Humap & Dialogue Tools
Some positive changes with DialogueLife. Finally marriage with Humap Ltd. came to reality in the beginning of December last year. Humap became the biggest owner in DialogueLife Ltd. Also we are in the process of changing name of the company into Dialogue Tools.
What kind of company is this Humap? To be honest I think I use this blog writing to clarify that to my self as well. We have been working side by side with Humap since the very beginning, and after this 1½ years I suppose I have some idea.
Normally I’d say it’s quite easy to say of a company that what kind of company it is. I honestly think this is not the case with Humap, and I find that very interesting. Of course if I want to be boring I can just say that it is 10-year old Finnish consulting company that has 14 consultants, offices in Jyväskylä, Helsinki and Turku. It has two subsidiaries Humap software and Dialogue Tools. Humap is especially good in involving people in its processes with customers. Just somehow with Humap it feels that by saying such a things is nowhere enough or even in the grey area of lying because it leaves so important points out.
With some people it goes like this: You see them for the first time, or meet them for the first time and they seem quite normal or even little bit boring? You learn to know them little bit more and you realize how intelligent they are. After a time you realize that they surprise you every time and that your first impression really was not even on the same continent with what you think of them now. (after 4 years I think my girlfriend is one of these people) Do you know any people like that? For me Humap seems like this as company. Just bad marketing strategy or something else?
- Picture from Humap summer days 2009
Humap the curious consultancy
For me two key things that I’ve learnt about Humap are that it is driven by passion, and that it is a laboratory. Driven by passion came very concrete when we became their subsidiary. Only question they had for us was, what are you interested in? Point here is to do things your passion and energy lies in. How many companies is lead like that!?! Humap is not divided into business areas like companies usually, but into passion-groups, if you don’t find a passion group in Humap that gets you ignited start your own and see if others join.
Humap works as a laboratory. Idea is not to read books and the go to customers to tell how things work. We test things with ourselves; we have experienced those things ourselves before talking about it with customers. One good example of this is new Amsterdam and London offices. Most of our customers are internationals these days; we need to be as well in order to have some experience how it works.
There is something more, and this is something I don’t think I’m very good explaining. Planning things in Humap is quite different from what I’m used to. I haven’t been involved long enough to know how this really works, but it seems that things are not planned very much. We start to do things, and there is some planning, but it seems to be to its minimum. Still, I can see things happening that have needed years of dedicated work. It is interesting, must have something to do with the passion thing. Maybe some future postings about this when I understand more.
How does it sound to you? Would you like to hang out with people from this kind of company?
DialogueLife continues as a product of Dialogue Tools and this blog continues as a blog about Dialogue Life. Life goes on.
What a story. It could ne very useful also on other contexts.
I like the idea that there is no plan. It is nice to think we can map out every step ahead of time and arrive at the intended destination, but it doesn’t work. Life’s maybe more about making fundamental choices, heading in the direction of somethings you believe are inherently valuable.
You may well arrive at some specific goals along the way but so long as the general direction is valuable to you and yours, I think that’s a good, purposeful result.
Heard someone saying something like this: “Dreams tends to come true, not plans.” It seems that no matter what you plan to do, you find yourself spending your time on what really matters, what really is your passion at the very moment.
I want to link this Humap culture of doing things always in a bit different and new way to that Losada’s three dynamics of team performance. I see a strong connection between these two matters. As Losada has proven with the mathematical model, in high performance teams, the group dynamic never repeat itself exactly the same way. So when the situation is different from previous, high performance dynamics always finds the best ways of behavior. This is very interesting notification of Humap as a consultancy company. Isn’t it like behavior of nature or anything living system? It’s always changing and renewing itself through that strong connection with others.
Good point Matti. If I remember right, Martin Little also emphasied the importantce of working in a new way every time. He was visiting the Humap&Feidon Multiversity in January. I think he was talking of the same thing, but on a individual level. Meaning that everyday communication situations, you always need to finetune your message to a situation, work or private life. Othervise you loose the connection to people, you’r not sensitive to their messages anymore. Of course you can tell the same stories, but finetune them every time, let them evolve.