A little celebration for the beginning of Brazil Team Mastery!

It’s a good moment to write a little reflection about the past years with the Team Academy Brazil process, since right now the first Team Mastery Brazil program is starting!! Next week 23 people from Latin America will start the journey of 1,5 years for growing to be Team Coaches. The group is mainly Brazilian, but there are participants from Chile and Argentina as well. They will start that in Finland, in the origins of Tiimiakatemia. This is a big step, and we should celebrate a bit, I think!

First meeting between Team Academy, Senac and SoL in Sao Paulo in 2008. Pic: Paulo Fluxus.

The movement for introducing Team Academy in Brazil has been a joint effort of the greatly insightful Brazilians from SoL, Senac and Santander, and the Team Academy and Partus with it’s network, especially Monkey Business (Ville igniting the talks in 2005 and 2008 and me leading the practical implementation work from Team Academy side since 2009 together with Valtteri and Mimmu from Partus) and Mondragon Team Academy, that has joined the process in 2010 and made a great effort in working on the implementation ever since (especially with the effort of Ana from Tazebaez and Jose Mari from the coaches team). Constant support has been given by the Hub and by AIESEC too, by various people from various countries. Now it’s time to inhale, exhale, and realize that a big step has been taken – the Team Mastery Brazil starts!

For making it happen so far we have…

…dreamed about Team Academy in Latin America since 2003…

…met people with passion & vision for great talks over lunch & dinner while traveling around the world, and shared this dream together with them, making it a collective dream…

…challenged the original Tiimiakatemia Finland to grow outside of Finland since 2005 and outside of Europe since 2008, and contributed to this growth all over Europe…

…completed the BBA process of 3,5 years in Tiimiakatemia Finland and invested on the Team Mastery Europe process of another 1,5 years for growing to be Team Coaches…

…invested on a voluntary project of coaching entrepreneurship in the Andes of Ecuador for getting to the field and acting on it…

…chosen to make Team Academy Brazil happen, and taken it as a main thing to achieve, working on it with seriously big effort since 2009…

…spent over 1000 hours in Skype over the years mainly at 9pm-midnight Finland / Central European time (noon in Brazil) for moving the project forward…

…made numerous action learning journeys to Brazil, Europe, China, India, USA, Africa with the network of Team Academy in order to learn the world and listen to the needs that exist for this global social innovation…

…created Monkey Business / Monkey and Banana cooperative (since 2007) to be able to support this kind of passionate projects and to scale this experience and offer the chance to change the world for more and more people…

…read Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline part by part, returning to the different parts many times…

…invested on a Master program called MINN (that is run with Team Academy by the University of Mondragon) in order to get a co-creation space and a key partnership with Mondragon in this process…

…made Team Academy Experience of 2 weeks in Sao Paulo in 2009 with Senac and Santander, made multiple Learning Expedition journeys in Finland & Mondragon with the BTA project core team players during 2009-2011, created a KickOff week for Team Academy at Senac Sao Paulo with a global network team in (first time in TA history we had a capacity to collaborate internationally in a TA beginning process and use the skills of the intercultural network for getting the best results) and made 5 months of pilots in Brazil with a global team in 2011 for getting the touch and the clarity of the green light for this implementation…

…concepted Team Academy implementation steps in the global level, mainly with the effort of Partus – the Tiimiakatemia developer company, but also as a joint effort of Tiimiakatemia Learning Network, that started to organize and meet meet regularly every year in summer 2010…

…participated and hosted over 1000 dialogue training sessions of 3-4 hours each in Team Academy context in various countries…

…given speeches of Team Academy and Monkey Business all over Europe, Brazil, USA and China spreading the message and convincing the key influencers and decision makers = the youth, the people with opinion, the dreamers who can do what they want to do when they want to do it…

…learned portuguese and english… (YUHUUU!!!!!)

