Hello, and greetings from Ecuador!

The time in Brazil is over. Now we’re back in Quito, the capital of Ecuador with Henna, and Sanna went to London to spend some time in there. We’re now having some vacations, and preparing our return to Finland. We’ll be back in Finland on July 8th.

You can watch some of our photos of our time in São Paulo in here.

Me, Sanna & Henna, giving a presentation

I’ve been a bit sad over the past few days, missing Brazil. The work and the people were so awesome in there, we had a great time, although we didn’t have time almost for anything else than working on the coaching there. In fact, it’s good to spend some free time, resting, post-working and post-evaluating on what we have done, in Brazil as well in Ecuador. Later this week we started to be quite tired, there was not enough of sleep behind of us, and we felt we really had given our best to the coaching. Last night we slept for 12 hours in a row.

So we didn’t have a lot of free time, but we had some. I visited Guarujá on last Saturday (on July 20th) to visit a friend, while Sanna & Henna were dancing samba the whole night in a Samba bar. On Saturdays many people in Brazil go to a samba place starting from afternoon at 1 or 2pm. They eat, drink and dance until around 6pm, after which they usually go to continue the party in somewhere else. Another free evening we had on Friday evening, when Zoe, our customer from Banco Santader, organized a good-bye party for us, and invited some people from our coaching with us. There were also some friends of theirs, and we had a great time. After Zoe’s we head to a local salsa club, Azucar, which is apparently also a global brand, existing e.g. in Barcelona.

Estela and Zoe, the organizing people from SENAC and Banco Santander

The last week was really awesome. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we had workshops about Personal and Company Learning, Dialogue, Leading Thoughts, Implementing Team Academy Model and Leadership (on the earlier week we had had already two workshops on community Learning and Innovation). We could feel the change already in the atmosphere, and especially the short 45 minutes’ birthgivings and their presentations on them were great. The Brazilians are quiet natural as actors and bringing a lot of entertainment, fun and dancing, and doing everything almost improvised (they usually seemed to use about 5-10 minutes in planning the presentations, and they were great, including the entertainment, creating new knowledge and theory. The birthgiving presentations were really different than we have in Team Academy in Finland.

On Thursday we had the ending event of the coaching, were they had longer birthgivings of 4 hours, we were capturing some learning and implementing the learned things into the practice, as well we gave some awards to the participants, with the same criteria than the awards of Team Academy are being given in Rocket Days.

The birthgivings were still greater than the earlier ones, at least I felt very proud of the participants, although I knew their competencies were not because of our coaching, but because they are really intelligent. I think our coaching basically just woke the participants’ good sides and inspiration, bringing out the connection between innovation, team work, different methology and their intelligence and knowledge of education. We had named assistant coaching for all the 3 groups doing the birthgiving, to help control the process and keeping it on time, based on the earlier experiences we had. Brazilians are natural in dialogue, they have very deep and profound discussions, but we noticed some similarities on them with Ecuadorians. Sometimes staying on the topic, on the dialogue container, is hard, and especially the conversation (closing the subject and ending up with the clear conclusions and ways to implement into practice) process is hard. This is funny, because in comparison to our culture, it’s hard to get Finnish people to talk, while the Brazilians might talk too much. That’s why we put the assistant leaders to keep better control of the process.

Participants giving birth - they were great!

Controlling the process was a challenge sometimes also because of the language. All the pracitices, birthgivings and also most of the dialogues within the workshop groups were held in Portuguese to support all of the participants better, and then, Henna & Sanna don’t know Portuguese, and also I had some problems here and there understanding some situations and deeper conversations. On the first two collective days, as well as on Thursday we had simultaneous translators to help everybody understanding the common things with the group: dialogue, prensentations, questions etc. But on all of the partices and birthgivings were had to follow their dialogue in Portuguese. Simulaneous translation is also very expensive, so in the workshops we didn’t have them. I also felt my great importance the the sense of translation, because if there were ever some challenges with language on either side, I was there to help them. Also I think to some of the participants that had problems with English, it was a lot easier if some of the more difficult things and instructions were given in Portuguese. Also the other participants were helpful and did some simultaneous translation during the workshops for the people with more difficulties with English.

