Posts tagged Tiimiakatemia
Monkey Business Got The Revolution – Award!
Jan 22nd
Whoop what a party yesterday! It was Tiimiakatemia’s (Team Academy Finland) 19th Birthday Party. It was time to gather together, the whole network and have a blast. On the spot were hundreds of Tiimiakatemia alumnis, customers, network members and friends from all over the world – coaches, team entrpreneurs- you name it. Everyone willing to meet friends and celebrate Tiimiakatemia and team learning and everything that comes with it
One of the evening’s high lights for us was being given the Revolution-award. We didn’t find out or hear what the criteria for this award was, but I guess the name of the prize tells it all! 2012 truly is the year of “DO THE NEVER”!
We want to send out humble `thank you` for all of those who voted us. So here it comes; THANK YOU!
(About voting; today is the election day here in Finland. We vote for new president. I hope that `DO THE NEVER` theme continues throughout the weekend. To the ballot box!)
Travel Agency for Superheroes acts again!
Jun 1st
1 year ago in Quito, Ecuador, while working at local entrepreneurship school and after having coached about the Team Academy in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for University Senac Sao Pauolo & Bank Grupo Santander Brazil, I made a Learning Contract defining that I want to work more with international big companies and surf. This is a post about how the wishes come true. It presents the learnings from a Creative Expedition we did for a group of 20 Marketing & Sales executives of a big French bank Crédit Agricole of in Finland in partnership with Entrepart.
Our relationship with Entrepart and Crédit Agricole dates back to 2007, when I was a teampreneur in Team Academy and we were invited to give a taster of Team Academy for a Crédit Agricole group in Helsinki. I went, together with 3 more teampreneurs, and apparently we succeeded to pitch the case well, because this time CA decided to start their week-long Finnish expedition from Team Academy of Jyväskylä and I had a chance to organize the program for the week as Entrepartner in Finland.
The idea of CA spending a week here in Finland was to do a Translation Nomade, a kind of creative expedition that takes people out of their normal living & experience cycles, and opens up new ways of thinking business. Topic of the week for marketing executives was HR management. We met companies with curious HR aspects, such as Nokia with challenges related to the aim of transforming the engineering business into service business, Docrates Clinique combining Socrates philosophy and doctors, being a unique private cancer Clinique in Nordic Countries and Fujitsu with long cooperation with the National Theatre (meeting took place at the National Theatre). As bankers, our guests were very curious about Finnish banks, and we learned about OP-Pohjola and Sampo, which were both rock’n’roll learning moments with highly interesting peer practice-exchange.
We also discovered the buzzing places of the entrepreneurial wave of Finland in places, such as Team Academy, Design Factory and Korjaamo. Just to give an overview, we were with Demos Helsinki with Manifest of Good Work, Monkey Business as a product of Team Academy joined with Carola Wictorsson and Kaisa Oksanen from the research group of Antti Hautamäki, contributing for creating innovation environments, regionally, Ellun Kanat with a study of Y-generation, STARA with age management program, Outi Ugas from Hahmo presenting the Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 project, Teemu Arina from Dicole talking about the Homo Connectus online, Sulake with Habbos around the globe and Ramine Darabiha with MySites and Aalto Entrepreneurship Society going to Shanghai World Expo on Tracks. In Jyväskylä we also met Stafix with static stickers and most importantly, a 7-nationality team founded by an Ecuadorian, working in Vaajakoski, Jyväskylä, and crushing it worldwide.
Whoah! Lots of meetings! We really had a week full of action and the program covered the Finnish society and landscape pretty comprehensively. “Participants come back with many insights.” said Christian Mayeur, founder of Entrepart on the way back home.
At the last night dinner in Kappeli we dialogued (time for it comes afterwards) and concluded that: In Finland a lot of trust and space is given for the youth, and that creates interesting companies & projects. And what about this well-being, every company promises a package of it for the employee, but what’s the individual responsibility of each own well-being, isn’t there any? Also the area of exact information was thought: in France and especially in the bank numbers & measuring the facts are appreciated, but it seems that in Finland the process and feeling the move and having dialogue is more important. Maybe this feeling resonates with the people we met on the way?
Personally, I was honoured to meet with all these people and companies that are highly intersting for Monkeys. Now it’s time to start discovering the seeds this learning journey has planted. Thank you for your commitment and presence, all who contributed and joined the journey! My next goal, other one written in the same Learning Contract in Quito, is to make 100 % of the turnover from outside of Finland. Maybe this week with CA was a step towards that too.