…practiced hosting team dialogues and collaborative processes in Team Academy since 2004…

…and for sure, been very grateful to Johannes Partanen who started the education revolution with Tiimiakatemia in Finland in 1993 and for his company Partus that has been developing the methods ever since together with the Tiimiakatemia Learning Network…

The story of Team Academy Brazil began about 10 years ago at a SoL Global Forum in Espoo Finland when Brazilian people from SoL network met with Finns from Tiimiakatemia. That is very cool because right now I’m on my way to a similar event here in Stockholm. It’s time to gather for the SoL European Forum and I’m totally on fire thinking of what might be growing out of this gathering now!

Ready to take action! Puc Rio workshop in process. Pic: Cesar Augusto.

Anyway this story of Team Academy Brazil beginning process is written just from my point of view. I actually ask for the others who have worked in this process to share their points of views and the things they had to do for making this happen, so we can see how much collaborative effort it takes to make such a dream come true. Now that the Team Academy is starting in Sao Paulo, we are working on starting Team Academy programs in Rio too. There my dreamer Team Mastery mate Anita Seidler is our collaborator, with whom we already did a workshop of TA at Hub Rio as well as at Puc Rio Genesis.

Now stepping to the night with SoL people in Stockholm with a curious mind, and looking forward to meet the team of the first Team Mastery Brazil in Finland in the end of next week. It feels we are moving, join the ride!

Henna

Yes, it’s been a long, hard and joyful journey! We love Team Academy and run Monkey Business, a spinoff from Tiimiakatemia Finland, for living. Pic of Valtteri & me by Anita Seidler.

Brazilian and Latin American educational market

Hello!

We haven’t been writing too much, should write more! We are already off from Brazil, and returning hopefully at the end of July.

We’ll write soon more on what has happened on our other deals in Brazil, but I wanted to concentrate now on our research about the Brazilian educational market and some information we have found with it.

We are going to organize an event in Jyväskylä, Finland, on 28th of May, together with EduCluster Network. You can find out more about the network in the earlier post of this blog. The theme of the event will be Latin American educational market. The idea is to share tacit knowledge about the market and how to act there as a foreign company. We have Brazilian, Argentinan and Chilean tables with specialists in from those countries in the event.

Many people have been really helpful with the research. Thank you interviewees Marco Santoro from EISElab, Flavio Foguel from Univag University, Daniel Mitraud from  Grupo Santander’s Universities division, Cleide Nakashima, Heiko Hosomi Spitzeck, Cecilia Oliveira, Vivian Neri and Felipe Loberto from the HR department of Grupo Santander and Ronald Zottele from Senac São Paulo. Also, with Tatu Lyytikäinen from VTT we were exchanging some very interesting information.

Thank you also people who have helped us in getting contacts or in some other ways: José Edson Santos, Cecilia Oliveira, Flavio Foguel and Pablo Handl from The Hub.

Some of the worst challenges in the Brazilian education are caused by some very fundamental things, the economical and social inequality, in the country. The traditional status of economics in Brazil is that the rich are very rich, and the poor very poor. The conditions of public education, which is the only one the poor can afford, are very poor, and with that the poor are usually excluded especially from the higher education.

Valtteri celebrating the victory after long hard work finishing and returning his final thesis, which made a big part in the research and material we are producing to the event.

On the other hand, there are many, many opportunities in education and educational market currently. We have seen quite exact possibilities for the Finnish players we are doing the research for. The possibilities we have seen are for example in e-learning, different kind of educational technology, the primary education and in developing the university education.

Education is a key element for development in Brazil, and in order for the country to take its place as a welfare society (which is their long-term goal as with) and a internationally competitive society, they need to improve the education a lot. The Brazilian government has committed to double the size of country’s university education capacity, which creates many opportunities.

Now, while the growth seems to be at its strongest, it would be a very good time to invest something to do business there. Monkey Business, and Team Academy are doing successful projects and interesting business with big clients in Brazil, wouldn’t you?

