Christopher Howell
Most organisations say they want more creative thinking, then run every meeting, incentive and review process to reward predictable answers. Senior teams know the habits that built the business are not the habits that will change it. The hard part is getting a roomful of smart, time-poor executives to actually practise a different way of seeing a problem.
Christopher Howell is a Magic Circle magician and trained coach who uses the craft of illusion to teach senior teams how to think past their default answers on innovation, change and creative problem solving.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Christopher Howell
- He makes creativity visible as a method, not a mood. Magic gives the audience a direct experience of being wrong about what they just saw, which is a short route into discussions of assumption, bias and fixed thinking.
- His Project Illusions workshops have been booked into hard commercial environments, including a session for 25 senior leaders at Linklaters, then recognised as the FT’s most innovative law firm.
- He combines performer craft with coaching training, which means the content lands as a workshop, not a cabaret. Participants leave with techniques they can rehearse, not a memory of a show.
- His client list spans regulated professional services, global consumer brands and technology, including KPMG, Google, Procter and Gamble, BBC, Volkswagen, Danone and Arup. The material travels across sector and seniority.
- The format is unusually memorable in a category where most innovation keynotes blur together. For audiences that have sat through too many decks on disruption, his session is the one they still quote a year later.
Biography highlights
- Member of The Magic Circle and Equity, trained under Jeff McBride and the late Eugene Burger, two of the most influential figures in late twentieth century stage magic.
- Founder of Project Illusions, a creativity and innovation programme delivered to BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters.
- Delivered a senior leadership workshop at Linklaters during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, with a named endorsement from its Director of Strategy.
- Co-producer of the touring variety show Norvil and Josephine with Guinness World Record acrobat Desiree Kongerod.
- Performed at The Magic Castle (Hollywood), Wintergarten (Berlin), Hackney Empire and the Houses of Parliament.
- Holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Richmond University, London, classical singing training from Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna, and a Diploma in Life Coaching from Newcastle College. Supporter of Breathe Arts Health Research, which uses magic as occupational therapy for children with hemiplegia.
Biography
Creativity is the word every strategy deck asks for and every operating model quietly punishes. The gap between what leadership says it wants and what the working week actually rewards is where innovation programmes tend to die. Howell’s work starts in that gap.
Project Illusions, the enterprise he founded, is built on a simple claim that is harder than it sounds: creativity is a skill, not a personality trait, and skills can be taught. The method uses magic as the teaching instrument. A trick lands because the audience held an assumption the performer quietly reframed. That mechanic, made explicit, becomes a workable model for how people get stuck on problems at work and how they get unstuck.
The material has been delivered inside some of the less forgiving rooms in corporate life. BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters have all booked it. The Linklaters session, run for twenty-five senior leaders during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, produced a named on-record endorsement from its Director of Strategy. Howell brings the training of a Magic Circle performer with mentors including Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger, a classical theatre and singing background, and a coaching qualification that keeps the sessions oriented around participant practice rather than spectacle.
What separates his sessions from the usual innovation keynote is the evidence of change in the room. People who have just watched an assumption of their own dismantled in front of colleagues tend to hold their next assumption more lightly. That is the point. The magic is the teaching aid. The outcome is a group that leaves with a rehearsed way to question how they think.
Key speaking topics
- Creativity as a trainable skill
- Innovation and change
- Problem solving under constraint
- Creative leadership
- Assumption and bias in decision making
- Personal and professional development
- Performance and presence
Ideal for
- Senior leadership groups running innovation, transformation or strategy offsites
- Partners and directors in professional services firms facing commoditisation pressure
- Communications, marketing and brand teams looking for a culture-shifting plenary session
- Conferences and internal events where the brief is to make creativity stick rather than sound good
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of creativity as a skill, with techniques that can be practised rather than admired.
- A shared language in the room for spotting assumptions, biases and default patterns in how teams approach problems.
- Specific methods for breaking fixed thinking, drawn from the craft of stage illusion and tested in coaching practice.
- A memorable shared experience that anchors follow-up work on innovation and change long after the session ends.
Talks
An interactive keynote that uses live magic to show how assumption and perception shape decision making, and how leaders can train themselves to think past their default answers.
Key takeaways:
- Creativity is a skill that can be taught, practised and measured.
- Most innovation failures are failures of assumption, not imagination.
- Simple, rehearsable techniques exist for stepping outside fixed patterns of thought.
A longer working session for senior teams that moves from demonstration into participant practice, building creative habits that transfer into day to day problem solving.
Key takeaways:
- How to identify the creative blocks inside a specific team or function.
- Tools for generating alternatives under time and commercial pressure.
- Techniques that turn a one-off session into a durable working habit.