Rethinking How We
Work and Lead
This Conference is not your typical day of learning. We’re doing it differently, starting with celebration, sparking connection, and designing experiences that inspire real-time action.
We’ve built this event for business leaders and those who aspire to lead with creativity, curiosity, and courage. From the moment you arrive, you’ll dive into a day framed by play, self-awareness, and practical frameworks you can use immediately.
Do It Differently is an experience. Engage in conversations, test new ideas, and celebrate the art of creative, human, and impactful work. End the day energized, inspired, and ready to bring fresh approaches back to your team.
Designed for business leaders and those who aspire to lead, this day is a chance to elevate your leadership, challenge assumptions, and create meaningful change in how you and your team work.
A dynamic team bringing expertise in leadership, human behaviour, creativity, and sustainable growth, here to rethink the way we work and help you Do It Differently.
Helping You
Do It Differently
TEDx speaker and HR leader with 15+ years of experience helping leaders build lasting habits, navigate workplace change, and cultivate inclusive, high-performing teams.
Jane Helbrecht
Uplift Engagement
Métis entrepreneur and ADHD advocate helping teams unlock creativity, build inclusive cultures, and design spaces where innovation and genuine connection thrive.
Donavan Robinson
Pop CoLab
Capacity strategist for high responsibility leaders, helping them succeed at a high level without their health, relationships, or quality of life paying the price.
Kate Hanson
Kate Hanson Co.
Business strategist and podcast host helping business owners grow sustainably by designing a
business that aligns with their energy, values, and life.
Jordan Labelle
Evergreen Growth Collective
Enneagram specialist and former educator helping professionals understand what drives behaviour, strengthen team dynamics, and lead with greater self-awareness and confidence.
Tamara Kroeker
EnneagramAWARE
Event strategist, producer, and emcee designing professional development programs and intentional community spaces where growth, engagement, and belonging genuinely thrive.
Kristine Tubiera
LMVA Consulting
Together, they create an engaging, human-centred experience that sparks connections, ignites self-awareness, and delivers practical strategies you can use for meaningful impact.
You Will Leave With ...
A Deeper Understanding
Self-awareness is the foundation of everything.
You'll walk away knowing the instinctual patterns and internal drivers that shape how you think, decide, and lead, and how to use that self-knowledge to show up more effectively for your team.
A frameworks that works.
These aren't ideas you'll forget by the time you're back at your desk. You'll leave with hands-on tools, from Play Personality frameworks to problem-solving sprints, that you can apply immediately in your workplace.
Frameworks for Complex Challenges
Structure for the messy stuff.
When priorities compete and problems pile up, instinct isn't enough. You'll gain proven frameworks to identify your real bottlenecks, make better decisions under pressure, and stop carrying it all yourself.
Resilience That Lasts
Lead with clarity, not just strategy.
You'll leave with a stronger internal capacity to lead through uncertainty, grounded, steady, and clear, so you can sustain both your performance and the people around you, without burning out in the process.
Connections That Go
Beyond the Room
Your peers are experimenting too.
You're not figuring this out alone. Leave with relationships and insights from other business leaders and owners who are navigating new ways of working and are willing to share what they're learning.
Actionable Items
Action beats intention every time.
You won't leave with a to-do list a mile long. Just one or two concrete leadership experiments, ready to test immediately, with real results you can measure and a weekly action plan to keep momentum going.
Ready to
Do it Differently?
I think we forget that everything starts from doing something differently. We get so used to our systems and whatever we call "the norm" that we forget that at some point that system had to be created and was a shift from something different. Doing things differently is simply a reminder that possibility is endless if we open up our mindset to seeing things from a new perspective.
Tamara Kroeker
EnneagramAWARE / D!D 2026 | The Skill Beneath the Skills
Because the playbook you've been following was written for someone else's game.
What if the reason it's not working isn't that you're doing it wrong? But instead, because you're playing someone else's game?
Everyone you look up to built something around who they are, what they have, and what they're willing to give up. Some of that is worth borrowing. But what if the real work isn't learning their moves? It's figuring out which ones are actually yours.
Jordan Labelle
Evergreen Growth Collective / D!D 2026 | The Game with No Rules
If we keep doing the same things, we will keep getting the same results. Work has changed. People and their expectations of work have changed. It's time for leaders to reflect and experiment to drive better results, more engagement and ensure the team's overall well-being. What worked in the past doesn't always work today. It's time to do it differently.
Jane Helbrecht
Uplift Engagement / D!D 2026 | The Art of Doing It Differently
What limits leadership growth is rarely ambition or capability, it's unmanaged capacity. As expectations increase, leaders are often left to navigate growing demands without a strategy to sustain them. To do it differently is to strengthen how leaders operate so success can continue without the hidden cost.
Kate Hanson
Kate Hanson Co. / D!D 2026 | It Doesn’t Have to Drain You: Resilient Leadership in Uncertain Times
Play is Performance
"Play is the most underrated performance tool we have. It lowers our defenses, raises our creativity, and connects us to each other in ways no meeting agenda ever could. Doing it differently means treating play like the competitive advantage it actually is."
Donavan Robinson
Pop CoLab / D!D 2026 | How to Lead with Play: Understanding How Your Team Can Perform Together
We spend so much time with the people we lead and work with, so let’s make it fun and do it differently. By creating spaces that give room to explore, experiment, and have conversations, we invite everyone to play, learn, and lead.
Kristine Tubiera
LMVA Consulting / D!D 2026 | Host & Event Producer
Ready to
Do it Differently?
Lead with Play
Donavan Robinson | Pop Colab
This session kicks off the conference with one simple idea: we don't all play (perform) at work in the same way, and understanding that changes how you lead, collaborate, and connect.