For more information about the event, the research or anything, find our contact information at the bottom of About page.

- Valtteri

Yellow meetings in Sao Paulo

Three weeks in town and it feels like home to be back in Sao Paulo again. Both me and Valtteri are here for the 4th time now in fact, and it’s getting better all the time. Part of this great feeling now might come from the fact that we are living in a real cozy home downtown, yet the biggest sensation is still caused by the people we’ve met and the conversations we’ve had in here.

I wanted to share a bit about what’s up here now for us. Lets start that from yesterday because one of the best encounters just happened at the street then! We were walking in Oscar Freire towards the Consulate of Finland for talking with them about the Brazilian education ministry contacts for the work we are doing in here for EduCluster Network. As we walked, I noticed a guy passing by wearing shoes with yellow shoestrings. Ok, he passed, but no more than 5 minutes after came another one, with yellow showstrings as well, and this time I commented in Finnish to Valtteri: “Looks like yellow shoestrings are in fashion in here!” Instantly the guy turned around, claimed that he heard that, and simply continued by saying: “Ah we know each other – we met at that art exhibition opening back in November. I remember your project and I’ve been thinking about you in some situations in here, we should talk more!” We also remembered him, Fredrik Boëthius, very well, and so we ended up for a rich chatting lunch at Galeria dos Pais and also visiting this coworking space where he rented a space at Augusta.

Yellow meeting in Sao Paulo at a coworking space called Pto de Contato in Rua Augusta.

My note from this happening is that we find our tribe when looking for the yellow and talking about it too. Here another yellow intervention from Ville’s United World College (UWC) Norway friend Paulinho Fluxus, with whom we met last November in the party of Canil at USP and gave the Monkey tape: More Action. More Chaos. More Miskates. More learning.

Yellow intervention - Monkey Business in Brazil now! By Paulinho Fluxus.

Yesterday morning our core collaborator in Brazil, Anita Seidler, visited us on breakfast and we talked about the World Economic Forum in Mexico and about the actions in Chile, where Tiimiakatemia is also invited to host workshops. We also talked about my master’s MINNteam that we are intending to bring to know this wonderful country. Over dinner we met another beautiful friend Cleide Nakashima, with whom it’s always fun to talk and to learn the brazilian culture, and would be great do collaborative projects too. With Cleide we talked about education and training, about what’s their difference and what’s needed in fact. The type of talks we had yesterday make me think, what are we trying to accomplish as team entrepreneurs in this world? Also, why and how are we making the life of the people easier? What kind of contribution is needed? I believe the answer lies in empowernment, teambuilding and entrepreneurial attitude that allows the people to create a world they want to live in.

Most of all we’ve been in talks with Senac and Santander, the two organizations who first took the initiative to bring Team Academy and us to Brazil in 2009. We are meeting both regularly and keep collaborating. In Senac the action is related with the preparation for Brazil’s first Team Mastery program that is starting in May 2012. With Santander the conversation is about teamwork and how to ignite that more instead of having lots of indivual success.

Here some pictures of the past 3 weeks, including more great meetings and places like the Hub Sao Paulo, MyJobSpace, EISELab etc:

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Aside of all the face-to-face meetings I’ve been glad to have a virtual connection with the brazilian the MSLS alumni Telma Gomes and her project One Future One Planet Global Dialoues before Rio+20. This connection is originating from the Art of Hosting Karlskrona, where I participated just before coming here. There we also reconnected with Elvio Coletinha, an MSLS alumni from Belo Horizonte, who used to do a case about applying sustainability into Team Academy curriculum. Lets see if we make it to Belo Horizonte to meet Elvio and the projects in there still during this time in Brazil.

With yellow regards,

Henna Monkey

Coming to Brazil!

Finally, after a little bit quieter time, two projects start to take big leaps again!

I, Valtteri, and Henna, both now from Monkey Business, are finally coming back to Brazil! This time we are going to make a very effective, shorter trip of 5 weeks, between April 2 – May 10.