The external event, where we had 70 participants interested about the Team Academy concepts & methods

On Friday we had the External Event for 70 participants, of thich many were teachers from famous universities, as well as a lot of entrepreneurs and people from The Hub. It was of course very exciting for us. Most of the day went in a way that we gave presentations and stories about the concept of Team Academy, as well as some of our most important tools, and the participants were discussing them several times in the Learning Cafés they had. They went really deep in their conversations, deeper than Cristina, our co-organizer from SoL Brazil had usually seen, she said. Anyway, there was a lot of interest among them about Team Academy.

The organizers - part of them - of the External Event - and us - from left: Sanna, Susara? (from Santander), Henna, Estela (from SENAC), Thereza (from Santander, and one of the most active participants of the coaching), and me

So Grupo Santader, SENAC, and many participants of the External Event had a great interest in Team Academy, and we have had many conversations about establishing a Team Academy in Brazil, about all the different co-operation models in the future (the Team Mastery program, the International Team in TA, visiting TA in general etc.) and dozen of other subjects considering our common future. Also Team Academy in the Mondragon University has been interested about co-operation with Brazil. So there is a lot of positive signal, we just need to be good and sell our product until the end. So the conversations continue with Brazil, and we have many ideas about the future!

I’d like to thank all the participants of Banco Santander and SENAC, you were absolutely fabulous, our clients organizing this, Zoe from Santander and Estela from SENAC (especially Estela was there in every moment, and she really throw her actual job aside during our visit and gave her everything in accomodating us and organizing e.g. the External Event, she was so awesome!), SoL Brazil and Cristina, their president and The Hub Brazil and its owner Pablo, who helped in organizing the External Event.

The whole group from Santander/SENAC coaching. In total we were about 30, of which the majority are in the picture

It was such an incredible experience, with Henna’s words I’d like to say, we’re ignited!

Valtteri wrote this blog text on Friday, 19th of June 2009:

Hello world!

Kirjoitan tämän blogin nyt tällä kertaa englanniksi, on tullut kyselyitä englanninkielisiltä lukijoilta.

I’m going to write in English this time, I have had some requests from international people reading the blog.

For those who want to read the earlier blog posts in this blog in English, you can check them at http://www.banana.fi , where Henna has been writing very similar thoughts in English.

So, here we are, in São Paulo, Brazil, since Friday. Everything has been really really good this far. I have an own, private hotel appartment of 3 rooms in a four star hotel, in gthe core center of “Sampa”, as some of the locals call São Paulo, just next to Avenida Paulista, the main business street. To work, meaning to the headquarters of Grupo Santander, we have a 100m walk. So, unlike the paulistas (people living in São Paulo), we don’t have to waste a lot of time in traffic.

São Paulo is, as far as I know, still on the top 5 in the biggest cities in the world. In the central São Paulo there live about 11 million people, but in the greater São Paulo (including some of the surrounding towns which have practically grown into SP because the space in between just vanished over the years) there live around 18 million people. So you can imagine the traffic, especially since the normally well working subway, metro, doesn’t go to even close to all of the parts of the city. Foe example to the house of a friend of mine it takes 1,5 hours by bus from the center, if it’s a peaceful time of day traffic wise. In other case, it could take up to 2,5 hours to his home.

São Paulo

We have now 2 days of coaching behind. The weekend was mostly about catching up the jet lag, especially for Sanna, who came from Paris on Friday, as well as getting to know our clients, Estela from SENAC, and Zoe from Grupo Santander, as well as a lot of planning. On Monday we had another day of the final preparations of the coaching, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, started the real action.

