Change is inevitable. Readiness isn't.
Become the person leaders call when real work needs to move.
🕸️ Organizational Development
🌱 Learning & Growth
⚡ Change Enablement
🎯 Strategy & Execution
Build a repeatable capability for bringing 30–75+ people into consequential work—whether you're gathering intelligence, developing leaders, launching something new, creating alignment, or preparing people for change.
And don't do it alone.
Over six months, we'll train and equip you to facilitate PopUpThinkTank inside your organization—and put our team, tools, experience, production, data, and support behind you.
You lead from the front. We work behind the scenes.
The result isn't another certification.
It's a capability your organization can deploy—and a competency that can change your career.
Applications are now open for a small group of 2026–27 pilot partners.
For practitioners inside organizations with 2,000+ employees. Executive sponsorship required.
The future is getting ahead of us.
Most organizations aren't short on ideas or plans. They're swimming in them.
New frameworks. New technology. New operating models. Strategic priorities. Culture initiatives. Leadership expectations. New KPIs. Transformation roadmaps.
Meanwhile, the people responsible for helping make that happen are working inside organizations already experiencing cognitive overload, competing priorities, collaboration fatigue, information without context, and accelerating complexity.
The result is a widening gap between:
Where the organization wants to go
and
its capacity to get there.
We call it the Readiness Gap.
Left alone, it becomes Readiness Debt—the accumulated cost of strategies, solutions, and expectations moving faster than the people and systems required to make them real.
L&D can't content its way out of this.
For years, the default question in learning and development has been:
“What do our people need to know?”
It's still an important question. But increasingly, the harder questions aren't about information.
—>What assumptions are we making?
—>What are people actually experiencing?
—>Where is there energy—and where is there friction?
—>What are leaders seeing that others aren't?
—>What are people closest to the work noticing?
—>What needs to change in the system, not just the person?
—>What don't we know yet?
And that's where the role begins to change.
Because when the work is complex, one person can't possibly know everything that matters. The intelligence is distributed across people, functions, levels, experiences, and perspectives.
That's an opportunity to move from:
Request taker → Internal consultant
Content creator → Strategic thought partner
Training provider → Capability builder
Meeting facilitator → Trusted convener
To be able to say to a leader:
“I understand what you're trying to accomplish. Before we prescribe the solution, let's get closer to what this actually needs.”
And then have a practical, proven way to do exactly that.
That's where PopUpThinkTank comes in.
A 90-minute format for bringing 25–75+ people into one shared and relevant challenge—so you can surface intelligence, generate insight, create participation, and help real work move forward.
Not for everything.
But when the answer can't possibly live with one person, you'll have a way to help find it.
30–75+ people.
90 minutes.
One core challenge.
This is the core competency you'll learn to lead—with our team supporting you before, during, and after every session.
💬 Frame the Question
A leader or sponsor, guided by a facilitator, names what's known—and what's not. Clarity without closure.
🪞 Quiet Reflection
People catch their own thinking before colliding it with everyone else's. A low-stakes, high-value pause.
⚡ Quick Burst Exchanges
Short, rotating conversations surface lived experience, context, patterns, tensions, connections, and possibilities—fast. The room starts thinking and learning together.
🌐 Sensemaking in Real Time
Ideas accumulate. Connections form. Patterns emerge. People aren't merely receiving information about the work. They're entering the work.
This isn't primarily about becoming a better meeting facilitator. It's about building a reputation. We want leaders across your organization to start thinking:
“Bring them in.”
When a project needs to launch.
When a strategy needs to become real.
When teams need to sync up.
When leadership needs better intelligence.
When people need to learn.
When assumptions need to surface.
When a transformation feels stuck.
When something isn't connecting.
When the organization needs to understand before it can act.
Your role shifts.
From a function people consume → to a capability leaders deploy.
Become the person leaders call before the next big thing.
The ideas aren't the only point.
There's an assumption that brainstorming exists to produce ideas. And yes—we generate plenty of them. But something else is happening at the same time.
Participation.
Ownership.
Engagement.
People encounter the problem themselves.
They compare notes.
They hear perspectives they wouldn't encounter in their normal workflow.
They develop shared language.
They see the constraints leaders are facing.
Leaders hear the lived reality of the people closest to the work.
Assumptions surface. Connections form.
People begin to understand not merely what is changing, but what the change is trying to solve.
That's where ownership can begin.
Because leaders can't announce ownership into existence.
They have to create the conditions in which ownership can emerge.
We call it Ideation-as-Engagement.
That's why the same format can be useful for something that looks like a focus group, a leadership development experience, a project launch, a change initiative, or a strategic conversation.
Organizational Readiness has three dimensions.
That's where we believe the next generation of L&D, OE/OD, Talent, Culture, and Change practitioners can become indispensable.
