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Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:30pm EDT
This Immersion is designed for experienced CPS practitioners ready to deepen their impact in organizations. Day 1, Tools Off the Beaten Path, explores underutilized convergent tools to strengthen decision-making and group alignment. Days 2-4, Leading Change with Agility, Versatility, and Creativity, focus on what teams create (product), the environments they work in (place), and the people and processes that shape collaboration. Through hands-on application and real-world challenges, participants will learn to diagnose team dynamics, recognize conditions that support creativity, and apply CPS as a unifying engine across ways of working. This is a practical, interactive experience for leading creative work that delivers results.

Days 2 - 4: Leading Change with Agility, Versatility, and Creativity - Michael Ackerbauer, PhD, and Christa Heydt-Hernandez
Every organization has a rhythm. Some teams find it and produce work they didn't know was possible. Others grind against each other and call it culture. The difference isn't luck — it's whether leaders can read the signals their teams are already sending and respond with the right move at the right time. This three-day immersion adapts a three-week graduate course into a hands-on practitioner experience. Across three 3.5-hour sessions, we'll work the creative systems that shape what gets built, where creativity can breathe, and how people actually collaborate when the work gets hard. Day 2 opens with the product of creativity: what we're here to make, how innovation actually happens in organizations, and why most change efforts stall before they start. Day 3 turns to place: the climate, culture, and psychological conditions that either invite creative work or quietly shut it down. Day 4 lands on the person and process: how cognitive preferences, emotional intelligence, and creative problem solving become the substrate underneath agile, design thinking, and every other framework you're already using. You'll leave able to:
  • Diagnose where your team spends its collaborative energy, and where it doesn't
  • Recognize the climate signals that predict creative outcomes before they appear in results
  • Apply Creative Problem Solving as the integrative engine beneath your existing ways of working

  • Bring a challenge from your own context. We'll work it together.






  • Presenters
    avatar for Mike Ackerbauer

    Mike Ackerbauer

    Certified Rock Balancer, Ackerbauer Labs | Buffalo State University
    Mike Ackerbauer (Macker) spent over 25 years at IBM leading technology and change leadership initiatives across dozens of organizations and industries. He now leads Ackerbauer Laboratories, a 3rd-generation consultancy specializing in organizational culture, change leadership, and... Read More →
    avatar for Christa Heydt-Hernandez

    Christa Heydt-Hernandez

    Founder and Principle Consultant, Idea Alchemy
    New to independent contracting and freelance work. I help organizations, teams, and individuals who have a challenge or problem to solve and do not think they have the tools or time to solve it. I work with clients to: Position the user first, whether customer, employee or individual... Read More →
    Tuesday June 16, 2026 9:00am - 12:30pm EDT
    Butler Library - Alex F. Osborn Brainstorming Center

    Attendees (2)


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