow Café
- Communality process for organisations
- Place for speaking, laughing and innovations inside the organisation
- Host by Monkey Business in the beginning
Sustainability Innovation Camp
- Learning process for sustainable innovations
- For companies or individuals
- Doing your share
Please feel free to give some feedback. Are you getting excited? I AM!!!
-Hugo- Back in (Monkey) Business
Mental Model Game pitching #1
Apr 19th
Wednesday 13.4.2011 at Hub SoMa in San Francisco was a historic day. The first investor pitch of the Monkey Business Mental Model Game was held then. And the results? Lot of fun and learning, I’d say! Here I reflect the outcome and share the slides used & ideas generated from this session. I’m going to use a short “motorola” model answering the 4 questions below.
What went well?
In my master’s program all individuals of our #minnteam had a challenge to pitch a project. I picked Mental Model Game since we had just recently been talking about it with Tekes and found out that there might be potential to invest on this idea and the development of it. So the pitching chance came with a perfect timing!
Mental Model Game game board & spin wheel originals.
Thanks to deciding the topic well in advance I was able to develop my pitch by talking it thru for many people before the actual show. Hugo & Ville Monkeys, Aleksi Hasu and #minnteam mates helped by giving a lot of open critics & additions beforehand. (Thanks guys!) Just before the show I also established a relationship with the investors by chatting a bit with them before going to the stage. It helped to relax and enjoy the moment, and finally the presentation went better than any of the test pitches. It was a good experience and for sure I felt that I want to do it again and again and again!
What went poorly?
The presentation was quite well handled but in the questions and answers part I was not sharp anymore – it was the selling point and I went on talking not focused. First question was: What kind of customers buy this game now and have you asked them woud they like to pay for an online game or mobile app? That was easy to
answer: individuals & consultancies have already showed interest for buying a training for facilitating the game, and also for buying the web / mobile version of the game. The next question I received was harder: Why companies buy exactly this product? I answered that it’s bought for the team-up-day purposes or for eg. the sales teams motivational purposes. But that’s not really a good answer. Mental Model Game is not just any dynamic for the team-up-day. Instead, it’s a deep and simple tool for improving the team dynamics and performance inside a company, and you don’t need to wait for a development day to play the game. It can be used for thinking challenges in real time, even urgetly. For the next pitch I will go deeper in thinking about the real value of the Mental Model Game with the Monkeys team and with the academics who have launched the theory originally.
What did I learn?
Mental Model Game session in Helsinki, Finland - March 2011.What did I learn?
I learned that it’s important to mention numbers, and for example answer to the question “How much are you investing on it yourself?” and of course I forgot to tell that. We have been investing on the brochyre texts about the game, on the rights for the name and websites, and on the Mental Model Game tour. Our total investment is about 2000 € + 2000 working hours up to date as a team. We are now facing a bigger investment need for getting the online game development going on and the board game design done.
I also learned that: “Investors never invest on a service company, but if you had a developer in your team who owns this project it would be an attractive project to invest in.” Second positive comment from StepOne José was: “I want to see you making it happen, it’s a good idea and you’ve got the basis ready – it will be a good learning experience for Monkey Business to check how far you can go with the Mental Model Game - make it happen!”
What will I do differently next time / take to practice?
I would practice still more before presenting. Maybe 30 times is minimum for practice, now I had 10. Goal would be to get to give 300 pitches at least! And that’s why we are launching a “Pitching Evening” concept to Jyväskylä region, for getting a stage to learn this lovely skill, and for waking up the start-up culture in our city. Would yu be up to participate? Is there someone wrking on it in Jyväskylä already? Who should we team up with?
We will keep on developing the game with our new designer Janne, and keep on talking with Tekes about the possibilities for idea development funding.
Summa summarum: I used to be critical towards pitching because my mental model of a pitch was that it’s boring to have one head talking for a crowd as fast as possible to get the idea sold. Now, after experinecing the role of the presenter, I can just say that this was the most learningful experience I’ve recently had. Being seriously vulnerable and honest with the project in front of 30 or more people makes you feel, think, act and love it!
Today our USA Learning Journey continues in Boston with Liher Monkey. We’re visiting MIT Lab, Babson College with Endeavor course running there, and also Harward & some local enterprises. Do you have more ideas for what might we do here? We’re around until Friday 22nd of April.
