Monkey Business

Yvon

Visiting Patagonia @ Ventura

There were 10 dreams that I wanted to make true in life, and one of them became reality last thursday.  I got the chance to visit Patagonia and met Yvon together with 26 team entrepreneurs from Mondragon Team Academy and Team Coach Aitor Lizartza.

The visit started with a fully inspirational speech by Yvon Chouinard. Yvon started sharing that even if the Economic crisis is breaking down many companies, this has been the best year for Patagonia. He shared that people (consumers) become more conservative when the crisis hits and start buying what they really need. Actually the growth of Patagonia has been about 20% this year, but it could have been up to 30 or even 40%.  It did not happen because of their own choice, since they want to create an organic and sustainable growth.

Yvon sees that the government or the corporations won´t change the world, but it´s now in the hands of the consumers to step up and to show the power by deciding what to buy and who to support. He mentioned as well that co-operation through Business is the only way to create solutions for the environmental crisis we´re going through. Leading by example, Patagonia and another 24 clothing brands have created a shared project with the aim to provide more information (about how a cloth has been produced) to the customers prior to their purchase. It will take some time till this really takes place, but idea behind is that customers with an iPhone will get the chance to find out when they visit a store what has been the process of creating the jacket: where, materials, transportation…

Patagonia´s business model is not based on selling more to the same customer, but they aim to sell to new customers. I got some ideas here. Patagonia has the commitment to donate 1% of their sales (4 million $ will be donated this year) to organizations that support environmental change and activism.  From my perspective, this tribe has been created already, it does not grow and they are looking for tools to make change happen. So how can we do that? probably education is the only way to make that change happen. So how about Patagonia creating scholarships or grants for students from developing countries to attend schools that can create  profound changes in behaviours through radical educational models? Team Academy could be a good partner probably for that ;)

We got the chance to visit all the facilities and after that the teamsters had to work on a company challenge in 2 teams.

First team had to work on a challenge related to Product Marketing, and Helena Barbour, the Business Director for Lifestyle product presented it:
1. Patagonia is a brand committed to both the climbing and surfing lifestyles. Surf culture is driven by brands that sell fashion forward styles at low price points to the youth market, with significant advertising investment. Since Patagonia doesn’t promote fashion, low
prices or advertising, how should the brand seek to be relevant to the surf customer?

2. Given the environmental and social compliance parameters we choose to work within, our retail prices tend to be higher. How do we appeal to the younger generation who want to pay less at Zara, H&M etc?

The second team had to work on a challenge presented by Lisa Pike, Director of Environmental Giving. She posed the following questions:
1) A lay of the land of the environmental movement in both Spain and Europe (if they are not just Spanish students).  What are the driving environmental topics and issues that are resonating with citizens and customers currently?

2) How best can we communicate and execute our environmental giving in Spain/Europe.  Each year Patagonia gives away 1% of sales to grassroots environmental organizations.  Is this the right model for Spain? If so, how can we better brand this core company mission and execute it in Spain/Europe.   If not, what other approaches might we consider?

The students had 2 hours  to work on the challenge and then present the solutions, which were really good.

Yvon is definetely a truly inspiring master, whose business is based on the Zen philosophy. “Don´t focus your effort on shooting the animal correctly, but focus your energy on making the right move when shooting the arrow” – said him.

I wanted to dedicate this post to Tatu and the boys, to Hugo and his upcoming baby and to Ville, who lent me the book written by Yvon “Let my people go surfing” in November 2008.

Liher

Monkey Business Must Books Vol. 1

Over a month ago, on 13th of December 2010, I asked on our Monkey Monday weekly meeting about the must books for Monkeys and our friends. Meaning books that have influenced us a lot, and if you read them you may gain a better understanding what this Monkey Business is all about. This is the first volume of the list, and with the help of our bookshop friend Esa, you may soon find them in our private bookshop at the Yellow Office. See the books below and get yours from Amazon. If you buy them after clicking the links below, we will receive a small credit to buy more books, too. So thanks for you support and have a good time reading! It would be great if you let us know your key insights and favorite books as well.

Ps. If you are on Facebook reading this, you may wanna click here to see the page online, I suppose the shop isn’t available there. Or, just manually, the books are Papillon, The Fifth Discipline, The Alchemist, Let my People go Surfing, Blue Ocean Strategy, Orbiting the Giant Hairball and One from Many.

Ps2. The Finnish musts Vol. 1 will be revealed next but here’s a taster: Tatu ja Patu Supersankareina.

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Learning Journeys à la Monkey Business

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!