We still have a lot of potential to empower!

Our Story

2008, two weeks after Lehman Brothers went bust and the start of the financial crisis, Curium came into existence.

Great timing. A mission to empower potential when the world’s organizations needed to slash and burn costs to stay afloat!

We learned very early on that every second shaping purpose is time well spent. It is not a battle between winning business and finding your ‘just cause’. You can do both. In fact you need to do both.

 

Lesson One – Start with “Why” 

Long before reading Simon Sinek (who we think is awesome) we spent our first days talking about purpose and values. What’s it all for? How are we different?

We wanted to be purpose-led but honestly, we also needed to get some business in. Did we have time to work out a ‘just cause’ (a term borrowed from Simon’s recent work) or should we just start work?

It took us two weeks to work out an early version, which included a fumbled attempt to describe to a senior director at Lloyds Bank how we wanted to unlock their potential while going through change…but they really got it.

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Lesson Two – Introduce Neuroscience

Talking Mindset is trendy now, but in 2008 not so much…

The obvious place for Curium to focus was in ‘change’ given the founders had spent years delivering major programs across the globe.

As an avid reader of psychology and brain science since he was 13 years old, James led the way in establishing a People Solutions (then called Performance Learning) part of Curium.

But would the customer understand the mix of running complex programs while also delivering neuroscience-based education and entertaining workshops?

Turns out they did. And they were hungry for it. Especially at the front line where dealing with stress was hugely ignored (thankfully that is now changing in many organizations).

In short, the results were astonishing. Our people-first approach has got us working with companies we’d only read about: NASA, the FBI, CIA…still feels surreal!

Lesson Three – People First

Putting people first will accelerate results, not slow you down.

Failure is part of life.

But we just call this learning and it’s not something to be afraid of!

Being prepared to fail and embrace the learning from that, has driven some of our best innovations:

Our own software solution, that we use to deliver our IP, know-how, coaching, toolkits, and templates directly to our customers 24/7.

The creation of the Voyage programs, and Voyage Leader®, as an example, is a globally successful program that has won Innovation Awards two years running.

The creation of CODE®, a brand-new profiling tool that we built as a result of our learning with the likes of NASA and Pepsico and a load of other top organizations. This enables our customers to navigate the change landscape like never before…and fully digital!

Lesson Four – Appreciate your failures

Your failures are what fuel and drive innovation.

And this is where we currently are – But we still have a long way to go, and a lot of potential to empower!

 

Lesson Five – A New Chapter – Empowering Potential in the US 

We learned a lot in our first eight years and knew the next part of our story was ready to be written… Stateside in the US!  More reach, more empowering potential, running more global programs around people, change and technology – it was the natural next step in our transformation.

We moved to Florida in 2016, started small, but quickly realized the immense opportunity for growth. Fast forward to 2021 and we’ve had not only our strongest year, not only for year-on-year growth but the impact we are having on empowering potential … in a pandemic.

We’ve given more back than ever when people and clients needed it; ramped up the empowering numbers; launched the “Curium Connect Leadership Series” to help accelerate our just cause; and empowered the potential of people across the world (and maybe beyond)!