Varvara Grankova

Education startup Abracademy claims that learning circus tricks can boost creativity and improve communication skills in executives

In a conference room at the company, payment service WorldRemit, its chief product officer Alice Newton-Rex is performing a card trick on her colleagues. Magic is not usually part of her job, and Newton-Rex’s inexperience is betrayed by the nervousness with which she shuffles the deck after one of her employees has drawn a card at random and memorized it. Amazingly, it ends up first in the pile. The most surprised of all seems to be Newton-Rex herself, who has had only a few minutes to master the trick.

Newton-Rex learned this trick at a training course for top managers held by Abracademy, whose founders believe that studying the art of magic is useful for managing and strengthening a team. Newton-Rex was initially skeptical about the training, but now believes that magic came in handy. “Our team was growing very quickly. So it’s good for us to get out of our comfort zone,” she says.

Abracademy was founded in 2015 by professional magicians and people with a background in education. For example, the company’s head magician Alex Pittas once sold magic kits at London’s Camden Market before joining the UK Association of Professional Magicians. Pedram Parasmand, who ran the training for WorldRemit, was a school teacher and then co-founded the consultancy The Skills Lab.

Abracademy's clients include Vodafone, Barclays and Twitter. Last year, Abracademy trained more than 4,000 HSBC employees over a six-month period.

Following the example of executive training providers at business schools, Abracademy develops training programs together with clients. The company uses the concept of “magic” to help executives master creative thinking and sharpen their presentation skills, and the concept of “faith” to help staff survive periods of rapid change and feel more positive about them.

Like some other startups, Abracademy is trying to compete with established business schools and traditional training providers.

According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, in 2015–16 universities in the UK alone earned £667 million from further education and training programmes.

Abracademy also competes with alternative education providers such as Swedish startup Hyper Island and corporate universities of large companies.

One of the problems with courses like Abracademy's is the difficulty of measuring their usefulness, says David Ash, quality director at EFMD, the business school accreditor.

The Magic of Learning

Magic is a good tool for training top managers, Filho believes, since a high-quality trick requires many skills that are necessary for success at work, such as confidence that the process will end with a result, and communication skills. Another key part of Abracademy training is the explanation of previously shown tricks. The pleasure of this process contributes to the production of dopamine, the “happiness hormone,” in the participants’ bodies, as a result of which their attention improves and they perceive information better, Filho notes.

“The challenge that all executive education providers face, both private business schools and specialist training providers, is how to prove the value of what they offer,” he says, noting that there are no exams or credits at the end of the course. “I would be concerned if my company was spending money on that,” Ash adds.

Abracademy courses are tailored to each client's needs and are aimed at improving the skills that companies want employees to develop, says Abracademy training leader Priya Ghai. Once the course outline is agreed upon with the client, the Abracademy team decides which tricks to teach to participants to achieve the client's goals.

Each course is run jointly by a facilitator, who guides participants through the learning process, and a magician who understands how the human mind works. It is this understanding of human psychology that allows magicians to perform sleight-of-hand tricks, says Guy. “The combination of these skills has helped create a series of workshops that have an energy and engagement that, if you can replicate in your everyday life, can enhance creativity and collaboration,” she says.

Abracademy founder Rubens Filho is an experienced magician (a "spell master"). He admits that the hardest part is convincing a client to attend his first training. "They have their own expectations. We had to turn down several potential clients who were expecting a magic show from us," he says.

Consulting firm Accenture was one of Abracademy’s first clients. Accenture’s Edward Mackl was part of the magical training in Dublin. His team runs sessions for Accenture clients on creative approaches to business problems. “We’re always looking to improve what we do, and Abracademy offers an interesting approach,” he says.

According to Mackl, imagining himself performing magic tricks for an audience has been a big help when preparing presentations for clients. “You have to get yourself in the right mindset to generate ideas so that you can fill the audience with the right energy,” he explains.

Translated by Nadezhda Belichenko

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