01 — Get our people ready.
Skills. Growth. Leadership. Understanding. Confidence. Relationships. Context. What do people need in order to meet what's coming?
02 — Get our system ready.
Technology. Incentives. Processes. Structures. Tools. Workflows. Environments. What in the system is enabling—or fighting—the future we're trying to create?
03 — Get better at change itself.
Ambiguity. Adaptability. Sensemaking. Coordination. Execution. How do we increase our capacity to move when we don't yet know exactly what we're moving toward?
Your opportunity is to become the person who can work across all three.
One capability. Across the work.
PopUpThinkTank can become part of how you help your team and your organization. Learn one format. Put it to work across your organization.
🚀 Launch
Bring people into a new initiative, strategy, technology, project, or transformation before asking them to execute it.
🔎 Discover
Surface lived experience, test assumptions, gather intelligence, and hear perspectives that conventional surveys and small-group conversations can miss.
🤝 Sync + Align
Build shared context across functions, levels, teams, or stakeholders without weeks of organizational telephone.
🌱 Learn + Grow
Put teaching inside an experience where people can immediately reflect, connect it to their work, exchange perspectives, and generate application.
🔄 Reflect + Adapt
Pause during or after consequential work to identify what's changing, what's working, what's creating friction, and what deserves to happen next.
Discovery. Learning. Launch. Alignment. Adaptation.
Plenty of learning and development happens along the way.
But it happens inside the work.
AI can generate more information, analysis, recommendations, plans, presentations, and content than an organization could possibly consume.
So information isn't necessarily the scarce resource anymore.
Shared human context is now the limited resource.
—> Comparing notes.
—> Reading reactions.
—> Recognizing patterns.
—> Surfacing tensions.
—> Exercising judgment.
—> Building trust.
—> Making meaning together.
—> Developing wisdom about a situation that no individual—or agent—possesses alone.
The future doesn't simply need humans in the loop.
It needs groups of people with shared context in the loop.
And this changes the value of the practitioner, too. In a world where AI can increasingly create the content, build the deck, analyze the data, and propose the answer, your value moves toward something profoundly human:
Creating the conditions in which people can think, connect, exercise judgment, participate, and move together.
That's a competency worth building for 2027—and for whatever comes after it.
PopUpThinkTank creates structured space for that to happen without requiring days off-site or weeks of meetings.
And AI makes this more important, not less.
“So... What Exactly Do I Get?”
This isn't a certification where we teach you a methodology, hand you some templates, and send you on your way.
Over six months, we're building a capability together.
You become the person inside your organization who can lead it. And our team works behind the scenes to help you deliver it exceptionally well.
That means some things you'll learn to do yourself. Some things you'll gain access to. And some things we'll continue to do for you.
🧠 You Get Equipped
You'll develop the skills, judgment, and confidence to design and facilitate PopUpThinkTank sessions: 90-minute Zoom experiences that bring 25–75+ people into one shared, relevant challenge.
You'll learn how to:
Recognize when PopUpThinkTank is—and isn't—the right tool for the job.
Turn an organizational need into a well-framed challenge worth bringing people into.
Prepare the leader or sponsor without creating a mountain of work for them.
Facilitate a fast-paced, psychologically safe experience where people can contribute without pressure to perform in front of the full group.
Lead individual reflection and three rounds of small-group insight.
Listen for patterns, energy, friction, and what wants to happen next.
Help leaders make sense of what emerged and translate it back into the work.
And you won't learn it in a simulation.
You'll build the competency while working on real priorities with real leaders inside your organization.
🛡️ You Get Backed
You won't be certified and sent off to figure it out alone. You'll have people behind you.
That includes access to our team— Tim Schuster, Maria Soyka, and an assigned trainer-facilitator from our network—and a growing community of trained facilitators.
Before a session, we'll help you think through questions like: Is this actually a good use case? What's the real need underneath the request? Who needs to be involved? What's the right question? How should I prepare the sponsor?
During a session, you'll have support as you build confidence leading the format.
And afterward, we'll help you make sense of what happened, synthesize what emerged, and turn the experience into something useful for the leader and organization.
Before. During. After. We're in it with you.
🛠️ You Get Enabled
Knowing how to facilitate is one thing. Having everything required to deliver an exceptional experience is another. That's where our team comes in.
For the PopUpThinkTank sessions we support, we work behind the scenes to help build the infrastructure around you, including:
Branded facilitation slides
Built and customized for the engagement—in your organization's brand.
Individual input + Insight Round forms
Designed for the specific session so participants can reflect, contribute, and build on one another's thinking.
Backend data capture
The infrastructure for collecting what participants contribute throughout the experience.
Post-session engagement surveys
So you can understand what happened beyond whether people simply “liked the session.”