Me & Henna holding a Team Academy presentation

The group (on the first, introduction days, of about 30 people) is very well prepared, and we think, very well selected as well. All of them are open minded, and they are also professionals of education, all of them. The only difficulty are their expectations. They are really keen on knowing more, understanding more, asking a lot of questions, all the time, which is really awesome. But they also ask very random questions, often not exactly related to the point, or related to the next point. So for example, we were explaining about our experiences, in the order of time, meaning first covering the first year, then going to the second, etc. I was just explainging about my experiences of the first year when they already started asking about the life after gradeating from Team Academy. This was one example, but it repeated very often. So, when you get a bit tired, the structure and the logic behind the presentation (first going through the big picture and then going to the details) suffer, and sometimes we got a little bit lost at some points. I think they were expecting to learn everything, and get to know the tools and especially how to implement them in their daily work, immediately, very fast, which in the case of Team Academy is not possible. Although the people are educational professionals, for us, and for our European network, it usually takes years to have enough deep understanding of the tools to be able to effectively use them. So we were already going a lot deeper than usually in similar coaching cases but they were still wanting more. But, the topic of the workshops for them is to get to know the tools more deeply, and we will select some of the tools to concentrate on more deeply, so they will be able to take some tools and apply them in their work.

The best point of the coaching this far was a Zombie partice we did. It was invented by Sanna, and she’s still considering whether to keep the copyright to herself and Entrepart of not, so I won’t share any details about it, but you can check the photos. That was so much fun, and the Brazilians are awesome in improvisation naturally. Their performances were full of laughter. We were so excited!

The Zombie exercise - presentations

So it has defenately been very very interesting and challenging. I especially have learned so much, because this is my first time coaching about our tools, and personally I´don’t think I knew the tools very well before. So a good start for a coaching carreer, let’s see if it’s something I want to do in the future.

It’s easier to be here in São Paulo now, than in Salinas, cause this is a very big metropolis, and everything is a lot cleaner, nicer, newer, shinier etc. and all the services are quite easily available. The Brazilians, well, especially the business world class, they eat very well and hugely in a more diverse way than the Ecuadorians. The the lunches as well as the dinners are full of dozens of types of food and a lot of vegetables and fruits as well. So I’m also enjoying my “easier” life. On the contrary, we are doing the coaching usually from 8am until 6-7pm, so we don’t have so much time to enjoy all the diversity, and more oftern that I’d like, we just don’t have the energy e.g. for eating out (since our clients are paying for it), but we just eat our hotel restaurant.

Right now, we’re sitting here in The Hub São Paulo, which is a part of the global The Hub network. Basically the concept is a big open office, where entrepreneurs can have free discussions and networking. The Hub aims at social entrepreneurship, but there are also other kind of entrepreneurs, who are interested of connecting with socially valuable entrepreneurship issues.

Me, Sanna and some of the key The Hub people

We’re all really excited to see how this coaching goes! Até daqui a pouco, until soon, as the Brazilians would say!

Tässä kirjoituksessa Valtteri & Henna kertovat päättyvästä Ecuadorin ajastaan sekä tulevasta Brasilian valmennuksestaan.

Nyt alkaa Ecuadorin aika olla ohi. Viikot olemme tehneet töitä, vapaa-aika on jäänyt vähäiseksi. Viikonloput olemme sitten rentoutuneet, matkustelleet ja nähneet Ecuadoria. Minä olen omistanut viikonloput vanhojen kavereideni näkemiseen ympäri Ecuadoria, Henna taas lähinnä rannalla, surffaten, sukellellen ja uusia ihmisiä tavaten.

Olemme valmentaneet tiimiä jatkuvasti 3 kertaa viikossa, ja osallistuneet ja avustaneet tunteja, vaikka tiimi (joka pegagogiseksi tiimiksi nimettiin) onkin hoitanut päävastuun, mikä on juuri niinkuin asian halusimmekin olevan.

