Meet The Disruptors: Janine Nicole Dennis Of Talent Think Innovations On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

“Never be afraid to fire a client.” This was advice I was leery of taking until I was faced with my first troublesome client. I had to remind myself of why I started Talent Think Innovations. I had experienced being used, abused and going above and beyond to please people who were never going to be pleased for a paycheck. It was freeing to politely let that client and some further down the pike that I would not be able to continue serving them and in some cases returning money paid to free myself of ongoing headaches. I know now that I owe it to myself at this point in my career to enjoy the work I do and who I choose to do it with.

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Janine Nicole Dennis.

Janine is the Owner/Chief Innovations Officer for Talent Think Innovations, LLC, a multidisciplinary business strategy and management consulting firm. She is also the author of “The Absurdity of Doing You: Rebel Elegance for the Evolving Soul.” Janine is a globally-recognized figure who has been quoted by HBR, Thrive Global, Bustle, The Cut, Atlanta BlackStar, Newsday, SHRM, USA Today and has been featured by Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Black Enterprise, and Ebony Magazines.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Initially, my aspiration was to become a biochemist working in a lab. Somewhere between calculus kicking my behind and chemistry labs sucking my soul, I switched over to psychology. In switching over to clinical psychology I thought I would be happy and fulfilled diagnosing people in a clinical environment daily. I was great at diagnosing but diving deeper into that lane let me know it wasn’t for me. In speaking to a dean at a university I was applying to for a Master’s, I had some questions about other facets of psychology. She pointed me in the direction of industrial psychology which is the study of how people think and behave at work. I was hooked after my first course and went full speed ahead pursuing a career in Human Resources in 2005. From 2005 to 2014, my career in human resources took me through healthcare, staffing, pharmaceuticals, home care, and R&D filling various roles. In 2013, I started Talent Think Innovations to free myself from the corporate rat-race while giving myself the opportunity to build a practice that allowed me to express the full spectrum of my interests and talents. As Talent Think Innovations approaches its 10th year in business, my focus has pivoted some as I am embracing some of my earlier ambitions and gifts of writing, teaching, my love of science, psychology, and philosophy and employing them to help my clients see life, society, and its intersection with work differently. Today, I help companies create business strategy that encourages businesses and leaders alike to take a humanistic approach to how they create and sustain their workforces.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

When I first started Talent Think Innovations, I thought I was being disruptive by merely focusing on the talent management lifecycle which is comprised of the candidate experience, the hiring process, internal mobility, training and development up to and including succession planning. After about a year of business, I started asking myself why I was limiting myself to this one box of HR. I had to be honest with myself that I was afraid to fail and in effect I chose to do something that was tried and true for the sake of comfort. The other salient truth I have handy today is I would have surely been out of business years ago had I not been willing to respond to what the market wanted from me early on which was branding, PR, marketing, executive coaching and technology analyst work. These things allowed me to live another day so I could eventually do the work I initially set out to do.

Since that time, I have pivoted at least twice that I can count to accommodate and support the work I was most happy doing and the work that I have been called to do. The work I am doing is disruptive because I have always stayed true to myself, my calling, utilizing the cadre of skills that is most unique to my talents. I am using my spiritual calling and practice as a medicine woman, education in industrial psychology and human resources, plus my lived experience as a futurist and professional in business to provide my clients with custom solutions to their most pressing business challenges. I have worked hard through the years to pick apart the challenges inherent in the running of business and the wild card of human transformation. I have taken all that I know about those things and grounded my work in the whole-human, wellbeing, future of life and advocacy for equity where applicable. Whether I am building trainings or revising operational strategies, systems, and structures my approach is always boutique and multi-disciplinary in nature.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I don’t know if it is the funniest mistake, but I will share that early on I would go to these networking breakfasts where they offer you a free breakfast on the house but then thereafter, you essentially pay a fee to remain part of the network. I legitimately hoped these breakfasts would serve as a way for me to not only get my name out their locally, but to hopefully garner business. In the end, it was a great free meal that got me zero business and lots of free samples from the resident Arbonne sales lady who continued to try to convince me that Arbonne would in effect make me a successful and wealthy business person. I share this with no malice or shade to those who have made a career out of the MLM business world, but to simply say that this type of networking was a waste of my time and efforts. The ideas and problems I was interested in solving were lightyears ahead of what I would hear in these meetings over pancakes. In hindsight, I was already known nationally and, in some areas, globally and garnering work with big companies. I felt silly that I was doing business in so many areas outside of where I laid my head that I made it a goal of mine to try to drum up business by any means necessary locally. I even spent some of my early returns on local advertisement. That didn’t work either.

