13 Years of Talent Hacks: Reflections in L&D

11/11/11

After 13 years the date remains the same: 11/11/11. A date that looks like a barcode. Or a glitch in the matrix. Probably a glitch.

Well, that’s the day we decided to open our own box (don’t worry; this’ll make sense soon).

‘Who’ opened ‘what’ box? Me and Paris. Paris and I. (I’m Deano, by the way.)

I’m the ‘psychology’ guy, he’s the ‘communication’ guy. I’m the ‘listener’, he’s the ‘talker’. I’m the ‘Milli”, he’s the…OK, we’re not doing that.

Looking back at everything we’ve been through together and all the good times and tough times, I can honestly say that I am superi Paris is the one person I can blindly trust. He’s got my back. (I know, because I tested him one day by leaving a half-eaten pack of Skittles on my desk. Next day, I counted them up, and they were all there!)

The important thing is, we were/are two very different people. With two very different worldviews. But we shared/share one goal (it eludes me at the moment, something to do with boxes, I’m pretty sure if I keep writing, it’ll come to me).

Now, we had a shit-ton of experience between us. And we were both sick and tired of the traditional corporate training world, and we naturally wanted to make a difference. Little fish in the ocean trying to make tsunamis.

Tsunamis, boxes, and Excel spreadsheets

So, we stepped into the unknown, into serious discomfort and laid out a master plan on how to conquer the world. On an Excel spreadsheet. Over a shared club sandwich (expensive then) at a cool hotel belonging to a big brand name (that’s why it was expensive).

And what we stood for was this radical idea: that people and organizations had these metaphorical boxes where they shoved everything uncomfortable, everything they didn’t want to deal with, everything they wanted to hide. From themselves. From others. From reality itself. We believed, no, we knew, that we could help them open these boxes. Air out all the uncomfortable stuff. Face it. Talk about it. Deal with it. Grow from it.

“I know, I know, we’ll call our company: Opening Boxes Consultancy”. Looking back, maybe that name would have gotten us somewhere else, what with the social media trend of unboxing.

We ended up calling ourselves Open Box Communication. It was a kind of on-the-spot decision that we talk ourselves into believing was a much more philosophical debate than it really was.

47 boxes and a flash of skills

We talked about being ourselves, no matter what that meant. We talked about doing things differently, without knowing what ‘differently’ meant to us yet. And we listed everything we could possibly offer. Bear in mind, it was getting late at that point, and the hotel pool bar was coming back to life with some impromptu karaoke. But we pushed on (despite the obstacles!), and we talked ourselves into believing that we should offer all these services to the world, because companies deserve to be enlightened.

47 services.

Well, that didn’t pan out real well. Maybe a bit too many services on display, to properly communicate what we do as a company. There was some talk about clients being ‘confused’ about what we offer…that kind of thing…anyway…

So, that mistake forced us to go back to the kitchen (a central Starbucks in downtown Nicosia, Cyprus), to reduce our menu and make it resemble more of a fine dining list of 5-10 items you can enjoy. Funny how present logic is always such a harsh critic of past action, right?

So, simplified, we did. We did our rocking, and things slowly started to roll.

But part of our rocking was to think a little outside the ‘box’ (trust me, no pun intended, we’ve heard this shit so many times). And therefore, as anyone in their right mind would, we organized a flash mob. Remember those things, back then? Yeah, we did one and it was good, if I may say so myself. And for a good cause and all. Sidetracked? We didn’t know the meaning of the word!

So, we got a few calls from people, asking for…Well, not for our services, that’s for sure! People wanted to hire us to run flashmobs. Hindsight…

Fast forward a few hours and we answered the call of a client, who will forever be etched in our collective memories as the client that got us focused and zoned in to our passion. They wanted some ‘team fixing’ at a very senior level, and we said we’re good at team fixing.

The day we ‘knew’

So, we pulled all the stops and ran our first ever Team Dynamics Boot Camp, today called The Village Experience. And it rocked! Some real, raw emotions were brought to the surface, with people dealing with conflict on the spot and taking immediate action to fix things between themselves and those they ‘wronged’.

