We build adaptive thinkers
and entrepreneurial cultures.
Using neuroscience, improv, and entrepreneurial practice, we train your people to move faster, communicate directly, and act on ideas instead of sitting on them — then measure the shift with real behavioral data.
Built on a meta-analysis of 1,000+ organizational science studies.
See if CognitivePlay™ fits your team
Most organizations don't have a talent problem. They have a conditions problem.
Smart, capable people default to caution when the conditions around them reward it. Change the conditions, and the same people start acting like entrepreneurs.
The brain doesn't change because of a good speech. It changes because of a complete loop.
Neuroscientists call it the gates of neuroplasticity: novelty, emotion, focus, and repetition. Learning scientists call it the experiential learning cycle: experience, reflection, abstraction, and testing. They describe the same loop from two different rooms.
Every CognitivePlay™ session is built to move a team through all four stages in a single sitting — not lecture one and hope the rest follows. That's the difference between a workshop people remember and one that actually changes how they work on Monday.
CognitivePlay™ is what happens when you run a team through that loop on purpose.
Sessions sized to your team, not a fixed package. Here's what actually changes for a team that goes through it.
The pattern we walk into
- Ideas generated, rarely acted on with urgency
- Disagreement avoided instead of resolved
- Decisions move carefully, even when speed matters
- Trust is high — but it's protecting comfort, not progress
What each phase rewires
- Early sessions — comfort with ambiguity and quick pivots
- Middle sessions — direct communication under real pressure
- Later sessions — turning ideas into action, not just talk
What we measure changing
- Conflict gets named and worked through, not buried
- Teams adapt faster when plans shift mid-stream
- Communication stays direct even when stakes are high
- The same trust now moves the team forward, not just together
This isn't a hypothetical arc — it's the same shift we measured independently in the case study below.
Neuroscience tells us why. Improv gives us how. Entrepreneurship gives it somewhere to go.
None of these work in isolation. CognitivePlay™ is what happens when all three run at once.
Neuroscience
The brain keeps rewiring itself for life — that's neuroplasticity. Every repeated behavior is either reinforcing an old circuit or building a new one. We design for the second kind.
The mechanism, not the motivationImprov
Inside an improv exercise, the brain's self-censoring planner quiets down while the regions tied to creativity and connection light up. People stop performing and start actually responding.
"Yes, and..." is a practice, not a metaphorEntrepreneurship
Not "quit your job and start a company." It's the habit of creating value with what's already in front of you, instead of waiting to be told. That habit is trainable at any level.
A new operating system, not a one-time lessonTelling people what to do barely moves behavior. Practicing under the right conditions does.
Adult learning research keeps landing on the same finding: people retain and act on what they construct through experience, far more than what they're told. Lectures build awareness. Practice builds reflex.
That's why every session is built around doing, not listening — short, repeated, high-stakes-feeling exercises where people fail safely, adjust, and try again, until the new behavior stops feeling like an exercise.
Reading or hearing information alone — what most corporate training relies on.
Talking it through with others activates recall and surfaces gaps in understanding.
Rehearsing the actual behavior, in conditions close to the real thing.
Explaining a behavior to another person forces the deepest level of encoding.
The before/after above isn't a promise. It's what we measured.
58 leaders. One 50-year-old nonprofit. A handful of sessions.
A national nonprofit came to us with a familiar pattern: a warm, trusting culture that had quietly become conflict-avoidant and slow to decide. We ran the loop. We measured the team before and after.
Measured independently by Symeta Behavior Science.
Read the full case studyReal feedback from the leaders and teams we've worked with.
I'd tell any team or leadership group to take a serious look at this. John brings real skill and a genuine drive to help others grow.
A genuinely valuable experience — I came away having learned a lot about myself as a leader and about other styles of communication. Already asked to have them back.
John's insight into driving company progress during hard moments is second to none — invaluable for our students as they grow on their own entrepreneurial path.
During our executive program's on-site week, John led an improv-inspired workshop that showed our healthcare leaders exactly how to sharpen team dynamics and communication.
We just marked five years as a company. Making culture a priority — the way Taking Flyt pushed us to — is exactly why. Culture really does eat strategy for breakfast.
From universities to healthcare CEOs, the same method travels.
Join 100+ business owners, leaders, and students who've already gone through the program.
Questions people usually ask
What is "adaptive thinking," and why does it matter for our business?
It's the ability to shift perspectives, challenge assumptions, and respond to new information with clarity instead of defaulting to old habits. In practice, it's the difference between a team that gets stuck and one that pivots — they solve problems faster, collaborate better, and lead through change instead of freezing up.
How is this different from traditional corporate training?
Most training delivers information and calls it development. We focus on changing how people think, not just what they know — no generic slide decks or check-the-box modules. The work is experiential and built around your real challenges, so the growth actually sticks after we leave.
Is this a one-time workshop, or an ongoing process?
Real mindset change doesn't happen in one afternoon. We can deliver a high-impact single workshop, but our most transformative work happens over a sustained engagement, with built-in checkpoints, practice, and reinforcement so new thinking patterns actually take root.
Is this for leadership only, or does it work across our whole team?
Adaptive thinking benefits everyone, from the frontline to the C-suite. We often start with leadership since how leaders think sets the tone for everyone else — but the program is designed to work at every level of an organization.
How do you actually measure growth and success?
We look at both qualitative and behavioral shifts — are people asking better questions, navigating disagreement more constructively, making decisions with more clarity under pressure? We set a baseline at the start and track movement through structured assessments and real-world observation, the same way we did in the case study above.
What does the investment look like?
Pricing is customized to the scope, duration, team size, and depth of engagement — we're not the cheapest option, and we're not trying to be. The organizations that get the most from this see it as a strategic investment in their people, not a line-item training cost. We'll give you a clear picture after an initial conversation.
Your team's brains are going to change either way.
The only question is whether they're reinforcing the habits that got you here, or building the ones that get you to what's next.
Grounded in neuroscience · Measured with real data