We are still coming as members of Tiimiakatemia Learning Network, but especially as Monkey Business. Monkey Business has the vision of being the most igniting collective in the world by 2017. And also by 2017, we aim to have 200 global members of Monkey Business. Now, Brazil is our next really big target. We dream of doing the real Do The Never! : The dream has been shouted out: We want to establish an MB office in Brazil in the turn of the year 2012-2013! Practically this means that with Henna, we’d be working premanently in Brazil for at least a couple of years with goal to establish a permanent Yellow Office in Brazil. The first steps are to make two trips to Brazil, now in the spring, and for a bit longer period in the fall 2012. This is all in order to make it sustainable to make the step of moving to Brazil, to be able to sustain ourselves there. We need to deepen our customer relations in Brazil, and create many new. We also want to start looking for future Brazilian Monkeys. Interested? Contact us!

For this spring trip to Brazil have several missions:

Do the Never Club

A) Grow our networks in Brazil. Networks expanding are something we want to and feel needed to do. For example, just yesterday we talked in Skype with a marvelous woman, Telma Felix de Melo Gomes, a Brazilian who lives in Sweden. In the future we hope to make get to know The Natural Step Network, The Hub network even better than now, SoL network even better, plus many others.

B) Work on our final thesises, on a research project of doing a market report of Brazilian educational field. The report is going to be presented in an event on May 28th for EduCluster Finland Network‘s member companies who are interested of the Brazilian market. EduCluster is a network for education export companies of Central Finland, which is the part of Finland we live in currently.

The goal of the market report, as well as of the event, is to present the market especially in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro areas in a way that will make it easier and encourage the companies to make steps towards doing business in Brazil.

The Revolution Award we won at Tiimiakatemia Finland's 19th anniversary in January

We really feel this is an important project. First of all, Brazil as a country is developing so fast. Currently it is the world’s 6th biggest economy, and in the educational system of Brazil there is a lot of work to be done as well. Secondly, with the language skills and network we have gained in Brazil we are able to give something to the Finnish companies.

Thirdly, we’d really like other Finnish companies to work in the Brazil field, all the synergy we can get both with Finnish and especially Brazil companies is more than welcome!

 

 

C) Valtteri is hoping to work as a team coach in Senac SP, who is still on the way of creating Brazil Tiimiakatemia, a bachelor program on team entrepreneurship, on the creation of a new model of their Junior Companies, to be more aligned for team learning. This step aims for the next step, which is the Junior Companies will run as really team companies and test how will the team learning methods work in Senac.

At the same time 18 people of Senac and some other people e.g. from Argentina & Chile are starting Tiimiakatemia’s program of team coaching Tiimimestarit Brazil in May. The program will start from Finland, getting to know Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä. Another part of Valtteri’s job would aim at working with the future Tiimimestarit participants.

The Yellow Office, Jyväskylä, Finland

D) We have offered our team coaching to and really hoping and excited to work with Grupo Santander Brasil’s HR department. The HR department, which responsible of taking care of the competences and well being of 50 000 of Santander’s employees in Brazil.

E) We plan to do a pop up of Monkey Business’s Yellow Office to show how would Yellow Office in Brazil look like! For the pop up, we’d of course invite our friends and anyone interested to come and visit us!

F) We are open for new contacts, initiatives and projects! We already have new starts, e.g. work with the networks in Rio interested about team entrepreneurship and team learning. E.G. PUC Rio University has shown interest towards Tiimiakatemia, and we look forward on maybe working with them.

So if you have read this and are in Brazil, contact us and let’s meet up!

Who wants to work with us in Brazil? Who shares the same yellow passion with us?  Which networks and people we don’t even know yet in São Paulo & Rio areas? What does the sentence ‘sustainably live in Brazil’ mean? What will the our presence and the Yellow Office look like in Brazil? Who will be our most important customers? There are a lot of questions we want to seek answers for during the coming year of time, and after that.