Välitauolla ulkona tiimin kanssa

Tiimin yksilöiden itsenäisyyteen olemme tyytyväisiä, vaikka yhteishenki ja tiimityöskentelyn meininki on joskus vaikea saavuttaa tapaamisten ulkopuolella. Tämä kulttuuri on selkeästi yksintekemisen ja suurten johtajien ja persoonallisuuksien värittämä. Ryhmän työ on kuitenkin parantunut ja tiivistynyt haluamaamme suuntaan, ja olemme myöskin alkaneet antaa erilaisia tiimityön- ja muita työkaluja heille. Olemme käsitelleet mm. toimivan tiimin 10 sääntöä, kaverijohtajuuden perusteet, Tuckmanin Tiimikehitysmalli ja Nonakan & Takeuchin Tietoteoria.

Yrittäjyyskoulun ideoiden synnytys- tunti. Osallistujat synnyttivät ideointiviikon päätteeksi liikeideansa

Timo lähti takaisin Suomeen viime viikolla. Hänen Salinaslainen tyttöystävänsä lähti mukana, asuakseen Suomessa vuoden ajan. Timon lähtö oli meille hyvä asia, koska emme enää pystyneet yhtään piilottelemaan hänen kielitaitonsa ja jo valmiiksi luotujen suhteiden takana, vaan jouduimme ottamaan rohkeasti päävastuun, ei vain suunnittelusta vaan myös toteutuksesta. Nyt huomaan todella sen eron, minkä harppauksen espanjantaitoni on hypännyt, puhumattakaan Hennan taidosta. Myös vanhat ecuadorilaiset AIESEC-kaverini, jotka tapasin toissaviikonloppuna, olivat hämmästyksissään. Tämä on tietysti minulle iloinen asia. Niin sitä oppii kun heittäytyy tai menee tilanteisiin, joissa joutuu heittäytymään.

Viime viikolla keskiviikkona meillä oli suurimman osan päivää kestävä yhteinen tiimipäivä pedagogisen tiimin kanssa. Päivän aikana keskustelimme Funorsalin (järjestö, joka on yrittäjyyskoulun vastuullinen) koulutusvisioista, kävimme läpi tiimityökaluja sekä muodostimme joitakin tiimin sääntöjä uusiksi. Kävimme läpi mm. tuntien suunnittelu- ja toteutusprosessia.

Pedagoginen tiimi matkalla suunnittelupäiväänsä. Hennalla tuli huono olo, ja hän matkusti auton lavalla :)

Haluammme kiittää tiettyjä ihmisiä täällä Ecuadorissa: Kiitos pedagogiselle tiimille: Flavio, Enrique, Vanessa, Glenda, teidän takia tätä tehtiin, ja nyt on fiilis, että kannatti. Kiitos JES1:n osallistujat, annoitte meille paljon iloa ja valoa innostuneisuudellanne sekä tunteellisuudellanne. Teidän ansiostanne tiedämme jo paljon enemmän tästä paikasta. Kiitos Lucian & Enriquen pizzeria, Luísin ravintola sekä Jorgen kuppila, näissä paikoissa söimme ja vietimme iltaa usein tavaten mielenkiintoisia ihmisiä. Olitte myös aika joustavia ja todella yrittäjähenkisiä! viimeisenä kiitos Funorsalille ja Nuevo Mundo ry:lle, jotka mahdollistitte tämän kaiken.

Henna & Valtteri toiseksi viimeisenä päivänä lähtötunnelmissa. Taustalla Salinas ja vuoret

Nyt elämme jänniä paikkoja. Torstaina lennämme São Pauloon, Brasiliaan, uusiin haasteisiin. Haasteenamme on kahden viikon valmennus Grupo Santanderille - yksi kansallisista pankeista Brasiliassa - ja SENACille, joka on kansallinen koulutusinstituutti. Tämän lisäksi järjestämme yksipäiväisen 60-80 ihmiselle External Eventin (paikalla mm. koulutusalan ihmisiä) Tiimiakatemian oppimistyökaluista yhdessä. Käytännön järjestelyt ja verkoston hoitavat SoL Brazil ja The Hub São Paulo.

