Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) 2017

Everyone is creative! However, we manifest our creativity in different ways. By taking the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, discussion of KAI theory, and interactive exercises, you’ll be amused and validated by gaining a greater understanding of how much your cognitive/creative style affects your problem solving, decision making, and creativity. This session is useful for anyone who wants to know more about thinking styles, including HR managers and business consultants, plus those interested in psychology, business, management, sociology, education, and politics. You will:
• Gain a better understanding of yourself and others.
• Learn how to influence how teams plan and execute projects.
• Influence strategic practices, management, and supervision among leaders and workgroup members.
• Learn how to better manage creative diversity in order to manage change more effectively.
NOTE: This session is limited to 25, due to the use of the instrument.

Experience a world-class method integrating analytical and imaginative thinking to create better, more-robust business strategies applicable to any complex problem, such as increasing sales or creating a better education system. Learn tangible tools you can use in the real world.You will:
• Uncover real root causes and discover new hidden opportunities in complex problems leading to new insights on how to innovate.
• Normalize the effect of organizational levels or the loudest voices in the room in service of true problem understanding from ALL content experts.
• Create an explicit logic map connecting actionable tactics to strategic pillars to broad strategic vision as a better way to articulate a robust business strategy with ownership.

In the spirit of "amplify" – to increase in size and effect – discover how simple visuals can invigorate and amplify your creativity. With a little work and inspiration, you already have all you need. Visual tools are all around us, which you can incorporate into your creativity practice. Sometimes advanced techniques and overthinking can get in the way of being fully present and fully creative. Come play with simple and powerful visual tools and techniques to enhance your facilitation skills, enable your clients and teams to achieve deeper learning, and illuminate new insights. Augment, boost, intensify and magnify your own creativity and strengthen your tool kit with fun and unique new ways to tap into the visual learner, which most people have in large measure. This highly interactive session will increase your capability to tap into your inherent creativity and see how you can expand the ways you lead others to do the same. Oh, and have fun, too.You will:
• Identify ways to create your own visual resources, such as card decks, collages, magazine files and more.
• Deepen team relationships and build trust through creative visual techniques.
• Propel teams toward action with powerful intention-setting exercises that clarify purpose.

Everyone is talking about design thinking these days. Ever wonder what it's all about? Roll up your sleeves and give design thinking a try in this zippy 90-minute clinic. You will work in pairs to design something delightful, based on your discovery of each other's needs. You will practice each stage of the design process (immerse, frame, imagine and prototype) and have a chance to reflect on ways design thinking might amplify your creative process. You will:
• Learn what is at the heart of design thinking.
• Design something of value based on empathy and feedback.
• Explore how design methods might enhance your innovation practice.

Getting beyond obvious ideas and the obvious understanding of the world around us is essential for creating breakthroughs and for deepening connection. We will explore how the power of metaphor, and other techniques for "making meaning," are leveraged in Synectics' frameworks, tools and models. You will:
• Gain insight and understanding by "making the strange familiar."
• Spur new connections by "making the familiar strange."
• Turn the very absurd into breakthroughs.

It has been said that facilitation is both an art and a science. The science involves the tools, processes and approaches that we can study, learn and apply. The art of facilitation is made up of the intangibles, those nuances that we cannot always learn from a book, but lessons that come only through experience, trial and error and, sometimes, abject failure. If we are fortunate, we can learn from the successes and mistakes of others and avoid at least some of the same mistakes ourselves. Discover the top 10 (or more) most-important things that I have learned (sometimes the hard way) about facilitating Creative Problem Solving. We will tap into the experience of the group, building together a list of critical success factors for the facilitation of CPS. This session is designed for the experienced and beginner facilitator alike. You will:
• Gain new insight into both the art and the science of facilitation.
• Receive a self-selected list of facilitation success factors specific to your role as facilitator.
• Learn facilitation hints and tips gained from the successes and mistakes of others.

Discover the Creative Imagination Toolkit for amplifying imaginative and productive thinking skills. This toolkit was developed by combining the expressive mandala drawing method of Jung with the principles of Multidimensional Interactive Creative Imagination Imagery Model of Khatana and the theoretical model of creative imagination of Jankowska and Karwowski. You will:
• Explore the therapeutic power of imagination and its history in psychology.
• Learn how to amplify your self awareness, using self-expressive mandala drawing, and how to use your imagination for better decision making and overcoming fear.
• Hear the story of my journey and how creative imagination helped me protect myself from Iran's oppressive government and education system.