The point is I was trying to make my very macro trajectory micro and that just wasn’t my path. I think we all have thrown away a few dollars on the way to figuring out what truly works for us and our respective businesses.

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

Mentors for me are fated guides and friends that show up for us along the way. Quite simply, my parents are both go-getters in their own rights. They have been diligent workers in whatever they put their minds to. My grandparents on both sides serve as beacons for me as well. There would be no me or any accomplishments had they not taken the chance to come this country when they did sacrificing all they did for the greater good of their children and future grandchildren.

My Aunt Bev was the first in our family to get an advanced degree. She was the most business-focused of all of my mother’s siblings and so I looked up to her as a child. She put me through college and has guided me to the best of her ability through every shift in my career. She and my mother gave me the startup to start my business in 2012 and when I had to spend it to cover unforeseeable costs I incurred as a result of Hurricane Sandy that fall, they gave it to me again. Since that time wherever I have needed her or my mom to show up they have as I have grown my business. I’m blessed to have them both.

There are a few others to name like Ron Thomas and Dr. Janice Presser who put the battery in my back to get out of the corporate rut and start my business, Not only did both Ron and Dr, Janice nudge me to get out of dodge, but they have opened their networks to me and said my name in rooms that opened countless opportunities for me.

Last and certainly not least, another mentor of mine is my significant other and divine counterpart, Terrence L. Williams. From the very beginning of our relationship, he has taken an interest in my business and my work. He is the CEO of Human Resource Consultants where he has built a firm that is not only simplifying the recruitment process so candidates can not only get the reskilling and coaching they require to support their job search, but he has made it simple for employers to access these skilled professionals. He is brilliant and has served as a trusted advisor and investor for the last two years in my business.

Every single one of the people I have listed here deserves their flowers for assisting my development as they have.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good?

I don’t believe that disrupting is always good. I have seen so many companies disrupting for the sake of seeming innovative and it has resulted in poor outcomes or unsustainable shifts. There is a delicate timing, intentionality and purpose to being disruptive that I try to honor in everything I do.

When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’?

As an innovator, I’m not of the opinion that all things “tried and true” are inherently archaic or of little use. There are many companies that have figured out the secret sauce of connection to their customer bases and as a result they have garnered varying semblances of success. A great example of this would be Disney. Disney has forever been in the business of taking the unimaginable and making it tangible for the dreamers of us. As a result, we have seen their brand expand from a cast of characters and stories homegrown within Disney to their expansion into acquiring the arguable zenith of all things fantasy and fantastic, Marvel. While I am certain there have been many pivots along the way, the way they serve their guests from their parks to their ever-expanding brands seems from the customer perspective to be unchanged. They create joy through experiences.

We can safely say something has “withstood the test of time” when both the customer remains excited about the product or service and revenue remains steady relevant to the times without much deviation from the original intention or approach.

Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

The notion that something is positive or not-so-positive is rather subjective, but I can say that disruption which the greatest number of people can get behind is usually something that creates conveniences, lessens the impact of a problem, eliminates it altogether or contributes to creating an experience people desire, want or need to have. It is worth adding that the populace usually needs to be ripe for the shift the disruption will cause or at a minimum believe that crossing the chasm from where they were previously to where the disruption has led them was worth the trouble because some aspect of life feels exponentially better as a result.

