Garry Marsh

I have a chimp in my head. So do you. Amygdala, lizard brain, survival instinct. Call it what you like, but we all have one, buried away somewhere deep in our subconscious emotional brain.

My chimp and I have been together a long time, though for many years only one of us knew that.

We shared a quarter of a century clambering up a corporate career ladder at a variety of top companies, culminating in nine years at Microsoft UK. We met a wide variety of people and chimps across those years, and learned a huge amount from all of them, even the very scary gorillas that occasionally threatened to kill us, metaphorically speaking of course.

Eventually I decided to jump off the corporate ladder and set up as a training consultant. My chimp went ballistic. So did my wife’s chimp. “Leaving Microsoft?” the chimps screamed in unison. “Are you insane? Think of the stock options! Think of the money! What if you’re no good at training? What if nobody hires you? Ever? Will that kill us? Yes, it will! Don’t do it!!”

The chimps did quite a lot of that, but not for long.

We calmed our chimps, set up a training company, and got to work helping corporate clients’ employees and managers identify and work with their own chimps.

Now we write books too, starting with the Chimpossible Conversations collection, a series of stories set in the workplace and imagining conversations between yourself and your inner chimp; your subconscious emotional brain. Every story ends with a personal action plan to help readers think about implementing the key learning points in their own lives, for more success at work and home.