Leadership development · Creative thinking · Innovation
Solve tougher problems and build capacity
Your people have more to contribute. Our practical leadership and creative thinking programmes help them lead with confidence, work better together and turn ideas into action. They work on your real business challenges, with practice and support to make new ways of thinking and working drive better results.
Trusted by teams at
What we do
We develop people who lead well and think creatively
For organisations
1. Leadership excellence
Help managers become leaders their teams can rely on: coaching, building trust and leading change with confidence.
2. Culture transformation
Build a more innovative culture, where people share ideas, solve problems together and put good ideas into action.
For organisationsFor individuals
3. Creative Intelligence Academy
Build your own thinking skills: think more creatively, look at problems with fresh eyes and bring new ideas to your work. Courses and programmes for individual learners.
For individualsThe challenge
Is your team asleep or awake?
Before | Team asleep
- Resists new methods and technology
- Uses AI to skip the thinking, or avoids it altogether
- Waits to be told what to do
- Works in silos
- Leaders manage by telling and instructing
- No shared way to solve problems together
- Settles for “good enough”
After | Team awake
- Embraces change and adapts quickly
- Uses AI to think better, not less: questions it, builds on it, judges it
- Takes initiative and contributes ideas
- Collaborates across teams and speaks openly
- Leaders coach and enable
- A shared process for tackling tough problems
- Energised, and delivering breakthrough results
We understand
We understand the pressure on leaders today: to deliver results, hold their teams together and steer through constant change, often without a clear map. Creativity Wake-Up helps your people build the skills to meet it: leading and coaching with confidence, thinking creatively and critically, and using AI to think better, not less. Practical skills for a world that grows more complex, unpredictable and connected every day.
For organisations
Choose the programme that fits the challenge
Leadership excellence
Lead Forward
Equip managers with the skills to navigate uncertainty, drive innovation, and inspire high-performing teams.
In a world of rapid change, traditional leadership won’t cut it. This multi-month, deeply experiential leadership programme is backed by neuroscience. It helps you think strategically and lead with confidence.
Leaders practise coaching, hard conversations, building trust and leading change, and learn to use AI without losing the human connection.
Format: half-day to multi-month · in person, online or blended
Culture transformation
Creative thinking and innovation
Help your team build resilience, solve problems and thrive in fast-changing times.
Our flagship offer. Workshops and structured programmes that build creative thinking as a working skill, at individual, team and organisational level. Grounded in neuroscience and our own frameworks and tools, with optional coaching and an online follow-up programme to make the learning stick.
Culture change
For organisations navigating significant change. We help shift mindsets, strengthen psychological safety, and develop the leadership behaviours that make culture change stick.
Format: half-day to multi-month · in person, online or blended
Not sure which? Book a call and let's discuss, or see everything for organisations →
Single sessions
Workshops and keynotes
For a conference, an offsite or a team that is stuck. Interactive keynotes and focused workshops on creative thinking and leadership, tailored to your audience.
60 minutes to a full day · in person or online
Popular keynote topics
- Creativity unwrapped
- How to lead for creativity
- From imposter syndrome to creative confidence
How we work
Why it sticks
Mindset before skillset
Every Creativity Wake-Up programme begins with the inner game before the outer tools.
Skills grafted onto a fixed mindset don't stick. This is what separates behaviour change from training compliance.
Immediate application
Our workshops and programmes are hands-on. Teams work on real challenges, identify low-hanging fruit and design their first small experiments.
We don't hold application hostage until completion. The work begins immediately, and the programme supports it as it unfolds.
Psychometric profiling tools
Our programmes use psychometric tools including the Creative ID, Insights Discovery and the Aephoria Enneagram: robust tools, used widely around the world.
They give your teams and managers deeper self-insight and a shared language that strengthens team dynamics and improves collaboration across business units.
Designed to stick
Our learning architecture is informed by neuroscience principles on retention and behaviour change. This means spaced repetition, applied practice between sessions, accountability structures, and an embedding phase that extends well beyond the immersion itself.
