Design Thinking DC

* This is an online event

Most teams don’t have a decision problem. They have a (group) thinking problem.

Too often, a decision occurs on auto-pilot. The really ‘creative thinking’ is about justifying decisions after the fact. Take that habit into a group setting, and things don’t get better. They get noisier, more political, and often less effective. This session opens that up.

Instead of talking about decision-making, you’ll step inside it. Using a live, slightly absurd, and deceptively simple scenario, you’ll experience how decisions actually get made under pressure. You will discover where assumptions creep in, where group dynamics take over, and where “discussion” quietly turns into negotiation.

This is not a lecture. It’s a Decision Theater. You won’t just analyze decisions. You’ll stress-test your thinking in real time.

What You’ll Learn
Dr. Eagle will introduce a set of simple but powerful “claim testers”:

• Authority
• Logic
• Evidence
• Intuition

You’ll uncover your default pattern and how it influences the way you argue, decide, and collaborate. More importantly, you’ll learn how to:

• Recognize when a team is stuck in unproductive debate (defend > learn)
• Shift from defending ideas to testing them (learn > defend)
• Create decision environments that improve thinking, not just execution speed

Schedule
6:30 – Welcome / Warm Up Activity
6:45 – Instructional Setup / Group Formation
7:10 – Decision Theater Experience
8:10 – Share-out + Discussion
8:30 – Wrap

About Dr. Ethan Eagle
Dr. Ethan Eagle is a ‘recovering’ PhD engineer. Meaning: he took the long way around to a simple truth: innovation isn’t powered by hardware, it’s powered by humans. He believes every person brings irreplaceable value to a creative effort. And in the spirit of Arthur C. Clarke, often takes note that, “Any sufficiently advanced creative collaboration is indistinguishable from chaos.” He believes real breakthroughs don’t come from tidy processes, but rather emerge from messy, human spaces where curiosity magically finds a way to beat certainty.

Ethan founded Build the Change to tackle what most teams avoid saying out loud: We make flawed decisions. We struggle to collaborate. And together, we can become less effective than we are alone. His approach provides experiential scaffold for group interactions to improve these core team functions and have fun. We need teams that can scale wisdom, and wisdom doesn’t enter through the ears.