Why We Launched Collabor8 and Why an Octopus Became the Story

Collabor8 was launched because something was missing from the conversations shaping work, leadership, and people decisions.

Not information.
Not frameworks.
Not opinions.

What was missing was space.

Across our work in recruitment, talent advisory, and leadership conversations, the same pattern kept emerging. The most honest, useful insights about what was really happening at work were not surfacing in formal settings. They appeared in side conversations, after meetings ended, in moments of pause, and in spaces where people felt safe enough to speak without performing.

Collabor8 was created to make that space intentional.

It was never designed as a leadership programme, a networking forum, or a panel series. It was built as a listening space. A place for thoughtful, forward-thinking women to speak openly about the realities of work, leadership, hiring, and people decisions as they are actually experienced.

As the concept took shape, we realised we needed a language that could hold complexity without flattening it. A metaphor that could explain collaboration not as a soft skill, but as an intelligent system.

That is where the octopus came in.

The octopus reminds us that intelligence does not live in one place. It is distributed, adaptive, and deeply aware of its environment.

The octopus has survived for hundreds of millions of years not by being dominant, loud, or rigid, but by being adaptive, intelligent, and aware. It does not rely on a single command centre. Two thirds of its neurons live in its arms. Each arm can think, sense, explore, and solve independently, while remaining connected to the whole.

That matters.

Because the challenges facing organisations today are not linear. They do not respond well to top-down answers or single points of authority. They require distributed intelligence. They require insight from the edges, not just direction from the centre.

The octopus reminded us that collaboration is not something you schedule. It is a state of being. Intelligence does not sit at the top. Wisdom often lives in lived experience, emotional awareness, and perspective that does not always carry the loudest voice.

We also paid attention to how the octopus responds under pressure.

When threatened, it releases ink. Not to disappear, but to create space. A pause. A moment to reset, assess, and choose the next move deliberately rather than reactively.

That became the foundation for the Ink Tank.

Not a think tank. Not a performance space. But a place where people are allowed to slow things down, regulate emotion, and reflect before rushing to solutions. In our experience, many workplace conversations fail not because people lack ideas, but because they move too fast, ignore emotional signals, and mistake speed for progress.

Ink represents emotional intelligence in action. The ability to pause, create space, and respond with intention.

Collabor8 was also designed to be small, by choice.

The octopus does not attempt to occupy the entire ocean at once. It reaches outward carefully, sensing in multiple directions, responding intelligently to what it encounters. We adopted the same principle.

Small circles create safety. Safety enables honesty. Honesty produces insight. Insight leads to better decisions.

Large rooms encourage performance. Small circles encourage truth.

That is why Collabor8 was launched as a series of intentional conversations rather than a broad forum. Depth mattered more than scale. Listening mattered more than visibility.

Difference was never treated as a side note.

Strength does not always announce itself. Sometimes it blends, listens, and waits.

The octopus has blue blood. Not better. Not worse. Just different, evolved for its environment. That detail became central to how we thought about leadership and contribution.

There is no single acceptable way to lead. No one tone of voice that signals intelligence. No uniform expression of capability. Yet many systems still reward sameness over suitability.

Collabor8 was built on the belief that difference is not disruption. Emotional intelligence is not weakness. Intuition and logic belong together. Lived experience is a form of expertise.

Every arm matters. Every voice contributes. Not equally, but intentionally.

Since launching Collabor8, the aim has never been to produce immediate answers or polished outputs. The purpose has been to surface what is actually happening in the world of work, to listen before designing solutions, and to allow insight to travel back into organisations, leadership decisions, hiring strategies, and talent development in meaningful ways.

Some outcomes are visible. Others move quietly. Both matter.

Collabor8 exists because the pace of work has accelerated, complexity has increased, and people are increasingly fatigued by performative conversations that change very little.

It was launched to create space for intelligent listening.

Small circles.
Long tentacles.
Ink when needed.

Not chaos.
Intelligent collaboration.