Posts tagged Letim
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.
Monkey Business House Warming Party Videos
Mar 2nd
Last Friday on the 26th of February we had a house warming party at our new office in Vaajakoski’s Teollisuustalo. According to wild guessing there where maybe 80 guests in total. Thanks for everyone who came by, and also greetings for those who couldn’t make it this time. We will host a new party when the snow is gone.
Here are three videos that you may already have seen at MonkeyTV at Qik or Youtube. First two are in English and third one in Finnish. We also took plenty of pictures but those will come later. Enjoy!
We are many! 4000 unique visitors!
Sep 2nd
I am humbled. For two reasons and they are related. Let me explain a bit.
Today I was having a lunch with Anu from Zestmark coaching company. She’s a friend of mine since 2000 when we did the Kainuu Young Leaders program together. The program where I heard and learned about Team Academy, too, and met great people and … and… and… She’s also been my mentor during my studies at TA along with Janne Roiha (who’s Monkey now!) as they started at TA a year before me. Nowadays Zestmark concentrates on coaching young people and Anu is the CEO of that business. Anyways, we talked about many things including new cars, Monkey Business, Zest coaching, Personal Mastery (according to Senge the question are: What is important for me now and what is happening now?) etc. Anyways, it made me very happy to hear that our blog, this one you’re reading, had helped her to transform her business into something she enjoys more to work at. Thank you Anu for this compliment, and let’s co-create some kick-ass coaching for the youth of Finland and world!
Sidenote! Me and Gorilla at the 16th anniversary of the TA. BTW, mark your calendars for the 17th anniversary to be at the 16th of Jan 2010. It’s going to be big! Photo courtesy of Eija Laitinen.
Well the other thing. Some of you may remember my post from early December 2008. It was about the statistics of our website. By then, after 8 months the site had been open, we had had a little over 2000 unique visitors. Then some weeks ago Henna reminded me that you promised to check the statistics as some of you had asked her about that. So today after the lunch with Anu my former coach LeTim came by our office for a coffee (btw. Welcome others, too!). He was telling us about his blogs (11!) and the amount of visitors he gets even without updating them. So I thought I should check our statistics, too, and that is what made me very happy. It’s over 4000 unique visitors to our site this year! and over 900 in August! Now that made me feel humble, that you are so many out there who come and see our site and blog, and we are also many in here. What could we do together? Let’s make the world a bit more fun, right?
So thank you all very much for the support. We will keep building the Monkey Business and making the world more yellow and fun! Looking forward to make more mistakes with you. Peace and love, Ville.
Ps. For the first who guesses or knows who is behind the mask and drops the right answer as a comment will receive our new T-shirt model to be out soon. Yah!





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