Cheers and love,
Henna Monkey
Ps. Special thank you for Christian Mayeur and Sanna Tossavainen for creating this and giving us a chance to be part of this and work with you. It’s been quite a trip!
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
Thesis about Team Academy by Esa Saarinen
Nov 26th
We still are squatting in the premises of Team Academy, and today when I came from the surprisingly close-by grocery store I thought once again: “Team Academy is great because in here it is ok and encouraged to be excited.” Why did I think that? Well, I had just seen one Teampreneur painting graffiti related to the 24hr birth-giving of Team Company Dilectio. He was enjoying and laughing while doing the painting. And then Kaisu of Dilectio saw the graffiti, and she clearly was very excited about that.
That reminded me of the 7 thesis our friend, the explosively insightful philosopher Esa Saarinen has coined about Team Academy. He introduced these in the Team Academy’s 15th anniversary seminar in January 2008 where me and Tatu were the MC’s. I thought I should post them here to remind people who have seen them before, and maybe there are some to whom these are new.
The Core Reasons to the Success of the Team Academy: Esa Saarinen, the Famed Finnish Philosopher speaking
- Thesis 1 In the Hall of Fame of Experience-Based Learning Team Academy is # 1
- Thesis 2 Some People Speak, Team Academy Acts.
- Thesis 3 Team Academy Brings Dreaming Back to Professional Education.
- Thesis 4 Team Academy Calls Out to Young People to Express their Sincerity and Joy, apparently as the Only
Educational Institution in Finland. - Thesis 5 In the Endless Fight Between Stick-Disciplinary-Narrow-Mindedness and Breaking Out from Barriers, Team Academy Chooses Excitement.
- Thesis 6 The Core of Team Academy is Based on the Most Sustainable and Solid Foundation of Finnish Basic Values: Robust Pragmatism and the Spirit of Equality.
- Thesis 7 Team Academy is Based on the Power of Community and the Human In-Between, but behind it All is an Individual Who is Willing to Give Out His Everything for the Cause that Matters.
My favorite is maybe number 7 phrasing very nicely the connection and relationship between the individual teampreneur and the team/community. What are yours?
Ps. We are planning to organize an after party for all times Paphos-meeting in January together with Esa and the Paphos Alumni of Design Factory.
Monkey Business – Story about our name
Oct 15th
Many people ask where does the name Monkey Business come from. Here is the story. Fresh from Angers where it all started, now written at Team Entrepreneur‘s office. Team Mastery 1 participants Gilles, Laurent and Herve got a three year program launched here with 18 teampreneurs just two weeks ago! Sanna is coaching here with Gilles. Fantastic job, guys. Fantastic.
Herve Explains the name of the game called Experience Economy to the teamsters.
The name of Monkey Business has a strong connection to Angers, a city in the Western France. Me and Tatu started in Team Mastery‘s 1st promotion back in Dec 2006 in Finland, and then the second session with the theme of Leadership was held in Angers. Team Mastery is an international coaching program for people who want to learn team coaching Team Academy style.
So the second session was about Leadership. And as all the weekend/adult/entrepreneurs programs coached by the Team Academy / Partus there is a birth giving of new knowledge in the Friday evening. (The sessions are from Thursday 12pm to Saturday 12pm =48hrs of intensive dialogue and team work). I remember that this particular session was not so easy for me. It was confusing – maybe it was about the difference between a coach and a leader, and also I remember one member of our team was not comfortable with the atmosphere, as it seemed very business oriented with the aim of creating more and more entrepreneurs – Where is the idealistic part and saving the world? Well, I remember that in our birth giving we asked everyone that what is their mission in this world or what they dream about. I think almost everyone dreamed of a better world in a way or another.
Then, the second birth giving was about Fertile Emptiness. I remember Sari, Emmanuel and Javier R. (in the picture above on the right taken at the Team Academy Euskadi’s 3rd Anniversary) was in that group. But what was really the ignition for our name was the third team’s birth giving about the Evolution of Leadership. It was a theatre play and it took place in the gardens of our agriturismo place. 1st scene was from the jungle were monkeys were leading one another by running around and making loads of noises. That was a key. Laurent from CoMind and Tatu could really make some cool (and loud) monkey noises and movements. Another interesting and hard-to-forget scene of that birth giving was the 3rd scene were Claude from Strasbourg and TA Alsace had climbed in the tree, and repeated the word “Awareness”. (Tatu confirms this story and say that it was harder to actually get him safely down but we managed.) It was the Guru-model of Leadership. Then there was a still 3rd level, but I cannot recall what that was. (Tatu says it was working and learning together). Here’s a picture of Claude whom I was happy to meet this Sunday.
