Posts tagged Funky Business
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.
Slowly back in Monkey Business
Aug 6th
It’s the time of the year that the Finnish summer gets warm and people get back to work. I wonder why our holidays tend to start from midsummer and end by the early August. Anyways here we are. But now worries it ain’t serious. Let’s start with a looong meeting over coffee, then go for lunch and ice cream. We had ice creams at the kiosk owned by three guys from Team Academy. They don’t take their business too seriously. Somebody went and did a tag on their wall but boys just added a little note under it saying… Well, see below for the photo.
Also I got a picture of Janne and Tatu. Here we go! Tonight we’ll have some crepes at Janne’s place and I am looking forward to that. Janne and Tatu had a good talk about if we should define our products or not. Janne made a connection to restaurant that also has a menu, so we started to talk about menu of Monkey Business.
Janne and Tatu.
And last, there’s a nice video I found through Makenubs videoblog which I originally found through Demos Helsinki Blog. I like it a lot, both the dance and the song. It’s something by Brodinski and Noob. I think we’ll use this video somewhere someday. Good stuff, enjoy!
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.
Funky Business Forever
Apr 14th
Henna has read a book and here’s short article inspired by it. Enjoy and feel free to join the conversation. I wanted to add a picture, and this was the one I could quickly find. Make it Funky!
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Funky Business Forever! (1 book point)
What a great teaser book! I read this while I was on the trip around the world and really got my thoughts moving.
We are in the business of producing and testing new concepts. New can be either old stuff prepared better than ever before or an intersectional innovation that has never been seen before. Trends are flowing globally in unpredictable ways, and a lot of innovations travel around the globe very fast, so that just in some months one revolutionary idea is used, embodied everywhere and therefore old. How can we live in such a chaotic business world, I was wondering.
One theme I want to reflect in this context is the flow of work.
Our Italian mate Eric sent to TA a great video about the development of the world. According to this … video the youth of 2000 will have 50 different work occupations in their lives, each personally. This is radical comparing to our parents, youth of 50s, who only had one-two jobs in their whole life. How is the society and current infrastructure prepared in this rapid changes in such a fundamental stampmaker as work? I experience difficulties in all the official agencies there are: taxation office because of having at least 4 different jobs /employees to pay tax for each year and it’s difficult to estimate the annual earnings, governmental pension centre that gives student support because I move so often that they get confused about my address and position and so on. The traditional governmental arrangements in the society are not at all prepared for the fast-moving youth. Who shall break this curse and do something about it – how? This is a target that needs urgent innovation.
In the other hand not only the work places change often, but in the current western economical crisis also the works from big employees are fading away. A generation of 2000 will work in professions that don’t even exist now. Most of these professions are innovated by small flexble ventures that till now have been treated as pieces of trash, but became an extremely valuable veapon agains unemployment in the financial crisis. More and more people start up companies by their own or with a small group of partners, and thus employ themselves. This phenomenon creates work flow towards small entrepreneur experts like Team Academy. More and more co-operatives are being created and need coaching in getting started. This means we have to innovate services for start-ups in networks. We have to innovate services that create immediate action, not services that create long-slace possible entrepreneurship because action you can always continue, but if a long term plan fails to get into action it’s like wasted time, money and work. Vision of having a network of professionals combining their power for the needs of life after industrialation is shaping in my mind.






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