As far as negative disruption goes, call me an altruist, but I believe that innovation should do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people possible. Any time we are creating new systems, structures, products and services that will serve to further marginalize or disenfranchise people by limiting or eliminating their access to food, shelter, water, rest, healthcare, healthy environmental conditions or currency such that they are no longer able to care for themselves and their loved ones adequately is disruption that needs a moral intervention. The systems and structures created to keep a few at the top and many at the bottom are too many to mention, but I feel we should have a different consciousness around how we get on with creating what comes next.

A brief and maybe controversial example of disruption that remains arguable in terms of the good it is creating is cryptocurrency. While some economists have been calling the demise of the US dollar as we know it for decades, it is still here and still viable for all that it is worth even as a fiat currency. While crypto brings exciting hope for a more transparent and certainly transportable means of currency it hasn’t proved that it can consistently meet the necessary prongs of a reliable currency some of which includes being a sensible and stable unit of account and store of value to name a few attributes. For these reasons, the concept and viability of cryptocurrencies continues to disrupt conceptually and in certain arenas (as it should) but has yet to garner the complete trust and buy-in of everyone.

Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

1. “Never be afraid to fire a client.” This was advice I was leery of taking until I was faced with my first troublesome client. I had to remind myself of why I started Talent Think Innovations. I had experienced being used, abused and going above and beyond to please people who were never going to be pleased for a paycheck. It was freeing to politely let that client and some further down the pike that I would not be able to continue serving them and in some cases returning money paid to free myself of ongoing headaches. I know now that I owe it to myself at this point in my career to enjoy the work I do and who I choose to do it with.
2. “All money isn’t good money.” In the beginning of my journey with Talent Think Innovations, I wanted so badly to land every client I spoke with, and I would even take some work that was incongruent with the remuneration I was receiving to build rapport. Sometimes seeing those projects through led to bigger rewards and other times I found myself frustrated with myself because there were red flags early on that I overlooked that became ever more glaring as time went on. I have learned that the most rewarding money is tied to work you love and that compensates you adequately for the quality of the outcomes and output.
3. “Doh watch people!” I particularly love this piece of advice, because it came from my Grandma Marie and it is written to reflect her Trinbagonian patois as she hailed from the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She would always tell me this to alert me to not be so caught up in what other people are doing, but to stay focused on the lane I was creating for myself. I would argue that this piece of advice is a guiding force in everything I have done.
4. “You have outgrown the pond you’re swimming in.” This was a piece of advice given to me by a few mentors/friends when I was unknowingly building a reputation and a brand that was not going to be adequately supported by the employer I was working for and was limited by my own vision for how things were supposed to happen. At the time, I had come online and made a name for myself through blogging via my Blog “The Aristocracy of HR” which led to webinars, major brand partnerships, and speaking gigs internationally. I had envisioned starting my own consulting firm in the future after my then husband (we ended up divorcing by 2019) retired and I apparently garnered more experience climbing the ladder in HR. This advice was the catalyst to me thinking about my life and professional trajectory differently.
5. “You need to stay in one lane, you’re doing too much!” Reading this you may be thinking, how is this good advice for a disruptor? It is actually the best advice you could be given, because it is a sign that you are shifting the atmosphere from the status quo to something unique and different. The person who shared this with me early on in my business was confused by the myriad of ways I was seeking to serve the market and felt I should keep it simple. I knew the type of consulting firm I was interested in building and ultimately this was my career not his. Talent Think Innovations has not only been a business for me, but fertile ground for me to challenge myself both personally and professionally. Building my business as I have has allowed me to parlay my talents in arenas where I felt my voice and my ethos should be known. He ended up being one of my very best friends in life and business and one of my loudest supporters.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

I am shaking up things next by stepping into the title of author. I have been writing my memoir “The Absurdity of Doing You: Rebel Elegance for the Evolving Soul” slowly and methodically for the last six to seven years. The main title was something that got shortlisted during one late night breastfeeding session and while talking to a friend in 2015. From that point on, I would write bits and pieces of it via Evernote when traveling or when inspired. In 2020, I was approached about taking it to the next level and going after a publisher. I spent the entire pandemic deciding what I wanted to tell the world about myself and my experiences both in life and business.