You'll learn what play actually is, discover your dominant Play Personality from a framework developed by Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play, and leave with a practical lens for spotting how the people around you are wired.
You'll get a short worksheet, a moment of honest self-reflection, and one thing to pay attention to for the rest of the day.
The Skill Beneath the Skills
Tamara Kroeker | Enneagram Aware
Discover the instinctual patterns and internal drivers that shape how leaders think, decide, communicate, and lead.
Strong leadership isn’t just about what we do, it’s about understanding what drives how we do it. This session explores what self-awareness actually means and why it is foundational to effective leadership. You will learn how instinctual patterns influence decision-making, delegation, communication, and stress responses. Through reflection, journaling, and small-group discussion, you will examine the forces beneath your leadership habits and develop practical insights you can apply immediately in your own leadership context.
It Doesn’t Have to Drain You: Resilient Leadership in Uncertain Times*
Kate Hanson | Kate Hanson Co.
In a world where technology shifts, priorities change, and uncertainty is constant, many leaders aren’t lacking strategy. They’re carrying too much while trying to execute it.
Leadership today isn’t just demanding. It’s draining. This session introduces a different approach. One where leaders strengthen their internal capacity first so they can lead with clarity, steadiness and calm confidence even as complexity increases. When leaders are grounded and clear, teams become more collaborative, adaptable and responsive. Performance improves without adding pressure or eroding capacity.
Through humour and powerful storytelling drawn from three pivotal life moments, Kate reveals how resilience is built before disruption and how personal agency shapes how teams think, act and respond to change. This is not about doing more. It’s about leading in a way that sustains both performance and the person leading it.
The Game with No Rules*
Jordan Labelle | Evergreen Growth Collective
33 Minute Problem-Solving Sprint
Most leaders and business owners are already playing a game with no rules. Too many problems, competing priorities, and no clear way to decide what actually matters first.
In this high-energy, 33-minute breakout, you will step into a fast-paced collaborative sprint built around a realistic scenario: a stalled company, too many priorities, a burned-out founder. Working in small groups, you'll be guided through a three-part framework to cut through the noise: understand what's really going on, focus on the highest-leverage problem, and build an action plan that doesn't depend on the leader doing it all.
But here's the twist. The framework isn't handed to you. You build it. The rules emerge from the room, one at a time, as the game needs them.
You will leave with tools you can use immediately in your own organization and a fresh perspective on what good leadership actually looks like.
What you'll walk away with:
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Clarity on what matters most. How to identify the real bottleneck in your business, not just the loudest or most visible problem.
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A decision-making framework that fits you. A simple method for prioritizing based on what actually matters to you, not what you think should matter.
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A new way to lead. How to stop carrying it all yourself and start building plans that use the right people, tools, and systems around you.
How to Lead with Play: Understanding Your Team's Play Personalities*
Donavan Robinson | Pop Colab
Using some familiar ideas companies use to introduce the idea of play at work, this breakout applies the Play Personality framework to make "Play" for everyone. You will learn how each of the 8 play styles shows up on a team, what those people need to do their best work, and what happens when the environment isn't designed for them.
The session is hands-on. You will work through a real workplace challenge in a small group, with each person contributing through the lens of their play personality rather than their job title. The results tend to surprise people.
You will leave with a practical way to look at your team differently, a clearer sense of who you might be excluding from the conversation, and a few specific actions you can take when you get back.
This session is good for anyone who leads people, runs meetings, builds teams, or keeps wondering why the same two people always end up driving everything.
The Art of Doing it Differently
Jane Helbrecht | Uplift Engagement
As automation and AI continue to dominate discussions around how we work, we all have an opportunity to reconnect with the art of our work. The unique creativity, humanity and playfulness we and our teams bring to work continues to be a competitive advantage and is perhaps more important than ever.
In this keynote, we will share how work is changing and how leaders and team members can respond and experiment with how we get work done. We’re in a time of massive change and big changes bring big opportunities to impact the ‘how’ behind our work and get even better results.
Outcomes:
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Attendees will understand some of the current pressures on workplaces and teams, as well as trends in how the world of work is shifting.
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Attendees will reflect on the art and creativity in their own work and how they can leverage that artfulness for a bigger impact.
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Attendees will learn examples of how teams and workplaces are experimenting with how we work to drive not just performance but also well-being.
Our day is designed to spark new ways of thinking, leading, and connecting. You’ll dive into keynotes and interactive sessions.
Do It Differently!
Rethinking How We Work and Lead
* During the day, these sessions will be offered in two time slots. Attendees will have the option to select two of the three sessions.
And your experience goes beyond the sessions
Every moment is designed to give you practical tools, new perspectives, and inspiration to
Do It Differently.
Sponsorship Opportunities
Partner
with D!D
Our Title Sponsor
This is the space to introduce the title sponsor and a brief description of their company.
Thank You
Premier Partners
Event Partners
Event Supporters
Media Partners
D!D Advisory Group
A curated group of professionals who contributed time, expertise, and insight to shape the event’s content and overall experience.
Premier Partners
This event would not be possible without the support of our amazing partners.
Land Acknowledgement
We are on Treaty land.
We acknowledge that our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation (Shoal Lake 39 is also impacted) in Treaty Three Territory, and that most of our hydro-electricity comes from Treaty Five Territory in northern Manitoba. Through the land, we recognize our connection and commitment to working with the Red River Métis, all First Nations Peoples across Turtle Island, and the Inuit of Canada.
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Get in Touch
Connect with us to learn how Pop CoLab can elevate your team. For inquiries, reach out via email or phone, and let's create something memorable together!