Story

Where courage meets curiosity, culture changes

In a long tenured organisation facing a new world of work, one bold experiment made learning personal, and public.

The Challenge

The 200 years old financial services organisation was changing. Fast.
Digital transformation. New customer expectations. A fresh strategy on the horizon. And beneath it all, a growing recognition that future success would demand new skills and new mindsets.

But the learning culture hadn’t caught up. It still felt cautious, compliance led, behind closed doors. In a place known for long tenure and deep expertise, the idea of stretching outside your comfort zone felt… risky.

So we asked a different question:
What if learning didn’t start with policy, but with people?
What if it wasn’t top down, but peer to peer?
And what if the act of learning itself became the message?

The Approach

We partnered with a group of emerging talent and gave them a challenge:
Learn a brand new creative or performance skill, something that makes your hands sweat and your heart race, and perform it live.

Music. Dance. Stand up. Spoken word.
In front of colleagues, friends, family.
With every ticket sale going to charity.

This wasn’t a training program. It was a social movement, disguised as a talent show.

But the real impact came before the spotlight. Participants shared their journeys online: awkward rehearsals, shaky progress, honest doubts. It was raw. It was real. It was completely unlike anything the company had seen before.

And it was contagious.

The Metaphor

In a culture where many people had spent 10, 15, even 20 years becoming experts, the idea of being a beginner again, on purpose, was radical.

And that was the point.

This wasn’t just about performance. It was about permission.
To try. To fail. To grow.
To make learning visible, not polished.
To show that courage and curiosity aren’t titles. They’re choices.

Each person who stepped onto that stage sent a signal:
If I can do this… maybe you can too.

It became a living metaphor for the bigger shift underway:
We are all being asked to learn new things.
Not quietly. Not perfectly. But out loud, and together.

The Shift

The stories spread. Not through campaigns, but conversations. Not through mandates, but momentum.

People started showing up differently. Talking about learning. Asking questions. Taking small but meaningful risks. Because they’d seen what was possible, not in theory, but in the colleague next to them.

What started as an experiment in performance became a culture shift in motion.
Ordinary heroes. Extraordinary example.
And a powerful reminder: this is what the future of work looks like, not just different skills, but a different spirit.