With very Brazilian yellow greetings, or in the Brazilian way, beijos e abraços,
Valtteri

Tiimiakatemia Netherlands results inspiring Brazil process

Heyhey, a short while of christmas break and a few months of working in Europe have passed by and we are ready to return to work in Brazil soon! To get into the mood we’d like to share some actions that have happened here recently.

Valtteri & Henna have been working with Finnish educational companies in order to collaborate with them in Brazil. Last week the Finnish Prime minister Jyrki Katainen & Europe minister Alexander Stubb visited Brazil to talk about the relationship and the trade between Finland and Brazil. Surely that visit will boost our actions from now on since more and more Finns are getting active towards Brazil! Some of our industrial companies are strong there already. A great example of one is Wärtsilä, that had just sponsored this carnival street band at Copacabana.

Let the carnival begin at Copacabana!!!

While the ministers were in Brazil, the story of Tiimiakatemia Brazil was reached by a large Portuguese audience of entrepreneurs, universities, business incubators, publis administrators and students, as Henna was giving a speech about BTA in a Creative Industires Forum in Porto. As a continuation to that, a team for starting TA in Portugal is starting to form.

In Mondragon Tiimiakatemia Ana and her team taZEBAez hosted a young entrepreneur Helena from Brazil for 1 month for exchanging experiences and doing projects together. Now Ana’s team is working in China for 2 months and after that to India for 2 months. TA is all around the world!

Finally to share more tangible news from the network – in Holland the teams have been running since 2008, and here’s a video of their results in 2011:

See you soon in Brazil!

Henna

What are the results Brazil TA aims to present by July 2012?

Last Wednesday we had a special session working on the goals of the BTA project for the first half of the year 2012.

Anita, Ana & me working on BTA 2012. Pic taken at Mondragon TA.

This year I have participated to Mondragon Tiimiakatemia’s MINN master’s program, and BTA was the main reason to do it, so my final birthgiving of MINN in 2011 was about Brazil TA too. Our BTA team is glocal and located mainly in Brazil, Finland & Spain, so it was the Spain-based part of the team working this time. Now we face the challenge of sharing the new knowledge created in Spain with the rest of the worldwide team and with the world. So here we go, this post is one step on sharing! Join the conversation if you wish to do this with us, add some goals or collaborate for achieving the set ones

TA Brazil BG 21.12.2011 @MINN / MTA – Ana, Anita, Henna

BIRTHGIVING QUESTIONS for all the MINN participants intrapreneurial teams:

1. Why am I doing this? Why team? Why this project exists?

2. What are the results we will present by July 2012 with MINN1 project Brazil TA?

Why am I doing TA in Brazil? (these are comments form each of us in random order)

BG Why? Why I? Why team? Why this project? & Results for 2012?

For me & for the world. -  To allow everyone to make a choice and live TA’s empowering experience. - TA is a learning tool for life, I use it. - TA brings you the ownership of your life. –  To bring the innovation of TA to BoP – it’s a unique chance to do it in Brazil. – Because it’s a fortunate, empowering experience to be shared with more people. - Biggest challenge I’ve ever had – so very motivating! – To overcome myself again and again! –  Education & learning are tools to bring values – in Brazil value-based learning is the thing to do. - TA vision 2037 – to be the leading centre of excellence in the world in it’s field. - I want to live in Brazil like 2 years (Henna & Ana)

Why team?

To upscale our potential as individuals and to be more strong as a team. – Because diversity brings learning – we can disagree and it’s even needed to have different opinions and people to learn more.  – Because the awesomest experiences are shared as a team. For living the team experience ourselves in order to deliver it for the teamprenuers and future coaches of TA. – It’s a deep team experience that TA is offering, it’s a 4 year process, so as coaches we also need to have that experience in order to know what we are talking about and how is the team learning process. - For learning the glocal team dynamics. Next time when we present BTA in Europe we’ll also have a local person from Brazil as a part of the team with us! That’s the goal.