Data synthesis
We help turn hundreds of individual inputs, observations, and ideas into patterns and useful intelligence.
Ideabooks + session readouts
Artifacts that capture what emerged and give the work somewhere to go next.
Executive-ready deliverables
Built by us, delivered through you—and editable so you can add your organizational context, recommendations, and next steps.
You don't need to spend your highest-value hours formatting slides, building forms, wrangling data, or figuring out how to turn hundreds of inputs into something coherent.
You get to spend that time on what only you can do: people, relationships, priorities, judgment, consulting, and change.
💡 You Get Our Experience
You shouldn't have to learn everything the hard way.
You're plugging into what we've learned from hundreds of 90-minute Zoom sessions across Fortune 500 companies, global brands, complex enterprises, startups, nonprofits, and teams navigating real organizational challenges.
That means you're not starting with a blank page every time someone brings you a new request.
You're starting with a format, pattern recognition, tested practices, accumulated judgment, and people who have seen a lot of this before.
You bring the organizational context. We bring the experience of the format. Together, we design what this moment needs.
⚡ You Get Multiplied
This may be the most important part.
The goal isn't to give an already-busy practitioner another thing to maintain.
It's to change the math of the work.
Without a repeatable capability, every new request can become another custom project: Another deck. Another workshop. Another survey. Another training. Another process to invent from scratch. Demand adds.
Capability multiplies.
With PopUpThinkTank, you have a repeatable way to respond to a growing range of organizational needs—and a backstage team handling much of the production required to deliver it.
So instead of spending more of your time making the thing, you can spend more of your time doing the work your organization uniquely needs from you.
Consulting.
Connecting.
Diagnosing.
Building relationships.
Preparing leaders.
Creating the conditions for change.
That's the multiplier.
🌟 And You Get to Take the Credit
This part matters, too.
When the slides look great, the experience feels different, 50 people participate, useful intelligence emerges, the sponsor feels taken care of, and an executive-ready readout lands afterward...
you're the person inside the organization who made it happen.
Over time, we want leaders to start saying:
“You should talk to them. They have a way of bringing people into something complicated and actually making progress.”
That's the reputation we're helping you build.
Not request taker. Not task master. Not content creator.
Strategic internal consultant.
Trusted convener.
Capability builder.
The person leaders call when real work needs to move.
And while you're becoming that person, we'll keep doing something unusual for a training and certification partner:
We'll stay behind you.
Our people.
Our tools.
Our production.
Our experience.
Our support.
All helping you do some of the best work of your career.
We Work Behind the Scenes.
You Become the Capability.
That's the model. And that's why we're asking for six months. Not because learning to facilitate a 90-minute session should take six months. Because we're not trying to teach you a workshop. We're building a capability together.
The 6-Month Organizational Readiness Pilot
This is intentionally not a traditional training program. You won't spend six months sitting through classes about facilitation. You'll build the capability by using it on real work.
-
Discover + Design
MONTH 1
Together, we'll explore your organization's current priorities, your role, your sponsor's goals, and where readiness gaps may be slowing important work.
We'll develop a point of view around one central question:
Where could this capability help move your organization's real priorities over the next six months?
You'll begin training, preparation, and readiness work—but always connected to actual opportunities inside your organization.
-
Experience the Capability
MONTH 2
We'll help you launch internally.
A PopUpThinkTank facilitator from our team will lead an initial session around a real challenge or priority inside your organization.
Your leaders and colleagues don't have to imagine what the capability could be.
They experience it.
And the first session helps surface the questions, challenges, and opportunities that could become future sessions.
-
Let It Work
MONTHS 3–6
Now you begin facilitating.
Learning & development. Leadership growth. Discovery. Project kickoffs. Technology rollouts. Alignment. Change initiatives. Strategic questions.
Wherever the format fits the work.
Our goal is for you to facilitate 5+ real PopUpThinkTank sessions during the pilot, building your confidence, reputation, internal demand, and evidence about where the capability creates value.
And you won't be doing it alone.
What starts showing up?
🎯 Actionable Signals
What's moving? Where is the energy? What deserves to be prototyped, tested, explored, or acted on next?
🤝 Collective Intelligence
Who needs to gather next? Around what? With whose sponsorship?
🚦 Signals to Slow or Stop
Where does momentum have meaning—and where is activity merely motion?
🧭 Meta-Learning
People get better at reflecting, connecting, sensing, and adapting while they're doing the work.
A PopUpThinkTank can produce ideas. But we're looking for something larger.
What this means—> Each session is both content and container. The work moves. And the organization practices a different way of moving it.
What if 10% better compounded?
One slightly better meeting won't transform your culture.
Neither will one good brainstorm.
That's not the hypothesis. The hypothesis is:
What happens when the way you convene around consequential work gets 10% better—again and again?