Meillä on erittäin monipuolinen valmennustiimi. Henna Kääriäinen, ex- Osuuskunta Jalostamo Groove ja nykyinen Money Business, juuri valmistunut Akatemilta. Sanna Tossavainen, kaksi vuotta sitten Akatemialta valmistunut. Valmentaa nykyään Pariisissa Entrepartilla, vähän Team Factory Parisilla, sekä joskus harvoin Monkey Busineksellä. Ja lopuksi minä, Valtteri, pinkku, jolla on jonkin verran kokemusta AIESEC-opiskelijajärjestön kautta sekä nyt vuoden verran Tiimiakatemialta ja joka osaa puhua portugalia. Minun tehtäväni on hoitaa tarpeellinen käännöstyö valmennuksessa ja pitää meidät valmentajat ajantasalla portugalinkielisissä osuuksissa.

Meillä on siis mielestämme nuori ja dynaaminen tiimi. Mutta löytyy meiltä kokemusta. Henna ja Sanna ovat molemmat Team Masteryn, elin Tiimimestareiden englanninkielisen, ympäri Eurooppaa, kiertävän valmennusohjelman läpikäyneitä. Ja minulla on tietysti vuosien kokemus AIESECista, mikä on hassua, sillä koko valmennus on saanut alkunsa alunperin AIESEC-peräisista kontakteista. Asiakkaamme Zoe Fitzgerald oli vielä n. 5 vuotta sitten AIESECin aktiivi pitkäaikaisjäsen ja on työskennellyt mm. AIESEC Internationalin leivissä Rotterdamissa. Tiimiakatemialta puolestaan valkku Hanna Heikkisen sisko on ollut myös vuosia AIESECissa, ja tuntenut Zoen. Zoe puolestaan on ollut Jyväskylässä Tiimiakatemialla käymässä sekä heidän mökillään, joten tästä on lähtenyt idea valmennukseen. Minä puolestani olen tavannut AIESEC-taustani takia Zoen kerran eräässä konferenssissa. Pieni on siis maailma Mutta ei tämä valmennus helpolla tullut, Henna on yrittänyt myydä sitä jo vuoden verran yhdessä muiden Monkeyden kanssa. Luulen, että nyt sen mahdollisti suurelta osin se, että olemme muutenkin jo Etelä-Amerikassa ja se toi extra-energiaa erityisesti Hennalle myydä projekti. Itse olen ollut suurimmaksi osaksi vapaamatkustaja tähän asti, mutta osuuteni on itse valmennuksen aikana. Koen olevani onnekas, olemme Tiimiakatemian pioneereja, ensimmäisiä Euroopan ulkopuolella Etelä-Amerikassa, enkä usko, että kovin moni ekavuotinen pinkku saa vastaavia mahdollisuuksia tässä vaiheessa.

Avainsanat valmennukselle ovat innovaatio, opi ja unohda osa oppimastasi, uudet mallit ja niiden laittaminen käytäntöön. Uskomme tavoitteisiimme ja olemme erittäin valmiita työskentelemään kovasti niiden saavuttamiseksi.

Tämä ei ole ensimmäinen kertani Brasiliassa, mutta jännitystä luo bisnes-ilmapiiri, koska en ole sellaisessa aiemmin Brasiliassa toimineet. Lisäksi tietysti näen joitakin Brasilian ystäviäni, mikä on virkistävää. Olen käynyt São Paulossa useamman kertaa. Siispä paluu tuttuihin ympäristöihin, mutta uudella ympäristöllä ja uusilla, suurilla haasteilla!

En jaksa odottaa!

Entrepart
Monkey Business