Ups, Sorry – A New Blog

Whhuuuh. Sorry, I forgot to mention in here that we’ve moved our blogging to our official website www.banana.fi Please see that for latest news and developments about Monkey Business and beyond. Thanks a lot. 

 

Ville

Monkey Business in Oslo

Hello from Oslo,

Me Ville and Henna are here in Oslo with Hanna and Johannes (from Team Academy) and our partner Etienne from Solvay France to present Team Academy in EMFD Conference. In fact, Team Academy is nominated for an award in excellency in co-operation between a private corporation (Solvay) and a university (Team Academy. Check out more from the EMFD at their website

This pic show is part of our presentation in Oslo for EMDF Conference.

We will inform if you tomorrow if we win the award. The idea is to bring “the boy” home.

Poor Place Great Space

Hi guys…finally space to write! Finally I’ve got my place to stay and live & act normally. After a homeless month with a backpack of clothes and living mostly at the Team Academy my new home (poor place) feels like an oasis (great space). My place is an old flat built in 1963 and it certainly looks and feels like that! But the space around…it’s wonderful. Lake, hills, green trees and paths all over and the summer sky I can see from the huge window! The space makes the place lovely even though it’s small and more like a big window with a home than a big home with a window.

In a Team Mastery 2 first session at Jyväskylä, Finland, Anita from Spain said: “Home is where the heart is”. Then Nic from Kajaani, who works for Intotalo answered: “My heart is about 4 hours North from here, where my home is”. That was a smart joke with a meaning, I think.

This thought stays in my mind because I know that within the next few weeks there are many adventures to live in different countries, and I feel that in the next Autumn I will move again…but not inside Finland.

Okay but now that I have a home, it’s time to continue writing with the Team Mastery 2 HOMEwork.

Hende

Brass Monkey, Funky Monkey

It’s weekend and Manu’s birthday, from Manahmana, practically this means that it’s time for a Fiestas in Onati where Me and another Ville are staying while working with TAE aka Team Academy Euskadi. Javier Ruiz, the head coach of TAE, explains a little bit about their attitude on the following video.

The new theme song for the Monkey Business is found. It’s Brass Monkey by Beastie Boys. Oh Yeah! The Monkey Dance with this music will be our thing.

Stories from Oman part 2: Video of the workshop

As said earlier, Monkey Business was launched globally in SoL Global Forum in Muscat Oman, this past April. Here’s a video made from the workshop hosted by the Team Academy International network. I think we made quite a few new friends there. Please enjoy the video and book us for your next seminar

 

 

Adventures in Bilbao

Here I (Ville) am in Bilbao, working with the Team Academy Euskadi coaching and helping with their marketing for potential clients. If you comprehend Spanish you can also check out the blog of Manahmana. It’s the first team company in here.

I like the city of Bilbao quite a lot, not least because the first steps of Monkey Business are stepped here. Yesterday we took a walk around and met some interesting people on the street called second of May. Also visited the creative young entrepreneurship exhibition.

 

New Service: 24h Service Center for Coaching

This is an idea that’s probably been up for quite some years at Team Academy, but nevertheless, it has not been made into a reality. Well, I think it’s about the time that Monkey Business will make it happen.

The idea is that there’s a phone number where you can call at any time, for any reason. The promise is that we’ll help you in 24h.

The special services at the moment are personal and team coaching, seminar facilitation, workshops, world cafes and even keynotes. So if your speaker/seminar got suddenly sick no need to worry anymore. Call Monkey Business at +358 40 731 2084 and we’ll organize help for you in 24h.

Our Promise: 2-4 Monkeys at your service in 24h which in practice means: More Action. More Chaos. More Mistakes. More Learning.
Price: 3200€/24h+VAT+Expenses

Monkey Dance by Henna

Team Academy is becoming pretty boundaries crossing already, almost five years before the fulfillment of the new vision of being the Top boundaries crossing unit of Team Entrepreneurship in Europe on 19.01.2013. One good example of this is the street dance lessons hosted by Maria from Krokodiili. She has a passion for hip hop, and she’s the project manager for the biggest hip hop festival in the Nordic countries called Pipefest. Anyways, she hosts dance lessons at Team Academy and two members of Monkey Business, Henna and Johanna, have participated. I was amazed by the result as I met Henna today at the local grocery store. I am proud to present a brand new Monkey Business Dance!!! How cool is that?

Stories from Oman, part 1: “Hey. You’ve got the book!”

As you may or may not have realized the fact that Monkey Business was in SoL Global Forum in Oman with 5 persons crew have inspired and affected my thinking quite a lot recently. I thought I could start writing stories behind the scenes meaning I will tell you what really happened over there. Here’s the first one that brought smile on my face again this morning as I woke up.

We had a spot on the Learning Souq which in practise meant that we had a small spot where we could present our work and talk with other forum participants.

So we did take contact with people on the souq, usually chatting with them, telling a little bit about us and also asking what are they doing. Tatu had a special style of asking their level of interest and delivering material according to that. First he gave everyone Team Academy’s Leading Thoughts and asked if the person was really interested. If the person was he/she would get also Team academy book. Another way was to tell them to read the Leading Thoughts in the evening and come back next day for the book if they were still interested.

So what happened was that we heard a good story from one person (I don’t know actually who this was, supposedly someone from Sweden). He had been reading the book in his hotel room in the evening, and he had gotten until specific point which I cannot remember right now when his roommate came into the room. Immediately as the newcomer saw the book he had said: “Hey, you’ve got the book!” and ran towards the bed and practically stolen the book from the owner. And after that, the book owner didn’t get to read it anymore at that night because his roommate wanted to read it.

You can order the book from me (ville@oppiva.org) for the price of 25€ including the postage fees if you don’t have a copy yet. And if you realize you’re part of this story please let me know, too.

We decided to write a book.

On our way home from the SoL (Society for Organizational Learning) Global Forum in Muscat, Oman me and Tatu decided to write a book. We can go back few paths to understand where the idea comes from. Firstly we shouldn’t forget our shared experience in Team Academy (and especially Team Mastery) and all the books we’ve read. But at least in my case, there are few of them that especially inspired me. Karaoke Capitalism written by K. Nordström and J. Riddersträle is a big source of inspiration. The second one is “Muodonmuutos” by Finnish philosopher E.Saarinen. Third one is Project50 by Tom Peters and fourth Orbiting the Giant Hairball by MacKenzie. On the Saeb airport in Muscat I bought a book by P. Arde called It’s not how good you are, but how good you want to be. Just before the SoL GF I read the book by MacKenzie and thought that this would be an excellent gift for customers. After reading few pages of the book by Arde I thought about the same thing about his book. Meanwhile, I had also been reading book by S. Godin which is called Small is the New Big. From there I picked up the phrase do the never. Tatu got very excited about it too. We were on the plane from Muscat to Abu Dhabi or from Abu Dhabi to Frankfurt, I am not quite sure anymore. We were playing with the idea how we had already been implementing the idea of do the never in many cases of the history of Monkey Business and before too. Then suddenly it occurred to our mind, let us write a book that we can give to our customers. It would be another example of doing the never as usually books are written by people on their mid 40’s or even retired people. Maybe that’s why many seminars are boring and frustrating as it’s old people who’s written books telling about them. So we decided to write a book when we are still young, just about to launch ourselves to the field of business coaching

The book will consist short stories and writings on roughly five different areas. One is stories from real life lived by us or by people close to us. Second one is more theoretical where we open shortly some theories behind our way of working. Third section contains ideas that we want to make reality in near future. Fourth section is different questions or quotes that have inspired us and keep inspiring us. Fifth are is the pictures spread around the book.