10% more shared context.
10% stronger connection.
10% more useful intelligence.
10% more ownership.
10% earlier visibility into friction.
10% more energy for the work ahead.
Now repeat that across five sessions.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
Across discovery, launches, learning, strategy, alignment, transformation, and reflection.
Those gains don't merely add. They can compound. And something else compounds:
Your capability.
Five sessions in, you're not the facilitator you were during Session 1.
Your judgment improves. Your confidence grows. Leaders begin referring other leaders. You recognize opportunities earlier. You know which questions to ask. You spend less time reinventing and more time consulting.
Eventually, demand may outgrow one facilitator.
That's when we can begin asking a bigger question:
What would it look like to build this capability across a team?
Relationships get stronger. Shared language travels. Leaders become accustomed to listening earlier. People become accustomed to participating in consequential questions. Your organization gets better at convening itself. A cultural head of steam begins to build.
That's what we want to build with you.
We've seen what happens when people get in the room.
You're not piloting the format.
PopUpThinkTank has already been used across hundreds of sessions, including work with organizations such as Gap Inc., Mortenson, and Lifespark, as well as venture-backed startups and emerging organizations.
You're piloting what happens when the capability lives inside your organization.
Across the work, we've seen participants turn collective thinking into clearer language, actionable feedback, strategic partnerships, new opportunities, next steps—and renewed energy for the work itself.
One founder described getting “much clearer, valuable insights” and putting participants' language directly into the company's pitch deck.
Another said the experience produced direct, actionable feedback alongside a significant “boost of energy.”
Another described what changed simply:
“Having everyone in the room changes everything.”
The PopUpThinkTank format isn't the experiment.
Putting the capability directly into the hands of practitioners inside complex organizations is.
And we're looking for a few people who want to help us find out what happens next.
“Amazing. I've found my community.” — Tandiwe Vaughn, Global L&D Designer, Veeam Software
“A boundary-stretching structure with rich, inspiring conversations.” — Claire Williams, Founder, In Depth Coaching
“Intentional, guided connection without pressure—an effective way to create real change.” — Candi White, Founder, Live Brave Collective
“Execution-ready insights for immediate strategic engagement.” — Dan Hildebrandt, Director, Strategic HR
“Excellent experience.” — John Egleston, Product Owner, InterVarsity
We're looking for people who want to go first.
Some organizations will want to wait.
Until the model is established.
Until someone else proves it.
Until there's a case study from a company exactly like theirs.
That's reasonable.
This pilot isn't for them yet.
For 2026–27, we're looking for a small number of practitioners and sponsors willing to experiment with us.
The internal model is new.
So we're putting disproportionate attention around the people willing to help us develop it.
That means close access to our team. Co-design. Priority support. Hands-on help with real sessions. Influence over what we build next. And the opportunity to become one of the first practitioners bringing this capability inside a complex organization.
You'll get close support.
You'll influence what we build.
You'll learn alongside other early practitioners.
And you'll become one of the first people trained and equipped to bring this capability inside an organization.
Go early without betting the farm.
Six months.
Real work.
Real sessions.
Real evidence.
Then decide whether this deserves to become an ongoing capability.
Who should apply?
This pilot may be a fit if:
—> You work in L&D, OE/OD, Talent, Culture, People, Leadership Development, or Change Enablement inside an organization with 2,000+ employees (note: we will consider smaller orgs, just reach out to inquire).
—> Your work routinely intersects with leaders whose priorities affect 30+ people.
—> Your organization faces meaningful internal complexity.
—> You have—or can secure—an executive sponsor for the pilot.
—> You have six months to put the capability into real work.
—> You want to facilitate 5+ sessions, not simply complete a certification or training.
—> You want to become more strategic, more visible, and more valuable to the leaders you serve—and build a competency that can travel with you throughout your career.
—> You're willing to experiment before every detail has been perfected.
Industries with distributed teams, cross-functional complexity, rapid change, or significant transformation may be especially well suited—including retail, technology, professional services, construction, healthcare, and financial services.
Change how you change.
Six months from now, our goal isn't simply for you to say:
“I'm trained to facilitate PopUpThinkTank.”
We want you to be able to say:
“Leaders are bringing us consequential work. We have a way to help. I'm doing some of the most strategic and energizing work of my career. And we're beginning to build a capability our organization can use again and again.”
That's the experiment. Not another certification. Not another tool.
A capability.
For you.
For your team.
And eventually, perhaps, for the way your organization changes.
Change is inevitable.
Readiness isn't.
APPLY FOR THE 6-MONTH PILOT —>
We'll explore your role, your sponsor's priorities, and the real work coming over the next six months. If there's a fit, we'll develop the pilot point of view together.
PopUpThinkTank creates readiness for what's next.