Why Creativity Wake-Up
Why we are uniquely positioned to help you
Grounded in neuroscience
Our work is based on neuroscience, using rigorously tested tools and models.
Mindsets first
We focus on shifting mindsets for lasting change.
A proven track record
We have an excellent track record with top global and local clients.
Trusted partnerships
Our founders are adjunct faculty at GIBS Business School and partner with the NeuroLeadership Institute, Insights Discovery, Agile Talent and the Creative ID.
Results
What changes when people think differently
120+
people trained since 2023
Webber Wentzel
Lawyers and business services staff. The firm won the Innovation Award at the African Legal Awards two years running, and a team we trained launched its legal technology subsidiary.
100+
leaders and team members
Momentum Metropolitan
Group Finance, over five months. Four business solutions implemented, and 22 leaders now coaching creative thinking in their own teams.
30
leaders over four months
MTN, with GIBS
Leaders applied the tools to real work: an automated daily dashboard for network investment, a 5G roll-out risk assessment, and an onboarding redesign that reached 95% on-time completion.
“I’ve had the privilege of studying at Harvard and Stanford. This programme is better. We put our trust in you and you have shot the lights out.”
Dov Girnun, CEO, Merchant Capital
In their words
What people are saying
“Webber Wentzel won the Innovation Award at the African Legal Awards. This external recognition marks a significant milestone. Nina understood and got to grips with the law firm context and the market in which we are operating.”
Kathy Colman
Head of Innovation, Webber Wentzel
“The course totally exceeded our expectations. The coaching element was truly genius. The practical application projects unlocked so much for both the leaders and the business.”
Nicole Swart
Managing Director, Merchant Capital
“It got me out of my comfort zone; got me to think; got me to chat with the people in my team and collaborate with them.”
Nqobile Sibisi
Client Coverage Analyst, Standard Bank
For individuals
Think better, on your own terms
Courses you can take on your own, at your own pace.
Live online course · with GIBS
Lead for Creative Thinking
A globally accredited online course for leaders who want to grow creativity in their teams.
Apply and test what you learn each week back at work, and finish with a certificate of competency and a creative leadership plan for your own team.
Format: 6 weeks online · about 3 hours a week
Self-paced online course
The 5 Day Creative Wake-Up
Find out what is stifling your creativity, and start using it again.
Our tried-and-tested process for reviving creative thinking. Uncover what you really believe about creativity and how much you use it now, then learn how to nourish it and put it into action.
Format: five 30-minute videos · in your own time
Self-paced online course
Creative Note Taking with Mind Maps
Think, plan and remember more, in less time.
Learn the skill of creative note taking to help you evaluate, plan, collaborate and learn, at work and at home. Includes downloadable exercises and a summary.
Format: five short video lessons · in your own time
Our team
The people behind the work
Creativity Wake-Up is led by co-founders Nina Pearse and Celia Falkenberg, both adjunct faculty at GIBS Business School, with an extended team of facilitators, coaches and specialists in decision-making, culture change, innovation, HR and complex problem solving.
Meet the teamInsights
Our latest news and thinking
Watch our latest video, then catch up on the blog.
Latest videos
From the blog
Book a call
Let’s talk about your people
A 20-minute conversation about what you need and whether we can help. No slides, no obligation.
Book a callPrefer to write?
Send us a message and we’ll get back to you.
We get it
Cloning yourself at work can be an attractive option!
Getting results through other people is not easy. But unless you are a sole provider, that's the only way to get things done. And this what leaders do. They get results through others.
Your business needs people who can lead well and think differently. Yet we often see capable specialists struggling with managing people, teams falling back on familiar approaches, and too much depending on the same few leaders.
Sometimes it feels as though cloning yourself would be the easiest way to get everything done. You want to trust your people to take more of the lead and you need their development to make a real difference at work.