Why this project / company exists?

For applying TA into the local Brazilian context – to apply Tiimimestari (Team Mastery, Team Projects & Companies & Full-time degree program by TA method in Brazil. - We bring process & tools, the locals bring the content. - Company  would exist for enabling more flexible collaboration with the Brazilian partner companies and to help building the local TA ecosystem in SP & Rio. Company between us exists for us to experience the team company and empower more people to form them leading by example.

What are the results we will present by July 2012 with MINN1 project Brazil TA?

- Tiimimestari (Team Mastery) program starting in Sao Paulo in Feb 2012 and having 2 modules done by July 2012 + team of potential Tiimimestari participants formed in Rio too

- launching Tiimimestari in Rio maybe August 2012 or even at February 2012 – Rio is just a spit away from SP!

- 10 teampreneurs from Brazil visiting European TA’s by July 2012 –> this goal we need to work on together to have the Junior Empresas of Senac doing their final trip to European TA’s!

- Tazebaez + Finnish and other European teampreneurs going to work Brazil during the spring – August 2012

- projects starting with 4 different companies from BTA network by July 2012, the companies we hope to start doing projects with are Senac, Santander, Aoka, Artemisia, Natura, Microsoft, HUB, Irizar, Fagor, Grandene and Petrobras, for example

- Pablo Villoch from TA network in Chile joining Brazil Team Mastery with a Chilean project of transforming the Chilean and Latin American entrepreneurship education – crossing the boarders in Latin America!

- a thesis / research made about the Finnish education export to Brazil & about the Brazilian education market in general will be done in collaboration with Edu Cluster Finland Network

- MINN2 Master International for Intrapreneurship & Open Innovation by the TA of University of Mondragon having a session in Brazil during 2012!

- 2 articles written about TA Brazil project

- Formal company / association for TA in Rio – legal body for operations

- One TA team of teampreneurs back in Brazil in February 2012 to cause more action and more chaos to make this all happen!

- 20k € + 10k € +k +k +k +k +k invoicing with all these actions

- Flowing network and flowing teamwork

Year 2012 will be a year of transforming pilots into projects, making deeper company partnerships and most importantly, starting the first Team Mastery / Tiimimestari program in Brazil! We aim to start offering the full degree program with TA methods in Brazil in 2014.

Have a very merry Christmas and enjoy the holiday with the loved ones!

Henna

Welcome to Finland!

Hello world!

How are you doing?

We have returned to Finland & Spain for Christmas break, and will come back to Brazil in February 2012 with the projects that were pilots but now move on! And of course with the Team Mastery Brazil! It’s going to start first in Sao Paulo, and later on in Rio too. Right now we are focusing on writing about the process in Brazil TA from the point of view of: How to implement a Finnish innovation TA into another environment? This documentation will form Valtteri’s final thesis to TA, so it’s a bit of reserach + my final thesis to MINN Master’s program, so it’s a bit of the results documentation from this intrapreneurial project. It’s good to stop at once and just reflect and write. At the same time we are meeting Brazil-related people and projects here in Finland in order to strenghten the support network for BTA project.

While in here, we wanted to invite you to visit us in January. It’s cool, it’s friendly, it’s Finland!! Here’s our invitation video by Valtteri & me in Portuguese – enjoy! And here’s the folder we mentioned on the video:

Learning Expedition to TA Finland 18th - 20th of January!

Alternatively you can visit Mondragon TA or any other TA in the European network. Here’s a network map from Team Academy Learning network. Nowadays things are happening also in Portugal and in Budapest in Hungary – those places will be in the new map – just as Sao Paulo & Rio.

The World of Team Academies

We trust that any visit to the TA network will be insightful and useful to facilitate our future co-criation. So lets go!

Abrazos,

Henna & Valtteri