Theory U is replete with creative exercises with its focus on systems change. Discover the creative foundational elements of Theory U, which will entice you to think big – to amplify your creative work to the level of systems change. In this experiential workshop you will:
• Leave knowing some core creative components in Theory U.
• Have a road map of the “U” process to apply.
• Discover the aspirational applications of Theory U.
(Please dress comfortably to engage in a gentle embodiment exercise during the session.)

Today's businesses are dominated by disruptive upstarts and catastrophic changes. To survive, businesses need to adapt and innovate relentlessly. To charter the courses in unknown waters, business leaders need to catch the weak signals and faint premonitions of upcoming tidal change waves. We will explore strategies, such as design thinking, to build a collaborative, open ecosystem; tools to analyze data to reveal formulated patterns and movement; contextual data to explore cultural sensitivities, as well as age and generation factors; and unfamiliar and unexpected scenarios to practice. These and many other strategies are critical in today's business landscape. You will:
• Learn to better catch the signals and premonitions of upcoming business trends.
• Be familiar with some tools and strategies for forecasting future trends.
• Better grasp the upheavals and relentless changes in today's business world.

If you've ever seen an improv comedy show, you know that improvisers take the stage and create rich and colorful scenes from simple suggestions. As creativity practitioners, learn how to adopt and adapt these same principles, practices and mindsets and bring them to the stage where YOU are. Learn how applied improvisation and creativity are the perfect scene partners. Get ready to play, explore, take risks, support one another and have a laugh or two! You will:
• Enhance your own creative confidence and ability to respond purposefully and playfully.
• Experience how the powerful improv principle of "yes, and" promotes creative thinking in groups and teams.
• Learn how and when to integrate improvisation activities into your next CPS facilitation or training session.

Design thinking is part of the Creative Problem Solving family of methodologies. Designed for newbies, this session will give you the chance to experience the full design thinking process in 90 minutes, and create a product designed specifically for your assigned user. Amplify your knowledge about other creativity practices, and understand how CPS is similar and different. So when people ask you about design thinking (buzz word that it is these days), you can tell them you have experienced it. You will:
• Understand the principles of design thinking.
• Experience an overview of the full process.
• Understand how CPS and design thinking relate.

Have you experienced a challenge getting and maintaining the attention of your audience? Have you ever hoped you could deal more effectively with the short attention spans of learners, teach important points with interactive exercises, help your group gel and feel connected to each other, or deal with difficult participants? If you answered "yes" to any of these, this interactive workshop is for you. Discover principles for leading exercises and:
• Engage in 10-15 brief activities that you can incorporate into your own teaching or training.
• Learn pointers for conducting icebreakers and activities, including magic in a presentation (you will learn two or more magic tricks).
• Explore how to promote teamwork by using activities and exercises to teach important points, self-awareness, and Creative Problem Solving.
• Learn how to infuse appropriate humor in presentations.

Liberating Structure methods include 33+ options for designing engaging interactions that lead to creativity and innovation. We’ll interactively explore the work of Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless's invitation to make structural changes in the way we work in order to engage everyone and harness the collaborative and creative power of the group. You will:
• Discover the microstructures and principles of Liberating Structures.
• Experience several hands-on Liberating Structures activities.
• Explore how Liberating Structures complements Creative Problem Solving.

Despite the wonderfully engaging, dynamic, creative tools and techniques of CPSI, some clients want "normal" processes, such as strategic planning (yawn), operational planning (ho hum), organizational design (yikes), enterprise architecture, and even (ugh, wait for it) reverse-process maintenance re-engineering. So I amplified it, colorized it, stickified it and CPSI-ized it. Now, I have one to two strategic planning clients every month, with clients who say, “I never knew strategic planning could be so engaging, colorful and fun!” You will:
• Learn tools, techniques and best practices to amplify, colorize and stickify.
• Discover examples of normal problem solving and planning processes that are ripe for amping.
• Practice! Learn by doing. Try strategic planning that is amped, colored and sticked.
• Discover the benefits of rotating flip charts, StickyWalls, paper airplanes, and more.

Learn what laughter yoga is and how to use the four steps of laughter yoga. Understand why humor is a key ingredient for creativity and learn to use laughter yoga in your sessions. We will do a number of fun exercises that you can apply to your own sessions. A must for trainers! You will:
• Learn intelligent humor.
• Apply the four steps of laughter yoga.
• Experience and learn the laughter yoga exercises.