So it was in Angers that the seeds for our name Monkey Business was sowed but the name came up in the third session of Team Mastery in London. Our friend Javier Ruiz of Labein and TA Euskadi brought with him a game that went like this: “If you were an animal, what animal were you?” Tatu said Monkey, I think I said Puma (because I used to play Ice Hockey in a team called Pumas). But then Sanna said that I would be Sloth, which is a kind of Monkey, too.
Well this game wasn’t quite enough to make the name yet. There were some people talking about the book by Ridderstråle and Nordström called Funky Business. It was Tatu who was around in another conversation where he heard Monkey Business, and a bulb lit in his head: “That’s it! That should be the name!” And the good thing was that we were going to go and do in our first coaching project outside Finland with Labein right after the session in London so we got to develop our idea of Monkey Business a bit further. On that trip we also met with folks of Funky Projects, and the artist called Lady My who eventually draw the famous Banana for us. But that is another story that deserves a post of it’s own.
Greetings from Basque Country
Sep 29th
Yellow greetings from Basque Country. Here I have visited Gaze workshop (thanks for invitation!), Manahmana and today at Mondragon Team Academy. I wanted shortly share a little marketing idea from the first Team Company of TAE Manahmana. See the picture below. Make one for yourself, and spread into appropriate places! Also see Maialen and Aitor of Manahmana in the other picture.
New Design Coming Up for Monkey Business
Sep 21st
We’ve made a deal with Jaakko from Kuvituskonttori to design a new image for Monkey Business. But he is not the only one visually talented friend of ours. Also, there’s a very promising young designer working currently at Intotalo who has a skill hard to match when drawing monkeys and other illustrations. Juha-Matti has drawn for example a great comic strip about Tupsu the Monkey and a superman Monkey.
This is our latest Design by the Tiimiakatemia bookshop host Esa. He gave it to us in the first page of a small notebook at the Team Mastery Arena (which was quite a success, by the way!) I think it’s rather cool and maybe this will be the design for our next T-shirt. And yes, the point of this post was to say that if there are some eager designers and or people with some eye for the visual candy please let us know. We are building a roster of artists, and we need loads of graphics in the future. My inspiration has come for this kind of organization and style initially from Mambo from Australia and and more recently also from Control Clothing from Finland. Cool stuff indeed by both of them, I think. Story by Ville Monkey
Team Mastery Arena – Wonderful promovideo
Jun 26th
Our man and monkey Tatu will be MC’ing in this event called Team Mastery Arena coming up in September 17th-18th. I just surfed through their site and found this hilarious and fantastic video where Nic toasts about the event. It’s excellent!
Nic, the creative agent, is a good friend of ours, representing the entrepreneurship coaching center Intotalo in my home region Kainuu also known as The Creativity Valley. He’s helped me a lot in our dialogues about Monkey Business and life and he encourages me always as I know he thinks in the same way with us about creativity, action and learning. Monkey Business! Says Ville.
Learning Expedition to Team Academy
Feb 15th
Ever since I started at Team Academy back in 2004 I have been actively taking part into Learning Expeditions as a representative of Team Academy. I remember my first one in October 2004 when for example Etienne Collignon, Javier Ruiz and Claude Zauber came to see Team Academy. Now, about 4,5 years later I am organizing a yet another Learning Expedition to Team Academy with these same people who actually have by now all started their own Team Academy initiatives. And n fact, Etienne and Laurent wrote an article for the SoL Reflections about their first Learning Expedition. I thought you may find that one interesting as well if you haven’t seen it yet.
So there is a new Learning Expedition coming up and we are expecting an interesting week with plenty of dialogue and good thinking together. This time, besides the normal program, there’s a real speciality as we get to see the birth-giving of the Young Leader Special Training program and enjoy the dinner and Finnish sauna with them on Friday night. Promotional slides are here below. You can also download them here. Inquiries and any questions can be sent to me to ville@banana.fi
Ps. All the Finns and especially ones around Jyväskylä. Next Wednesday you have a chance to see something special as the first international team of Team Academy IPOTA gives birth about their learning from being a team at Team Academy. It starts at 9am at Team Academy. I can also organize a Skype so that people from abroad could follow it through a video call. Drop me a line if you are interested in that.
Written by Ville Monkey
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