With Yellow regards,
Henna Monkey
Mental Model Game at Hamburg
Apr 4th
31 brave people came together for an “Innovate or Die” event on 10 March in Hamburg, Germany, hosted by a German-Finnish crew, one of them from Monkey Business. Super Monkey Iiro Kolehmainen. It looked like everyone survived, and yeah, even had some serious fun.
One crucial tool we used was Monkey Business’ the Mental Model Game. It supports the process of recognizing one’s own and other people’s ways of seeing the world, and helps appreciate the different viewpoints.
Really interesting to see how the form of a game impacts people’s conversations. Maybe Marc Prensky provides some good thoughts on this phenomenon in “why games engage us”:
Now what happened during the Mental Model Game? Put simply, the participants shared their views about open inquiries, so questions like “what’s the difference between craziness and genius?” or “are we alone in the universe?” They talked in various constellations, for example large groups, smaller groups or individually, and they captured key insights. Initially, questions were given by the hosts, later the participants generated their own. Here are some juicy bits that people in Hamburg reflected:
Everything can be questioned what I had thought I knew
Don´t think just with your own head
Think crazy
Everything is changeable
Ideas are formed in the “connecting room” – don´t create any borders for yourself
Perspectives, perspectives, perspectives
People see things even more differently than I thought
It is important to have fun in life!
Again I learned quite a bit about myself
There is no limit for human creativity
The dialogue in the group reached a good level, and when one of the participants brought up the question: “What is the core of a human being”, it arose so much interest that it became the basis for the birthgiving phase of the workshop (conversion). This was guided by the question „if the inner core of the human being is so important, how will I incorporate it into my business?“
Participants’ creativity did not even stop at biblical quotations when Jesus, surrounded by his apostles, did a headstand, and remained in that position for the rest of the Last Supper. A really good way of shaking one’s mental models, isn’t it?
Thank you Monkey Business for playing the Mental Model Game with us in Germany, let’s continue this good cooperation in the future.
Writer is a friend of Monkey Business and enthusiastic of Team Academy
Theresia Warwitz
Travel Agency for Superheroes Offering?
Feb 15th
Ideas come up randomly. Yesterday, it was during dinner when it became clear to me, what is the offering of our Travel Agency for Superheroes. See the picture below.
It has three basic products:
- Highly personalized journeys for individuals, couples or small teams that are ready to embrace the flow and serendipity. Price: 1500€ a day + expenses + VAT
- Learning Journeys for bigger teams and groups. Like my friend Charles said yesterday over Skype: for people who are convinced that they need to see and think differently. Better organized and planned, ups, I mean guessed
Price 3000€ a day + expenses + VAT - Different camps e.g. Surfcamps & Divecamps Aimed at people who like to wear jeans at school or work. If it’s warm, these people use flipflops or sneakers. Price: 50-500€ per person + expenses for a week. Scholarships should be available soon.
- Update 15.2.2011 6:42pm! Also there is something called Zestcamps, organized by our friend Anu from Zestmark. I think that is really close to Superheroes Travel Agency actions, thus I want to bring it up. Zestmark’s focus is to help young people find their thing.
The idea is to go beyond travelling. Emphasize the inner journey. Learn together. Have good meals and dialogue. Meet new people. Have fun, play and laugh.
It would be great to know what you think after reading this, so please, drop a comment!
Ps. Thanks all of you with whom I have had chance to travel together. I have learnt a lot with you.
“Don´t worry – be crappy!” -Guy Kawasaki, Art of Start-
Nov 17th
Old finnish saying says that it´s better to have one goose in backpack than ten flying free. So here I go. Strongly believing that one posted writing is better than ten unposted. In a way that is how all started in Monkey Busines. No business idea. A lot of questions, small and bigger ones. Or even before that here was a meeting between two humanbeings, Ville&Tatu year 2005. Maybe even Adam&Eva before that. Later some biercans and mugs of coffee. And an attitude that we can have impact. WE HAVE IMPACT!
What would an organisation from future be like? Why is business so serious? What does mother Earth say to that? What is the best misunderstanding of my life? For me it´s Monkey Business – when people were talking about Funky Business. It was something we had been seeking out. Can´t be taken too seriously, yellow and playful. Travelling was meaningfull, ideas came through conversations with new people and surfing in new cultures. Bananashaped businesscard, logo and core message.