Simply put, we put on a rock show. Client loved it, because it actually changed things for them. People loved it, because they overcame a lot of the ‘elephants in the room’ between each other. And us? We knew what we needed to do and how we needed to act. We had a lot of fun at that training. We thoroughly enjoyed it. So, we knew, that no matter how we proceeded, we would always make sure that we were having fun with what we were doing. If we’re going to be delivering rock shows, then we need to enjoy it as much as the crowd, to transfer our energy to them.

Focused experimenting

You know, ‘focus’ when you’re running a business, is a real tough thing to do. Can I say we remained focused, ever since that first Boot Camp? No. Not really. But we knew that was OK, because it became part of our DNA to play around and collaborate with people and figure things out in the process. So, pure focus? No. But a focused kind of “mad-scientist-playing-around-and-experimenting-until-they-hit-upon-something-that-inspired-them”? Definitely.

We were doing HR and people development non-stop. Until we discovered Strategyzer and Business Model Generation. That was pivotal. And we became associated with them, which gave us the ride of a lifetime all over the globe, delivering innovation in our style! Dealing with the big clients we never dreamt of ever touching. But, even though that’s a story for another day, it’s important to note that it gave us the confidence to know that, no matter where we went, people were people.

1 + 1 = Something stronger

Where am I trying to go with this article? It’s so tough to condense 13 crazy years into a word count that makes sense for a blog piece.

Here’s the thing, right? Throughout everything, we’ve always had this unique dynamic going on. A listening psychologist and a talking communicator. The business shrink and the MBA trainer. The observer and the performer. Assessment and expression.

But I think this dynamic isn’t purely about having complementary skills. It’s about bringing two fundamental perspectives to every single challenge we tackled and, in doing so, offering so much more than was intended. The psychological insight to understand the ‘why’ and the ‘who,’ paired with the communication expertise to nail the ‘how’ and the ‘what.’ For 13 years, every solution, every intervention, every piece of work we did, carried both these strands. As a team entity made up of two core parts, the whole was stronger, and still is.

And let me tell you, this dual perspective? It fit right into the narrative we had playing in our heads non stop. Because you can’t just open boxes without understanding what’s inside them. And you can’t just understand what’s inside without knowing how to communicate about it effectively.

No need to tear open up the entire box!

We became good at noticing patterns in how people grow and develop. We saw that the most powerful transformations didn’t come from trying to change who people fundamentally were (it’s stupid to tell a poor listener to try and listen more!). Instead, they came from helping people find small, manageable ways to adapt their behaviors while staying true to their core selves. “Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try doing that?”, we started dropping little shortcuts for people to use.

This realization hit us like a ton of bricks in 2019. Here we were, helping people and organizations open their boxes, and what we found inside wasn’t stuff that needed to be completely overhauled. What we found was talent that just needed to be hacked in small, measurable ways.

Enter Talent Hacks

It wasn’t just a rebrand. It was an evolution. A natural progression of everything we’d learned about helping people grow without losing their authenticity. Because let’s face it, there are enough management gurus out there telling people they need to fundamentally change who they are. We decided to call bullshit on that.

Instead, we developed the concept of behavioural H.A.C.K.S., Habits Anyone Can Keep. Small, practical shortcuts that, when applied rigorously, create lasting change without requiring people to become someone they’re not. It’s like we took that initial idea of opening boxes and made it more tactical, more accessible, more human.

Looking back over these 13 years, it’s amazing to see how that core belief, that integrated approach of understanding plus communication, has guided everything we do. From those early days of 47 services (damn!) to today’s focused approach of behavioural hacking, we’ve stayed true to that fundamental insight: that lasting change happens at the intersection of psychological understanding and effective communication.

The core is strong

The boxes we help open today might look a little different than they did in 2011. The tools we use might be more refined. But at our core, we’re still those two complementary perspectives working in harmony. Still believing that everyone has untapped potential waiting to be unleashed. Still convinced, 13 years later, that the best way to grow isn’t to change who you are, but to hack your way to becoming a better version of yourself.

Not much has changed for us since then, in terms of our ethos and our beliefs. Let me put it this way, in a bittersweet world that keeps trying to put people in boxes, we’ll keep helping them open theirs. Teaching them the hacks they need to create true harmony at work, by learning to orchestrate their authentic selves into something even more powerful, one hack at a time.

13 years. Countless boxes opened. Numerous behaviours hacked. And we’re just getting started.