Fast-forward to 2022 and “The Absurdity of Doing You: Rebel Elegance for the Evolving Soul” is a collection of several anecdotes, recollections, and reflections that are based on my life’s journey to date. Each chapter is an intimate conversation between myself and the reader as I share some of my most intimate thoughts and experiences while in return asking you, the reader to consider your own journey, mindsets, behaviors and the characters that inform this screenplay known as life. Every author has a goal in mind when writing a book. As a New York born and bred, first-generation American of Guyanese and Trinbagonian descent, I want to be a beacon and example from my culture, but more importantly for every human. It is my ultimate goal to illustrate in my own absurd and rebellious way that you can transmute generational trauma, weather a spiritual awakening while raising three children, go through a divorce, and graciously learn from every person and circumstance in between while marching valiantly towards the pursuit of living an expansive existence.

As a society, we can use a shift in perspective as a human race, I hope to be an integral part of the human renaissance that is afoot. “The Absurdity of Doing You” debuts on Atmosphere Press via paperback October 25th and November 25th for Hardcover globally.

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

Other than the book I have written about my life and all of the painstaking moments leading up to its completion, I would say one of a few books that shifted me in a fundamental way is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. For the better part of my life, I have been most interested in understanding human transformation and all of its underpinnings. I think about why we are here, how we got here, and the trajectory of evolution for humanity. This is the reason I have gravitated towards science, psychology, and even became a philosophy minor in undergrad. In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari sets out to unearth the truth of humanity from a historic perspective and in doing so, beautifully illustrates how integral and unique we are as homosapiens while also highlighting that much of how we think of ourselves is possibly due to a genetically inflated ego and a lack of tolerance for anything too different from us.

I have kept the notion of our evolution top of mind. The fact that we caused the extinction of four other instances of homo erectus to extinction since our emergence is not only sobering, but fascinating when juxtaposed against the backdrop of us being the last human species who is now seemingly giving our humanity over to technology and artificial intelligence.

It is my belief that if I am not steering humanity towards the end I wish to see while also giving credence to the natural order of our evolution, I am working in vain. So much of what is done in business and society is based on self-interest of a group rather than doing the most good for the most people. I do my best to help my clients see that while they are concerned with the economy, politics, societal afflictions caused by racism and all other “isms” there is a broader story for us all. I try to connect that broader story of humanity to the humanity in the individuals they serve so they can be better stewards in business and beyond.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

One of my favorite quotes comes from the book “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran. The quote is from Chapter 22 which in the practice of numerology the number 2 amplified in this way often lends itself to lessons on duality and love. The quote is: “You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.”

When reading this quote, I took this to mean that the goal for us all is to be at home and in alignment with ourselves, but to the extent that we are not we still serve a purpose in the grand web of life. I try to remember this when I feel judgmental towards others or have a hard time justifying the existence of others based on the nature of their deeds. We don’t have to always understand the purpose of things, but I have come to believe at a minimum we have a duty to respect it without labeling a thing “good or bad”. I must admit this isn’t an easy life lesson for any of us, but I try my best to employ it.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think our thinking and reasoning as a human collective needs an overhaul. I would love to see us indulge in what I am calling my version of prismatic thinking. What prismatic thinking offers us is this ability to see everything as they are through the prism of life. If you choose to see life as linear and monochromatic, it will give you just that. It doesn’t discontinue bending in technicolor, but your lens will never cheat you from your own limited perspective. At its core, prismatic thinking is the ability to see a single human or occurrence from multiple sides, giving each their right to their respective expressions. There is no good or bad in the prism, just different speeds of light, necessary distortions, and a lot of spectrum.

There are many critical conversations happening now, but we aren’t reasoning, critically-thinking, or hearing one another well. I hope this snippet of my concept of prismatic thinking catches on.

How can our readers follow you online?

I can be found online as @MzJanineNicole on Twitter and Instagram. I am on LinkedIn as Janine Nicole Dennis. You can also learn more about me and connect at talentthinkinnovations.com.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!