What is the tribe I want to join? Whose truth do I believe? Who/What leads me? After what I am running for? Is it possible? What inspires me? What keeps me moving? Dream? What is the cartoon I want to create?
Juha-Matti Kinnunen aka Tupsu has drawn these cartoons. And by serendipity we have started to use it as a tool for running interactive workshops. By telling our stories and raising questions and then throwing them to participants. And sharing our story is something that inspires me. No logic. Just attitude. Yellow spirit. And a lot of actions&Dialogue. Love me or hate me. Do the newer!
Lifestyle company. With Impact. Like organic plant. Maybe?
Mental Models Game
Oct 22nd
Hi All!
Sorry for the silence of the blog. Let’s see if we can pump some life in here. I want to share with you about a game, a mental models game. We have been using it quite a bit lately, and want to play more in the future because it seems to work rather well.
The game is based on the Peter Senge’s discipline Mental Models from the book Fifth Disciple. It was back in 2006 when we had a creative intelligence and flexibiblity session coached by LeTim where we came up with the game. Homework for the session held in Pukkila was to read the part from Fifth Discipline about Mental Models. On the session we visited Kiasma and Heureka, where happened to be a game exhibition. I think it was because of those visits in the birth giving we came up with the game about mental models. The world of innovation is indeed interesting. In that session there were many great people such as Erkki, Teppo, Olli-Matti, Virpi along with to-be-monkeys myself, Henna and Hanne. There were others as well but I am sorry cannot recall everyone.
What’s the game like? You can play it from three to hundreds of players, I guess, but the basic unit to play with is usually between 10-20 people. That’s a good size to practice dialogue. What’s the goal? To gain understanding about existing mental models we hold, and maybe question or enrich some of them. The main point is to become aware of them by talking about them.
I think the mental model game works because it’s really a game. It has a serious content but not so serious approach. There are time limits for dialogues, there is unpredictability, there are surprises in the game and there’s an end. The game is a platform, I think, and people really get to participate.
We have found the game successfully taking dialogue into meaningful levels very soon, and thus it creates value even in short workshops (e.g. 2 hours). Usually the impact with such a short workshop is not so big, but I think the mental models game can really give participants food for thought.
I will travel to Central Europe twice in November first to Strasbourg and Brussels between 3rd-10th of Nov. And then to Basque Country, Spain from the 22nd – 29th or so. It would be great to play the game with you, so if interested, let me know and let’s fix a time and place!
Keep it yellow! Ville
Ps. About the future of the game. I forgot to mention that you can use it with any theme. E.G. we can use it to talk about our mental models related to social media, experience economy, leadership, team learning etc. In future we want to build a place online where you can download new sets of questions for example from Jarkko Könönen, Esa Saarinen or Peter Senge and so on.
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!
Don’t Eat Yellow Snow! VillaWool Beanies available now
Feb 1st
Heyhou All friends of Monkey Business!
Do you remember our Beanie campaign from last year? Even though it was only two that were sold, and the other customer was myself, the beanie got into an English street fashion blog and the brand was also exhibited in NYC later on. Outo wear is doing well and kicking, I think.
We are proud to bring you new beanies to warm your precious heads this year. Sometime ago Janne came to our office smiling and clearly excited about something. He told us that he had found something explosively fantastic from shop yesterday. Well, he didn’t share us directly what is was but the next morning he walked into our office wearing a hat that had big letter writing on it: “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow!”
We were really excited about the new beanie not least because we found out that it was made by VillaWool, a 35-year old family company from Finland. We had been using their other hats for years already. And as the freezing weather doesn’t seem to get much warmer we thought it is time to contact the company for little co-operation. Also the trigger for the contact was that our friend Soren who bought the hat last year told me that his beanie got lost… So Soren et al. here is what Matti from VillaWool says about the hat:
deys (Don’t Eat Yellow Snow) slogan was originally used by the first and only original Helsinki based Ski-Store called SkiSystems somewhere in the early 70s. SkiSystems were our first customers in this beanie business. real tough guys back in the days.
We are proud to say that you can order your own DEYS beanie now. Price is 30€ including Finnish VAT and mailing all over the world. Let us know which color your prefer: white, gray (my favorite) or black (Janne’s beanie is black). You should make the order by tomorrow 12pm in order to catch the first round of orders. If you somehow missed this message do not worry but just make an inquiry for the beanie as we will order couple extra to be sold from our office directly.
Peace, Love and Bananas,
Ville
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